How-to: Creating a sales narrative

Summary: How to turn your positioning into a micro-pitch & sales narrative, with an example deck outline.

In this section, we’re going to move from discussing science-based positioning in theory to discussing your value proposition in the form of a sales narrative you can test with prospects.

I’ll give you a basic outline for a typical B2B SaaS sales narrative below, but first, let’s think about what we’re trying to do here.

Hopefully, you’ve got a sense of which of the four strategies you’re pursuing — prove it, find it, own it, ride it, or a combination that makes sense for you.

Remember, we’re trying to build a position in the prospect’s mind so, in simple terms, they understand exactly who you’re for and what you’re about. The core inputs for your sales narrative, then, is whether you have:

• Proven there’s new value generated by a new wave.
• Found unique value that’s highly relevant to the prospect.
• Owned the value associated with you.

(And if that’s been working and you’ve been riding your position, your pitch will of course mention how you’ve helped similar customers succeed, as reflected in your references and logos.)

Now we’ve got those inputs, it’s time to turn them into an output — a narrative about your value proposition.

The value you propose

Your value proposition is the glue between product and market that goes to the heart of product/market fit. Think of your value proposition like the power cord that connects product and market together, so the two can generate value. It’s high-stakes stuff, and if that power cord doesn’t connect… well, not much is going to happen.

In the B2B world, we wrap that connection up between your product and the market in a sales narrative. Why a sales narrative?

On the one hand, you could have a generic, fill-in-the-blanks positioning statement but that’s often too dry and detail-free to be much help.

That’s too cold.

Or, on the other hand, there’s the founder’s big ‘out there’ vision — the bright future of what might be. That’s great — this is all about turning that vision into a narrative — but vision alone is usually too far in the future and too speculative to be of much use in deals here and now.

That’s too hot.

This is why we’ve spent so much time on positioning — on figuring out the value you propose. That’s what buyers are ultimately going to buy, after all: the value you can start delivering. And sales narratives are a great way to communicate that value. They let you:

• Tell a whole story, from beginning to end, whereas a homepage (for example) is more about getting folks to just take a next step (like trying the product or booking a demo).
• Tell a rich story, as opposed to a details-free positioning statement, especially in a sales context where you have more time and more of the prospect’s attention to work with.
• Tell a custom story, which you can tailor to your audience and their role (e.g., end user vs. C-suite).

You can also have a sales narrative without a sales deck at all if you’re product-led and don’t do sales per se; just call it your positioning narrative (or master narrative, or strategic narrative, or whatever you like). What you call it doesn’t matter; what matters is how you express your value proposition.

With that in mind, here’s a super quick, high-level guide to creating a sales narrative that captures your value proposition. Let’s briefly look at:

1. Micro-pitches.
2. Story 1 & story 2
3. Sales narratives (including a 10-slide deck outline).

1. Micro-pitch

The best pitches — and the best value propositions — spread. They’re memetic. They stick. They get repeated and they get shared, which is great for owning an association in the buyer’s mind.

To do that, they have to be small and catchy. They have to capture a big idea in a precious few words.

I call this kind of micro-pitch your “Hemingway story.”

Ernest Hemingway, legend has it, once crafted a short story to win a bet with his drinking buddies. The bet? That he could make them cry with a story of just six words. The story?

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Your Hemingway story doesn’t need to make anyone cry (or roll their eyes, for that matter), but it does need to explain what you do with absolute clarity.

Consider these classic micro-pitches:

• Use cloud software not on-prem. (Salesforce’s “End of Software” campaign at the turn of the millennium, before either ‘the cloud’ or ‘SaaS’ had been coined.)
• Use chat not email. (Slack.)
• Use chat not forms. (Drift and “conversational marketing.”)
• Do ‘inbound’ marketing. (HubSpot, riding the digital marketing wave.)
• Use agile not waterfall. (Jira riding the agile wave.)
• Use Linear not Jira. (Linear riding a classic anti-incumbent wave.)
• Mine sales calls for insights. (Gong, riding the Zoom call recording wave.)
• Design collaboratively in the browser. (Figma.)
• Build your own workspace. (Notion.)
• Payments for developers. (Stripe.)

