S6E9 – Strategic Storytelling for SaaS: Getting Everyone Aligned on Why You Matter with Elliott Rayner

In this episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast, Elliott Rayner joins Joran to unpack a game-changing tool for B2B SaaS brands: strategic storytelling. As a CMO @ Owow, Elliott has deep roots in the sports and tech arenas, Elliott brings a fresh, insider perspective on how to craft narratives that cut through the noise. In a world brimming with sameness, he shows us how the right story can become your unfair advantage.

Why a Strategic Narrative Isn’t Just Nice—It’s Necessary

Let’s face it: the B2B landscape is loud, crowded, and getting smarter by the second, thanks to AI. Elliott points out that with products sounding nearly identical, a clear, emotionally resonant narrative is your secret weapon. Customers don’t just buy what you do—they buy why it matters to them.

Cracking the Code: Key Elements of a Killer Narrative

Every strong story needs a spine. According to Elliott, three pillars hold it all together:

1. Differentiated Value – What makes your solution actually unique?
   
2. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) – Who cares most about that difference?
   
3. Credibility – Why should anyone believe you?
   Together, these elements form the modern marketer’s version of Aristotle’s ethos, logos, and pathos—logic, emotion, and trust, rolled into one.
   

Busting the Biggest Myths About B2B Storytelling

Think storytelling is just for B2C? Think again. Elliott demolishes this myth, reminding us that even in B2B, real humans are making the decisions—and humans run on emotion. Another common trap? Focusing too much on features. Spoiler alert: customers care more about outcomes than your latest feature release.

Putting Your Strategic Narrative into Action

Storytelling isn’t a slogan—it’s a strategy. Elliott walks us through a practical framework that starts with market positioning and persona work, then builds toward credibility. But the key? Keep it flexible. Your story should grow, adapt, and evolve as fast as your market does.

Weaving Storytelling into the User Experience

Want users to actually remember your product? Then bake storytelling right into your UX. Elliott shares how companies like Babel are using story-driven experiences to boost retention and engagement. When your product tells a story, users don’t just use it—they connect with it.

Common Strategic Storytelling Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

It’s easy to get storytelling wrong. Elliott points out two big missteps:

• Talking about features instead of benefits.
  
• Skipping the conflict that makes stories stick.
  Conflict is the heartbeat of storytelling. Without it, your message falls flat. With it? You’ve got an audience that’s listening—and feeling.
  

Anatomy of a Compelling Story

Great stories create contrast: chaos vs. order, before vs. after. Elliott urges companies to begin with a problem, take the audience on a transformation journey, and resolve with meaningful change. When your story triggers a new emotion, thought, or behavior—you’ve nailed it.

Breaking Down Silos: The Team Alignment Challenge

A brilliant narrative is worthless if it’s not consistent. Elliott calls out the disconnect between marketing and sales, emphasizing the importance of shared language and goals. A strategic narrative isn’t just a marketing asset—it’s the foundation of every customer touchpoint.

The AI Factor in Storytelling: Friend or Foe?

AI is reshaping the game, and Elliott says: lean in. While it introduces more competitors and complexity, it also opens doors to agile storytelling, smarter persona work, and dynamic positioning. Use AI as your co-pilot, not your competition.

Elliott’s Final Take: Own Your Unique Story

Elliott wraps with a powerful message: “Tell the story only you can tell.” That’s your edge. Forget being the loudest—be the clearest, most compelling. Stay curious, experiment often, and never underestimate the staying power of a brand built on narrative.

Parting Thoughts & Where to Go Next

Joran and Elliott close with a call to action: take what you’ve learned, apply it, and keep refining your story. In a rapidly changing world, strategic narratives should be living, breathing assets. Want more? Elliott invites listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn for hands-on tips and deeper storytelling wisdom.

