Lenny's Podcast · May 28The power of strategic narrative | Andy Raskin
Its pitch moves from transactions to the subscription economy, with the goal of turning customers into subscribers. Its 2015 deck cited Airbnb and Box as winners plus a Fortune 500 lifespan chart, and about 80% of early content was trend pieces. Andy's post on its pitch drew about two million views.
Tips
- Pitch a shift from an old game to a new game▶ 10:28Salesforce did not lead with being faster than Siebel or having more functionality. It led with a paradigm shift and asked buyers if they were in or out.
- Name the old game and the new game in a few concise words▶ 20:10Examples that worked: software to cloud, transactions to subscriptions, opinions to reality (Gong).
- Name the stakes by showing winners already playing the new game▶ 21:30Zuora cited Airbnb and Box as 2015 winners and showed a stat on shrinking Fortune 500 longevity. 360Learning used a McDonald's recruiting poster about learning from teammates.
- Name the object of the new game as a rallying cry▶ 24:10Zuora's object was 'turn customers into subscribers' and Airbnb's was 'belong anywhere' or 'live there'. The Zuora question was 'what would it take to turn every customer into a subscriber'.
- Reframe your solved problems as obstacles to the new goal▶ 26:00Zuora's obstacles included how to measure lifetime value with always-on customers and how to track changing preferences.
- Build marketing content around the movement, not your product▶ 36:55When Zuora started, roughly eighty percent of their content was pieces like how music companies and luxury goods companies embrace subscriptions, rather than product promotion.
- Have the CEO lead the narrative work personally▶ 56:20A Zuora sales leader said the CEO's story gave him air cover while he knocked down deals on the ground.
- Treat the five steps as principles, not a template▶ 51:25
- Write online consistently over time instead of chasing one viral post▶ 18:25The Zuora post drew around two million views and inbound inquiries from teams worldwide, which let him charge CEOs for narrative work. An earlier Tesla Powerwall pitch teardown got a few hundred thousand views.