This approach is particularly relevant in B2B, where it’s often more about the change or the ‘from/to’ transformation that your product enables that matters. It’s that transformation you’re often pitching after all.

Note that these aren’t necessarily taglines. You might never express it this bluntly to customers. Drift, for example, used “conversational marketing” to convey what you did with their chat tool in particular. That was their playbook; their position they could own relative to other chat providers.

Nevertheless, as an exercise in clarity, it’s worth understanding what your pitch fundamentally boils down to. For Drift, it was taking on the old forms-and-email approach as the enemy and coming up with a micro-pitch that captured their playbook — what they wanted buyers to actually do with their software.

Your turn

• What’s your current micro-pitch?
• What’s your playbook — what do you want buyers to actually do with your software? What playbook does your micro-pitch capture?
• Which of our positioning strategies does it reflect the most?
• If you had to get your micro-pitch down to 4-6 words, what would it be?

2. Story 1 & story 2

The narrative approach also gives us a chance to address both modes of attention.

Remember, as we discussed in the three areas of science, that the foundation of science-based positioning is the hierarchy of attention:

• ‘Story 1’ change stories for right-brain ‘radar’ attention — proving there’s new value from a new wave.
• ‘Story 2’ focused stories for left-brain ’laser-beam’ attention — finding unique value for a specific segment.

In practice, how much of story 1 and story 2 story types you use will vary based on your product and prospect. For example:

• A cybersecurity product might talk much more about the emerging threat ‘out there’ (GenAI-enabled hacking and exploits, for example). As a prospect, I need to understand what should be on my radar before any solution will make sense, so more of the narrative will be spent setting that context.
• A developer-oriented product might get into the specifics of technical details, APIs and integrations, and the challenge of build vs. buy very quickly. What’s ‘out there’ is far less important than the specifics of how it works, so we might lean more on story 2-style pitches in that case.

Or consider the typical exec vs. end-user pitch (and differences in attention):

• A C-suite pitch (or end users when going outbound) might spend more time on story 1, the why, and the change-over-time narrative about megatrends that are likely to impact their organization, setting up the new value that comes from these new waves.
• An end user pitch would focus much more on the how, how the tool works and how it affects their day-to-day, so we’d lean more on the story 2 pitch.

Mismatched pitches are a classic B2B sales narrative failure state. One startup I worked with spent a decade focused on the end-user pitch but never really cracked the exec pitch — execs don’t really care about a workflow they never do day to day. The Unicorn, on the other hand, went big on the story 1 change narrative, but it didn’t resonate with end users at all — it was about organizational transformation that was well above the front line folks’ pay grade.

What matters in these pitches is that your attention — your vision — intersects directly with your prospects’ vision, literally what they’re looking at day to day. If you can match what they see and appear to ‘read their mind,’ then you’re golden — you’ll win and keep their attention because you’re directly addressing their interests.

So while we’re going to look at a single deck outline below, keep in mind that sometimes you’ll need to go out much further on the story 1 side, while other times you’ll need to drill down more on the story 2 side.

Going right/left/right

Let’s take this story 1/story 2, right-brain/left-brain idea and get a little bit more sophisticated with it.

Notice that, even for very story 2-centric folks, you still have to put something on their radar in the first place, like the fact that your new product exists. Likewise for story 1 folks, there’s still some getting into the details to prove your value really is there.

This suggests a pattern we can use for any sales narrative we might be putting together.

The right-brain/left-brain hierarchy of attention came from, if you recall, Dr. Iain McGilchrist. McGilchrist has another powerful insight we can use in a sales context, and that has to do with how our brains process information.

Broadly speaking, we go from global context → narrow specifics → new whole. That is, we go from:

• Right hemisphere: What’s new, what’s changed, what’s ‘out there’ on the radar.
• To the left hemisphere: Applying our narrow focus to drill down to the parts and pieces.
• Back to the right hemisphere: Coming back up with a new, integrated whole.