Key Timecodes

(0:00) – Elliott on storytelling and strategic narrative

(0:46) – Introduction of Elliott Rayner by Joran

(1:28) – Importance of strategic narrative for B2B SaaS

(2:38) – Elliott on differentiated value, ICP, and credibility

(4:33) – The importance of the three pillars in storytelling

(5:38) – Misconceptions about strategic storytelling

(7:42) – Selling to humans in B2B

(8:05) – User experience as storytelling

(9:05) – Common storytelling mistakes in SaaS companies

(10:20) – Implementing a strategic narrative: step-by-step

(13:04) – Difference between strategic narrative and positioning

(14:09) – Elements of a good story

(15:34) – Common storytelling mistakes in SaaS

(17:25) – The role of conflict in storytelling

(18:08) – Example of storytelling in SaaS

(19:09) – Challenges in implementing storytelling

(21:04) – The importance of psychology in marketing

(22:39) – SaaS companies doing storytelling right

(24:51) – Understanding progress in storytelling

(27:30) – Aligning sales and marketing

(30:02) – AI as a risk and opportunity in storytelling

(31:59) – Dynamic vs. static personas and messaging

(32:10) – Elliott’s advice on strategic narrative

(32:39) – Advice for SaaS founders at different stages

(35:39) – Summary of key insights from the episode

(36:40) – Closing remarks and contact information

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Elliott

Storytelling is communicating contrast. Chaos and order, beginning and end, light and darkness that’s in the heart of all these stories. And the better you communicate contrast, the better your story is going to become. So it doesn’t mean you have to exclude anyone. But who cares most about that value? Who is the person who’s going to convert after two meetings rather than eight meetings? That’s who you should be crafting your story behind. The strategic narrative is basically understanding what story that you can to tell better than anyone else. And that is going to be the secret to standing out in the crowd. Without a strategic narrative around your SaaS, people don’t really truly understand what your SaaS actually does.

[00:00:46.600] – Joran

Marketing, sales, and product teams deliver conflict in messaging. Buyers struggle to see why to choose you over a competition. This is why we’re going to talk about strategic storytelling today. Specifically, how to craft a strategic narrative. My guest today is Elliott Rayner. Elliott has spent over a decade in the sports industry, creating products for the FIFA World Cup, Olympics, Adidas, Essex. Six years ago, he moved into tech, leading marketing at Babel, Arian, before joining the agency OWOW, where he worked with hundreds of brands and ventures to shape their products and stories. Along this way, he developed a framework to help teams craft clear, compelling strategic narratives. So without further ado, welcome, Elliott.

[00:01:26.890] – Elliott

Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:28.640] – Joran

You’re living in the Netherlands, so you’re used to our Dutch directness, so we’re just going to dive right in. Why is creating a strategic narrative important for B2B SaaS companies?

[00:01:39.900] – Elliott

I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, marketing seems to get harder every year. I think if you look at the amount of competitors, they’re getting more and more. And with AI coming in, I think you’re only going to have more of them. Then you look at who you’re building the story for. I think people are getting more diverse, more unique, and you have to be more personalized with your messaging, which makes it complicated. Then also, I think our products are getting more technical and complicated as well. Every dimension of the role is getting more complicated. A narrative is the one true thing that can make you stand out because your product is probably going to sound the same. You’re probably speaking to the same customers. Your brand, as much as you like to think it’s unique and groundbreaking, it’s probably sounding the same to everyone on LinkedIn. I think strategic narrative is your best way to find something unique, find out what you can say better than anyone else. That’s usually the thing that works. That’s the whole purpose of a strategic narrative.

[00:02:38.660] – Joran

You send over materials like your workshop and the book you’ve written, and then you stated what you’ll gain out of it. If you turn it around, now we know why it is important. What do you actually gain when you do?

[00:02:49.200] – Elliott

Yeah, there’s three things. So one is differentiated value. So for product marketers, this is you need to find… You should be communicating not your product. The product is less interesting rather than the outcome. Tell me what your product is going to do for me. What is my life going to be like with your product and without your product? Make that clear to me. What’s the value? And that needs to be differentiated. How is your value different to the 50 other guys who are offering you the same value? So that’s building block number one. Number two is your ICP. So most people, we spend a lot of time in this, developing our personas, understanding your audience. But the main thing is that the same story doesn’t work for everyone. And the more you cast that net, the more vague your story income has become. It doesn’t mean you have to exclude anyone, but who cares most about that value? Who is the person who’s going to convert after two meetings rather than eight meetings? That’s who you should be crafting your story behind. So that’s number two, is understanding who is my ideal customer profile. And then third, where I spend most of my time with clients now is credibility.

