Episode 25 of The Verblio Show
Andy Raskin is the storyteller of Silicon Valley, with a list of clients that includes some of the biggest venture-backed names in tech. With a website that says simply âStrategic Narrative,â however, the question is this: What exactly does he do?
As one client told him, he âgot their story straightââand it was worth every penny.
Andy goes beyond traditional marketing concepts to craft narratives that reframe the world and reshape the buyerâs journey. In his conversation with Steve, he clarifies what a strategic narrative is and what it isnât, and he offers actionable insights regarding who should be in charge of authoring it and where it should live. He also shares plenty of real-world examples, including the story behind Zuora and the greatest sales deck heâs ever seen.
Guest-at-a-Glance
Name: Andy Raskin
What he does: Messaging mastermind and go-to narrative expert for venture-backed firms in Silicon Valley. Former software developer and journalist.
Find him on the web: Andy Raskin | LinkedIn | Twitter
Get smart: âA company without a well-thought out story is a company without a well-thought out strategy.â
Top Tips from This Episode
Create a narrative that is larger than just your company
Too often, a companyâs narrative is all about them versus the competition, and how using them will benefit their audience. Thatâs not what makes a strategic narrative, according to Andy. âItâs a story that the buyer can have in their head thatâs validâand that is not dependent on the company itself,â he says.
An effective narrative goes beyond the company to describe some larger shift in the landscape. In the case of Zuora, that shift was boiled down to the idea of the âsubscription economyâ as a monumental change from the transaction-based marketplace of yesteryear. The âsubscription economyâ isnât about Zuora or their offeringsâinstead it describes a bigger paradigm shift in a compelling way and, in doing so, creates a sense of urgency for the solution Zuora can provide.
Your CEO needs to lead the creation process
Andy typically works most closely with a companyâs CEO rather the CMO. Why?
To paraphrase Ben Horowitz, âA company without a well-thought out story is a company without a well-thought out strategy,â Andy says. âThe story is the strategy. And if you really believe that, then the story is CEO work.â
Rather than having marketing come up with a narrative that is then relayed back upstream to the CEO, the CEO should be the one authoring the story from the outset, with direction and input from the rest of the team. Ultimately, the end narrative will be driving every department, so every area should be involvedâbut it needs to start at the top.
Put your narrative in a sales deck
Marketing narratives often go in an internal positioning document that nobody actually sees. Not only does that keep it from having the kind of visibility and team buy-in needed to truly drive a brandâs story, but, as Andy points out, âA collection of messages does not tell you how to talk to somebody in a real conversation.â
A sales deck, on the other hand, is public. âIt is something that the world is gonna see,â Andy says, and that allows you to get real feedback on whether or not it is resonating with your audience. It also forces you to distill your story down into a quick, focused pitch, requiring a discipline and clarity of intent you wouldnât otherwise have with an internal doc.
Episode Highlights
The strategic narrative = the story in the buyerâs head
âWe like to think that people make decisions by, âWe have some problem, weâre going to survey all the options for solving it, all the solutions, rank them on some criteria, and then weâre going to calculate the best ranking and choose the best one.â
âAnd maybe this happens in some sort of trivial situations, but I think where someoneâs really got some urgent thing, where theyâre really going to take some bold actionâitâs not that. Itâs this story in their head that theyâve built by observing the world and discerning patterns for how to thrive. So the strategic narrative is really whatâs in their head. And of course then the idea isâas a company, can we influence that? Can we try to maybe knock out an old one that was there and put in a new one thatâs going to guide how they see the world in a way that benefits us?â
Nailing down your narrative can unlock a multiplier effect.
âThere was this other point in the growth of the company where this mattered a lotâŠmaybe in a way even more valuable than at the beginning where the companyâs scaling, where thereâs been a lot of success, but itâs all been kind of like brute force of the founders⊠And now weâre going to be hiring lots of marketing, lots of sales, and if we can get this story nailed so that the founder doesnât have to be in the roomânot only for sales, but for recruiting and for the product and everythingâthen this is going to have this multiplier effect on everything we do.â
One story to rule them all
âJust to be clear, weâre looking for the one story. Thereâs a lot of things I seeâthereâs the ten stories that a CEO has to tell, or the five stories of marketing. And all thatâs valid, theyâre definitely different types of communications you want to have. What Iâm really looking for, though, is that one story that unites it all. âŠAll the storiesâto work wellâshould really be almost sub-flavors of that one high level story.â
Get away from âUs vs. Them.â
âOne of the biggest mistakes I see is that they make it like âThe old game was, you were using our competitorâs software, and the new game is youâre gonna use our software.â Some version of that, right? And thatâs not what weâre looking for. A journalist should be able to go in without even looking at your company and its products and tease out this shift, this story.â
An effective narrative is about the world and how to thrive in it.
âIf you just say, âHey, you have a problem and we can solve the problem,â then they may not understand why solving that problem really matters. And this storyâgetting this new story in their head about the world and how to thrive in itâthat positions that problem as a kind of obstacle to thriving in this new world. Then thatâs where the magic happens.â
Top quotes:
Andy:
[7:48] What is a strategic narrative? âItâs the story in the buyerâs head that guides their actions.â
[23:34] âYes, people want to know what your stuff does. At the same timeâand they may not say it or even know itâthey want the context. They need context to understand why it matters and why itâs gonna be urgent.â
[26:15] âWinning in sales used to be about opinions. Now, winning in sales is about having a view of realityâa real view of reality.â