This is the R/L/R jump. Story 1-focused narratives spend more time on the first R; story 2-focused narratives spend more time on the middle L, and for both narratives we should always bring it back to some new world that buyers will experience on the other side.

It’s thinking through that last part, in particular, that helps us shape our micro-pitch, our narrative, and ultimately the position we’re trying to build in the buyer’s mind. What will things genuinely look like for the buyer on the other side? This is the vision feedback loop where the more expertise you get at delivering that final value, the stronger your positioning and what you ‘see’ ultimately becomes.

Ultimately, the mix of story 1 and story 2 you use will be highly contextual based on your positioning strategy, motion (inbound or outbound), and prospect (high awareness late in the sale, or perhaps low awareness early in their journey). But simply knowing the story 1/story 2 dynamic exists — and that the R/L/R jump is how we process information — gives us tremendous flexibility in tailoring our narratives to meet folks where they’re at.

In fact, it’s highly likely this R/L/R process reflects the typical startup journey itself, especially at the early stage. The founder has a vision about something ‘out there’ (R), then gets into the weeds for a couple of years focused down on building product, working with customers, and seeing what resonates (L), and then emerges with a new, integrated whole — the polished, innovative tool (or book, in my case) with a dialed-in narrative to match (R).

Either way, the R/L/R jump is a simple way of understanding how both modes of attention work together in both creation on the startup side and buying on the prospect’s side, and that’s something we can harness for our narrative.

Your turn

• Does your current pitch map to this right/left/right, or context/specifics/whole approach?
• Does that final step — the new, reintegrated ‘whole’ — reflect what you’ve learned from customers?
• Does your long-form content (articles, ebooks, webinars, demos) map to this approach?
• Could your broader clarity strategy use this approach across your customer journey, too?

3. Sales narratives

I’ve been teasing the actual deck outline for a while, now let’s get into it.

First, here’s a five-point example narrative sketch for a fairly typical, insight-driven B2B pitch. (By sketch, I mean this is the easiest, roughest way to get some initial ideas down.) This is the kind of outline I use with my clients that balances story 1 & story 2:

1. BLUF: Bottom line up front to introduce your story and product.
2. Context (macro or micro): Set up your story 1 — the broader context or your perspective on the market. What’s your unique insight into their broader (or specific) context?
3. Tension: What’s the tension that brought the prospect here? What’s stopping the prospect from moving forward? What’s wrong with the alternatives? And what does the positive opportunity for them to keep succeeding in their role look like?
4. Solution: Story 2 — the product reveal that addresses the tension we’ve set up from the story 1 change in the environment, perhaps with a brief overview major product pillars.
5. Resolution: The impact and results the solution delivers, and what the solution means for the broader team and organization. This is the outcome — the integrated whole — they can expect and others have achieved.

Pretty straightforward, right?

A 10-slide deck outline

We’ve covered:

• The two story types.
• The R/L/R jump.
• A rough narrative sketch of context, tension, solution, and resolution.

Now, let’s turn that into a deck outline.

Below is my example from my Positioning Playbook (sans details), and this might give you a starting point — or at least a few ideas — for fleshing out your own narrative.

• Slide 1: Intro (or Meet [Product], or lead with a catchy take on your Hemingway story; either way, remember BLUF — bottom line up front).
• Slide 2: Macro trends/pains — context setting (either the wave, change, shift, or new reality for story 1 pitches or specific pains you’ve pinpointed for story 2 pitches).
• Slide 3: The need — connecting how this problem or insight relates to the prospect, creating tension.
• Slide 4: The challenge — why and how they in particular struggle with this tension, describing and agitating their pain (which should have them nodding along).
• Slide 5: The status quo — alternative solutions people typically try but are flawed because they’re too hot/too cold.
• Slide 6: The opportunity — a tease of a new way where the prospect is winning and/or the pain is solved.
• Slide 7: The product — the big reveal of the hand-in-glove obvious solution to the problem you’ve outlined.
• Slide 8: The product pillars — join the dots for the prospect, connecting core features to value.
• Slide 9: The impact — what it means for the user, the team and managers, and the broader company, resolving the tension of the problems you set up earlier.
• Slide 10: The result or outcome — the new integrated whole with your product.
• Slides 11 and beyond: More on the product, proof, and next steps — always suggest next steps — the pilot, the trial, the next call, etc.