[00:03:50.400] – Elliott

What is your social proof? You can say you’re the best and you deliver all this value, but people are cynical, rightly so, because we’re bombarded with information. Why should I believe you can do this? Don’t tell me, show me. Show me how good you are, whether it’s case studies, testimonials, or something creative. I think that’s the third pillar. That’s all the ingredients you need for a strategic narrative of those three pillars. That’s usually what I try and push people to spend a bit of time working out what those three answers are.

[00:04:18.570] – Joran

When you look at the three pillars, the ICP and socio-proof, that’s what you have when you have clients. Is this something you do later on when you have early traction of product-market fit, or would you recommend starting with Pillar 1, differentiated value and then move along the way you go?

[00:04:33.490] – Elliott

I would go for all three. The reason why I go for those three is it’s based on Aristotle’s triangle. Aristotle believed that in order to persuade someone of something, you need a combination of logic, emotion, and credibility. If you think of any time you’ve asked for a raise, asked someone to marry you, any of these things were really important that you make a good case, you usually do those three things. If you fail, you’re missing one of those three things. Logic is differentiated value. No nonsense. Give me how much the contrast in my life with you. Your emotion is personalized. What’s emotional to you is different to me. You can’t create an emotional narrative without doing your ICP. Credibility is the foundation of why should I believe you? You don’t need to perfect them early stage. Pitch, but you need to have an answer. Because if you’re missing one, you’re either going to get someone saying, That sounds great, but I have no idea what you do. I’ve read your pitch. I don’t know what you do. One, I think this is great, but I don’t think it’s for me or you haven’t sold me that I’m the right person for this.

[00:05:30.480] – Elliott

Or three is, I just don’t believe that you’re the best. That’s why I think the answer doesn’t have to be perfect, but you need an answer from those three questions very early on.

[00:05:38.620] – Joran

Yeah, and that’s why I have the triangle. They work together. I guess that’s why I always keep them in mind while creating the other one.

[00:05:45.840] – Elliott

Exactly, yeah.

[00:05:47.310] – Joran

What is one of the biggest misconceptions about strategic storytelling that SaaS companies or founders have right now?

[00:05:54.380] – Elliott

Yeah, two of them. I mean, one, of course, is product centricity. I visit amazing people who have incredible products. And because I’ve been a product manager before, when you’re working on that product all day, you become more in belief that how interesting your product is to your audience. And I think the temptation is, let’s just talk about the product. All of our communication, all of our thought leadership, all of our comms, our hero segment. And I think the key learning of storytelling is that people are much more interested in the benefits, the values, the outcomes of your product. And so I think that’s one of the misconceptions is that you You have to talk about your product when actually it’s the other way around. Once you’re on the hook, that’s when you’re like, Okay, tell me about the product. Once you’re on the second or third meeting or you’re on the third part of the website or you’re further on your pitch deck, that’s the time when you’ve got someone on the hook to say, Okay, now I can go slower and get into it to do it these days. Because most of the people I work with, most of your guests in your audience, no longer work on products that can be sold in four seconds.

[00:06:55.940] – Elliott

They’re deeply complicated technical things, so it’s better to shift it to the end of the narrative rather than the beginning. The second one, the B2B storytelling doesn’t really work in B2B, or it’s much more important for B2C. That’s why my workshops and my research in my book are much more about the science of storytelling and how it works on people. B2b is still human beings, maybe a committee. They’re still influenced by the same things and have the same emotional triggers. I think that’s one of the misconceptions of when I work for B2B. It takes me a little bit longer to convince them this can really work. It doesn’t matter how boring, how technical, how traditional your industry is, this works just as well in fashion and sports as it does for cloud cybersecurity.

[00:07:42.140] – Joran

Yeah. In the end, you are selling to humans.

