📕What’s your strategic narrative?
Hello! Adam Thornhill here. ‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a week.
Ready for the 67th edition of Podup? Enjoy the best bits from Lenny’s Podcast.
The right story can be the difference between captivating or losing your audience. Andy Raskin helps companies like Uber, Salesforce, and Square to identify their strategic narrative - the single story that powers their entire business. Join Lenny as he recaps Andy’s step-by-step guide to developing your own narrative:
5 steps to craft your story
Start by identifying the ongoing movement or trend. Give it a name.
Point out the stakes. Who stands to gain or lose? What’s already happening? Why is it important?
Define the goal. What does winning look like in this new scenario?
Present the obstacles. Why is it challenging to achieve the goal?
Finally, articulate how you plan to overcome these obstacles.
Lenny Rachitsky
Best in class example
Take Drift as an example. It’s a chatbot for websites. Rather than stating why their chatbot is superior, they positioned their product in the context of an emerging trend: the fact that consumers expect instantaneous replies. This strategy, which they termed ‘conversational marketing,’ allowed them to distinguish themselves from other chatbot services.
Andy Raskin
Adopt Andy’s playbook
To put this into practice, I ask the CEO to form a strategic narrative team of up to 4 people, typically comprised of leaders from marketing, sales, and other key areas. The team identifies the old versus new game shift and the associated stakes, resulting in reams of notes and ideas.
Two workstreams unfold. (1) Myself and the CEO work together 1-on-1 to create a first draft. (2) I ask the rest of the team to interview customers to gather insights. Everyone then comes together to review the first version of the strategic narrative.
During this second session, the team show a lot of strong feelings about us throwing out their ideas. I remind them that having a shit first draft is a million times more valuable than having all these great ideas. The first draft is often wrong but the good news is the team gets to weigh in. I then go back to the drawing board with the CEO to finalize it.
Andy Raskin
Why it matters
In business and life, our ability to effectively communicate our ideas, ambitions, and visions can make or break our success.
A well-crafted narrative helps you to align and propel your product, sales, marketing, recruitment, and fundraising efforts.Â
Andy’s method can help you elicit the emotional response you need to win hearts and minds and get people to act.
Next steps
Follow Andy’s guide. You’ll surprise yourself with the results. Here’s a before and after of how I’ve positioned Podup to new readers:
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After
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The Before wasn’t bad per say. It showcases the benefits of subscribing. However, it’s missing a why now. That’s what the After does so well. You question whether you have the necessary information to do your job in a turbulent market. The solution? Subscribing to Podup.
Your thoughts?
Thanks to Apollo.io for making this post possible…
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Quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Sentences were left out to make the narrative more concise. Podup is not associated or affiliated with any podcast.