That’s the outline! A few things to note here:

• Sales discussions are dialogues, not monologues: Sales 101, but while I describe this as a narrative, in practice, there would be several jumping-off points where you would engage with the prospect on their specific issues. (If you’re early stage, this is a great opportunity for customer development!)
• Discovery comes first: This is Sales 101 as well, but in any sales process, there will be some upfront discovery so you can weave the narrative into the prospect’s situation. The narrative isn’t a spell you cast on unsuspecting prospects; it’s a framework for discussion around their issues that leads back to your product.
• Tension, tension, tension: A boring story is a series of self-serving facts with no stakes and a predictable outcome. An interesting story has tension — a relatable character you’re invested in (i.e., the buyer, not the vendor!), the plausible, real struggles they face to overcome a genuine problem, and a satisfying solution as a payoff (not fake ROI stats). That’s the narrative drive that makes an outline like the above work.
• Your narrative must match your marketing: Your current narrative — especially as the founder tells it — might already roughly fit this approach, but it may not be reflected in the rest of your GTM messaging. If so, consider rolling out a clarity strategy along with a refreshed narrative.

This outline is also just a starting point, not The Definitive Sales Outline For Any Situation™, so consider how you might tailor it to fit. Small business pitches, for example, might be a simple “We’re X for Y” where you then get straight into the product. Enterprise pitches, on the other hand, might require a lot of context setting, discovery, and scoping work along with your product pitch. It’s up to you to design the buying experience you want for your customers.

Pitching value

Some folks treat selling like being a talking brochure. If your product really is that new or your prospect really is that unaware, then sure, you’re going to have to do a lot of explaining.

But selling can be so much more than that. Your pitch in and of itself can create value for your prospect in the right circumstances. Think about who they’d rather buy from — someone that just talked at them or someone who understood their problems and gave them valuable insights from the get-go?

There’s a couple of right- and left-brain ways we can do this. McGilchrist suggests that our right brain tends to be good at pattern matching, while our left brain tends to be good at mapping things — like the market you operate in.

Let’s start with pattern matching and the idea that pattern matching leads to customer expertise.

If your positioning is tight enough, you start seeing (again, vision is everything) the same problems over and over. David C. Baker makes this point in his excellent book The Business of Expertise. If you see the same problems again and again, you can predict prospect reactions and potential outcomes again and again. Why? Because you’ve become an expert. You’ve seen the patterns play out dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times. This gives you the vision for and insight into what might work for a particular prospect, allowing you to start delivering value in your pitch beyond just talking about the product.

If you can demonstrate that kind of expertise, your prospect will therefore be more inclined to trust you to solve their problem over the competition. Your positioning has given you the insight, expertise, and vision your competitors lack.

Speaking of competitors, you’ll note that we didn’t spend much time on the competition (beyond the status quo) in our sales narrative above.

Ideally, you’re pitching something new and innovative and therefore don’t need to address the competition beyond framing them as the traditional, legacy, old-school, or early approach that your innovation obviates.

However, the reality of most B2B tech categories is that there’s usually one or more entrenched incumbents and dozens or hundreds of other challenger companies and they get a say, too. This can make things very confusing for prospects and results in a lot of ’no decision’ deal outcomes simply because buyers couldn’t reach a high-confidence decision they were happy with (as Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna document in The JOLT Effect).

How do you create value for buyers in this predicament? This is where left-brain market mapping gives you market insight.

On the macro level, if you can bucket alternatives and give buyers a rough map of the whole market, you can resolve a great deal of their confusion, as April Dunford often talks about.

This also helps build trust by helping folks make sense of the market and ‘sensemaking,’ as we’ll see, can be a vital part of your broader clarity strategy, too.