[00:07:44.450] – Elliott

Of course, those humans are hearing 50 pitches. If you’re hearing 50 product pitches that are maybe 2%, 3% different, but one is speaking to you as an individual in a way that none of the others did, that’s the one that’s going to get to the next round. It’s really simple. We make marketing more complicated than it needs to be, but a great way to differentiate yourself.

[00:08:05.900] – Joran

Do you work with product-led growth companies or companies who have those demos or sales conversations first before showing the product?

[00:08:12.950] – Elliott

User experience is storytelling. You look at a Bubble where I was doing product marketing there, and all of Bubble’s language learning is based on storytelling. It’s for a good reason. You remember 20 times as much information when it’s delivered as part of a story. When learning a language, that’s an important thing And so they realized that the more that we bring user experience towards telling a narrative, the more engaging it’s going to be. And so, yeah, it doesn’t have to be campaigns. You can make your product tell the story, but you need to understand something important I worked with so many great mentors at different companies who tell me great product has a great story. And then I would say, what makes a great story? And most people would say, I have no idea. And that’s what got me interested. What’s the difference between a good story and a great story? That’s when I started reading and researching, going into the psychology of why humans just love storytelling.

[00:09:05.300] – Joran

What is a good story? What does it consist of? Before we dive in, one more regarding common mistakes. You mentioned talking too much about the product early on. Are there any other common mistakes companies make while creating a strategic narrative?

[00:09:18.140] – Elliott

The focus on features is an interesting one. I think the lack of personalization when it comes to features is something that it always takes me a while to prove to a client why that’s important. One person doesn’t need to read six reasons why. The best way to spend time is understanding which feature do these six different types of personas, which feature works best for them. There’s a great concept called Anchoring, which proves that your memory retention for the first feature read is 80% higher than the rest. You read the first feature, absorb the rest, and then forget them. It’s these things that I think if you look at most websites, you’ll still see six, seven features as you try to cram it all in. I think that’s a misconception. You can get it later on, but go in with your strongest weapon, personalize and customize it as much as you can.

[00:10:10.870] – Joran

Nice. Let’s dive into how to actually implement it. Somebody is listening and they say, Yes, I want to start building a strategic narrative. What is this step-by-step approach? Can you walk us through it?

[00:10:20.480] – Elliott

Yeah, I think there are multiple levels. One is to build a strategic narrative. The other is implement better storytelling, which you can use even when it’s writing a line of copy. For the strategic narrative, I go through three stages: logic, emotion, and credibility. For logic, it’s a positioning exercise, mapping out competitors and alternatives. We like to think we get business stolen by our competitors, but most people just say no and do nothing. You’re competing against the alternative, which is nothing. You then from that have a better understanding of your unique attributes and then can build your differentiated value. I go through that exercise of figuring out what is the thing that we can tell better than else and what’s our value I see. Next, personas. I think every place I’ve worked has a different format for Personas. There’s hundreds of ways to do it. But for me, it gets a little bit over complicated. I really look at what are the CFOs from Switzerland? Are they 14 to 19 year olds? Part of a committee, they just need a name. Then you find a conflict, many pain points, but what’s the one thing that’s going to make them click on?

[00:11:24.380] – Elliott

Then you identify trigger. So what is the thing that I’ve got that resolves that conflict, just like in a narrative? It’s the how. So important for B2B, you can convince one person, usually the CMO, because we’re persuadable. But then you don’t do it, they’re going to pitch it to the CFO, legal, and everyone else. You need to keep that in consideration as well. Have you built a narrative that doesn’t just appeal to one champion, but then can be retold confidently and appealed to the rest of the buying group. Finally, number three is credibility. This is the most important thing to prove your value. I’ve built a canvas where I think there’s five ways to communicate credibility, and I usually find out what is that one. Is it legacy? Maybe you’ve been around for 100 years, maybe you’ve built 17 products before this, maybe you’re owned by a parent company. That can help. But with most clients, maybe they’re new, maybe they don’t have that backing, and that’s where they have to be more creative. What’s your IP? What’s your relevance to a subgroup? Can you prove to be an expert in a specific area? Or is it something more creative where You can actually show how your product works and the difference that you can bring.

