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47 – Why Customers Don't Buy Pain Points or ROI

Episode 47 • 7th August 2026 • Experience-Focused Leaders • Alex Shevelenko

Your host Alex Shevelenko welcomes Rob Snyder, an author, startup advisor, Harvard Business School MBA, and former McKinsey consultant. In this episode, Rob shares his counterintuitive, physics-based take on why conventional startup wisdom and traditional sales playbooks frequently fail, especially in a B2B landscape where founders are taught to push product features and showcase ROI over understanding genuine customer behavior.

Rob discusses the evolution of his thinking from getting "punched in the face" by early startup failures to scaling a business to $104 million in revenue in two years without understanding why it finally clicked. He explains why modern B2B discovery often feels like an interrogation, with founders hollowing out buyer trust by clinging to rigid qualification frameworks like BANT or MEDDIC and running lengthy, non-aerodynamic product demos. He introduces his "Pull Framework"—breaking down how active Projects, Unavoidable needs, Limited options, and inherent Limitations dictate whether a customer will truly buy—providing a blueprint for eliminating up to 100% of unnecessary demos and pilots to compress 18-month sales cycles down to weeks. As the conversation explores enterprise friction, Rob highlights why inbound interest doesn't guarantee a sale, and why the most resilient founders will be those who hunt for internal "change agents" rather than relying on superficial pain points.

The conversation also touches on the practicalities of enterprise sales physics and the psychology of buyer motivation, including Rob's advice on how to uncover a prospect's personal "so that" drivers without creating artificial urgency. He shares insights from advising hundreds of near-death startups, explaining how analyzing real customer data—specifically fast buyers and resurrected leads—can reveal the exact triggers that cause a customer to pull a product out of a founder's hands. This episode serves as a masterclass for any founder, revenue leader, or growth executive looking to move beyond "answer-obsessed" pitches and build a go-to-market engine that is operationally equipped to drive real velocity.

To connect with Rob, find him on LinkedIn or visit his website at RobSnyder.org. You can also find his book, The Power of Pull, on Audible and Amazon.

Want to be a guest on the show? Contact us here. To learn more about RELAYTO, visit: relayto.com.

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