Again, notice the difference in hemispheric approaches. There’s right-brain approaches that are more about putting something new on folks’ radars, perhaps born of the expertise you’ve developed seeing the same problems they’ve experienced over and over again, and framing your difference in a then-and-now sense. That’s the change-over-time approach.

Then there’s the left-brain approach of focusing down on narrow specifics and differences and analytically mapping out alternatives so you and your prospects know exactly where you fit relative to the competition.

Both approaches are valid, and both approaches can create value for your prospects. In my view, the best sellers can do both — put something genuinely new and innovative on folks’ radar while still being able to speak to the details and narrow differences that exist across the solution map in a given category.

To me, that’s true founder vision. It can take a whole team to get there, with insights from product, engineering, marketing (product marketing especially), and sales all contributing, but at the end of the day, it’s the founder who has to pull all those insights together into a coherent vision, position, and narrative that drives the company forward.

Simplicity in complexity

This is also why brutal reductive simplicity in your narrative can be vital for helping folks internalize your positioning and narrative, both internally and externally.

Internally, as the company grows and becomes more complex, coordination headwinds increase and communication bandwidth decreases. Therefore, to be heard, messages have to be simple by design.

The same is true for deals — as deal complexity grows, simplicity in your core value proposition and sales narrative only becomes more important. It’s that simple message that needs to pull people together in a complex sale in the first place and pull the deal through all the obstacles that will inevitably appear so that it actually gets done.

And if your buyers just aren’t that sophisticated, there’s no need to galaxy brain it. Keep it simple and keep them moving towards a decision.

Simple doesn’t mean simplistic, however — insight is still key. And the way to help simplify insight is to name things.

Naming insight

One last tip for your narrative and broader messaging: name things.

There’s another reason why it’s not just the quality of your thinking but the clarity of your ideas and vision that’s so important in B2B sales. Sure, the prospect has to understand it — clarity obviously helps there. But chances are, the prospect has to go and explain it to other people too.

Most B2B sales are, especially at the enterprise end, managed by increasingly large buying committees. There’s usually a champion on the buyer’s side driving the deal, and you need to equip them with the insight they can take to their team and drive consensus so that a deal can happen at all.

As we’ve learned from sales classics like The Challenger Customer, high-quality deals happen not when the deal is tailored individually to every stakeholder, but when the stakeholders can reach consensus on a common goal and approach, usually driven by your unique insight delivered by your champion on the buying side.

This means they need a simple vocabulary to discuss their situation and their options. And, if you are indeed an expert on their problem, who better to give them that than you?

This is why clarity is so important, especially when it comes to naming things. Name your playbook. Name the problem. Name the challenge. Name the competing approaches and how to make sense of them. Map the market for your buyer, and leave them with that simple micro-pitch that describes the transformation — the from/to — that you can deliver.

This is great for your narrative internally, too. Being able to tell your story in a catchy, insightful way is vital for leadership so that your team gets it and runs with it, and future hires and investors see the value and want in.

In a small way, that’s what I’ve tried to do with science-based positioning.

I’ve tried to:

• Make sense of competing options (waves and niches).
• Add fresh insight (split-brain attention, story 1/story 2).
• Name the verbs, i.e., what folks should actually do (prove it, find it, own it, ride it).
• Boil it down to a simple 1-2-3-4 framework.
• And give it a name: science-based positioning.

You can tell me whether the framework lands or not, but either way, note that it’s the fact I was able to name these things at all that makes them possible to discuss, debate, and (from my point of view), sell.

That’s the meta lesson I want to leave you with here — having insight and an innovation to sell is great, but it’s not until the ideas are packaged in a way that folks can actually use that it’s, well, useful. Part of that is product, of course, but part of that is narrative, too. And if you can combine unique insight with some well-chosen names in a compelling narrative, then you’ve got the ingredients for great communication that’s both interesting and easy to understand. That takes a lot of skill to get right — it took me a lot of time to land on my narrative and framework, despite it literally being my job — but if you keep shooting for clarity, sooner or later you’ll get there.

That clarity doesn’t stop with your narrative, either. It needs to apply to everything you do, which brings us to your clarity strategy.

First published: September 2024 · Last updated: November 11, 2024