[00:12:35.310] – Elliott

But those are the three elements that you can use as the building blocks. And once you have that, that then becomes your battle cards, your messaging, your landing page. A strategic narrative shouldn’t be something that you agree on and it sits on the cloud and you all go about your jobs. It should be instantly translated into these dynamic documents that then reach the customer. And I think that’s the most important part of building a strategic narrative.

[00:13:01.000] – Joran

Is it almost the same as positioning?

[00:13:04.080] – Elliott

It’s almost positioning plus. Positioning leaves out credibility. Also for a lot of positioning documents, not understanding the committee part because you’re positioning towards sometimes one type of person. I think that’s where the narrative takes it a little bit further, is that it takes your positioning, it customizes it for your ICP, but then it’s that element of how do you actually How do you prove this? How do you go one step further to creating a story that someone can hear, not just find it interesting, not find it memorable, see the value in it, but believe it. I think that’s the difference where positioning falls a little bit short.

[00:13:44.320] – Joran

Are you struggling to find a cost-effective and scalable marketing channel? Check out where it is. We help you to have other people recommend your SaaS, and you would only pay them when they deliver you paid clients, making it a very cost-effective and scalable marketing channel. Want to learn more? Go to getreditus. Com. You turned it into a story, right? You gave an intro. What is a good story? How do we tell this story? And what does a good story actually consist of?

[00:14:09.820] – Elliott

That’s the interesting thing. When I started looking into it, I always think marketing is understanding how people think, feel, and behave. And the more I started reading is that storytelling has so much to do with those three things. So I read so many great books to research storytelling, and you’ve probably heard Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and the Five Story all of these different frameworks, you might see them on LinkedIn, and they’re all really nice templates to understand. At the heart of storytelling is this thing called universal story structure. You might think all stories are different, but when you boil them down, at the center of them is the same thing. It’s that journey we identify with, where all of these positives come with storytelling, like memory retention, preference, speed of understanding, that comes from that. The best way to understand it is to break it even simpler than that, is that When you say storytelling is communicating contrast, chaos and order, beginning and end, light and darkness, that’s in the heart of all of these stories. The better you communicate contrast, the better your story is going to become. All of these frameworks are really helpful to getting you going.

[00:15:17.380] – Elliott

But I think ultimately a great story is something where after hearing it, you feel, think, or behave differently than before. That’s what a great story is. There’s so many great little tricks, tools, and tips you can learn to be able to create better stories that do that.

[00:15:34.740] – Joran

Of course, you probably hear a lot of stories or you see a lot of stories from SaaS companies. Any common things they miss?

[00:15:42.290] – Elliott

So this is a research company based in London, and what they do is they measure emotions. So they’ll sit people down, show them every campaign by every company, and literally register, based on their facial expressions, what emotions are feeling. And that’s one of the misconceptions as well, is that there’s many different types of emotions, right? There’s fear, anger, fear, contempt. The one that most companies build towards are happiness and surprise, because we want to make you happy that you see the value. It’s your prize through innovation. Their research shows the more you feel, the more you buy. But What most companies do is just try to throw everything into those two green emotions, those positive emotions. But the most successful campaigns that they’ve measured are the ones that use negative emotions as well. Conflict, contempt, fear, and anger. If you think of most movies, you watch, this is it. You see something bad in the beginning, then you get the resolution at the end. That’s a great storytelling. A good example of this is how this reflects in the product is challenger sales. Challenger sales people will not sell the dream. They’ll bring attention to the danger of the status quo.

[00:16:46.890] – Elliott

Okay, yeah, we love this product, but we’re going to wait till next year. That’s selling the dream. But another way is you’re going to fall behind your competitors if you do not make yourself future proof. That’s a great example of storytelling. You’re saying, This is how things are now. This is how bad things could get, but this is how good things could be with us or your brand. It’s a very simpleised version of that hero’s journey. But I think that’s a nice little tip as to if you don’t have conflict in your story. If it’s all rainbows and butterflies, it will never resonate and connect as much as if you’re bringing in that conflict to your story.

[00:17:25.900] – Joran

It’s interesting because when you go to many SaaS companies, like probably 99% of them do indeed have something positive. We are all in one platform or we do X or we do Y, we deliver these benefits, but they don’t go for conflict.

