The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales
10 comments
·September 1, 2025carbonguy
The article details the seller-push (i.e. bad) theory, but doesn't go very far with the buyer-pull - presumably this is where one would get value out of the coaching sessions offered at the bottom of the piece?
The dichotomy seems real but hard to actually do anything with if you're in sales. I've done some penny-ante sales work in my past life in what I would call buyer-pull situations. It's great! People find you and they want to spend money, so all you have to do is not discourage them.
But once you get past "I'm selling something so manifestly useful that people find me to pay me for it", it sure seems like the things you, the sales rep, have to do to get their dollars skew rapidly toward the "seller-push" side of things. What else works? Folks gotta know about you and they gotta know you can solve their problems, right?
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soanvig
I hate sales people.
This blogpost describes sales strategy as obvious as it is annoying, just like described seller-push. Written in a fashion of trying to sell me something.
Just stop manipulating for a second, ok? But I guess the profession would not exist then.
TedHerman
Two background resources useful to know: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-Driven_Innovation and Christensen's "Jobs to be Done" theory. 2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245472.Integrity_Selling... specifically, the taxonomy of customer types
webdevver
my favourite theory of sales is that of the school of cialdini, which is basically treating the customer as something which can lead to money coming out of it if you supply the right verbal and visual stimulus.
lurk2
Unironically demonic.
croemer
There's no reason to put Physics in the title. There's zero Physics in the article.
It's about Buyer-Pull vs Seller-Push theories of sales.
Edit: The original title was "The Physics of Sales", now the HN title has been updated.
dang
That's a more representative title, so let's use it instead. Thanks!
lurk2
I’ve seen a few submissions have their titles changed in the last few months. I was led to believe that submissions should not deviate from the original title under any circumstance other than those described on the guidelines.
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
Has this policy been relaxed recently? I never liked it as I find a lot of submissions can be unintentionally misleading when the original title is used.
I believe (I have done very little sales, so mostly as a buyer) that while all three (buyer-pull, seller-push, Cialdini-style mentioned in a comment below) can work, the best result comes from buyer-pull when you have empathy for the customer.
You try to understand the needs of the buyer, and see if what you are selling aligns with those needs. This is needed for effective buyer-pull, because they might not understand what they really need, or how what you are offering might fulfill those needs.