[00:17:39.280] – Elliott

It’s just underused. It always end with positive lead into the positive. But there’s this element of you understand. It’s a way to also build common ground that we understand how tough your life is. We understand how difficult your job is making that in the beginning, and some brands do it well. But it’s one of many little tricks of researching the science of storytelling, then you can start bringing these little elements in to make it a lot stronger.

[00:18:08.730] – Joran

Yeah. So think about starting with conflict, bring them on a journey, and then end with something positive.

[00:18:13.970] – Elliott

Yeah, exactly. Watch any Disney movie, your children cry at the first 10 minutes when someone dies. Almost always, they go on a journey, then things are resolved at the end. Story Brand, the book very famous for storytelling, is built on this idea that these four elements of the hero’s journey A protagonist, a customer, then they have a problem with pain points. You come in as the solution to that problem, and at the end, you create value. You can pretty much use that as a nice template for most messaging. Very simplified, but it just exposes this thing that’s universally true, is this is something that connects with us and works really well. For most people, when they say, Can you create a story? It’s great to have something that gets you away from the blank page and usually gets you start creating and experimenting. That’s when you’re going to find something that might be a little bit different to what else is in the market.

[00:19:09.020] – Joran

We always make it sound nice or easy on podcast. When you look at what we It has to follow the triangle, logic, emotion, credibility, and create a good story with the universe story structure, having that contrast from conflict at the beginning, ending positive. Where do most companies struggle when they want to implement this?

[00:19:30.550] – Elliott

I think it’s that idea of it becoming a strategic document with positioning and personas. You do your positioning maybe once a year, but that’s not great. Positioning is based on competitors, and you might have 50 more competitors in two weeks time. So it needs to become a dynamic document. Same as personas, as you’re scaling fast, what are the chances that the personas that are working for you in April are going to be the ones that are working the best in May for the same reasons? For me, the most important thing is it’s not handing over a document, it’s teaching your methodology so people can keep experimenting and applying it. Life would be simple if you could just say, This is our position, that conflict, that value. Great. Let’s do that for the next two, three years. A long time ago, you could. But now that’s the most important thing is that don’t see it as a document you download and save, but see it as something that you learn that you keep applying every single day. It’s just a way of thinking. The good thing is that so much of it’s very obvious. So It’s those things that you’ve already thought that, you already knew it, but you’d never read it before or seen the statistics behind it.

[00:20:37.180] – Elliott

It’s nothing revolutionary. It’s things you already knew when you saw, why did that campaign work so much better than that one? Why did that product launch or that go-to-market go better? The reasons why it did or didn’t are usually connected to storytelling. You’re missing something or you miscalculated. And by training yourself, you’re much more equipped to spot what you’re missing.

[00:20:59.320] – Joran

Finding the framework, following the foundation to get your storytelling of an order.

[00:21:04.170] – Elliott

Yeah, and just spending more time in the psychology, which I think, I don’t know what your experience is, but we now saw metrics obsessed living in the numbers. It’s good to step back and think. Success is based on decision making. And decision making is behavior and what influences behavior. So I think also just it’s a nice chance to get away from frameworks and train yourself as a marketer, not a performance marketer, but a true marketer to see why is something working and why it’s not.

[00:21:33.310] – Joran

Are there any SaaS companies you think are doing it really right now?

[00:21:38.440] – Elliott

I just got a nice trip to Miro for their product launch and to see how they’re integrating AI and working closely with their audience. I think that’s a product that has evolved incredibly well. Canva is a very obvious choice as well, where I can imagine in five years, Canva will be very little to be about design because actually what they’re doing is just making workflows easier, and that can be applied to a lot of different places. Once again, the way they get people to become power users is very interesting. I see people sharing their work proudly across social channels for free. That’s always a dream when you’re doing it well. A couple of those ones that I think do it really well. The obvious one, Duolingo, I talk about a lot because I used to work for Powell. But my God, the the way that they rely on the data and the science and the gamification, of course, these ones are… There’s so many little lessons to learn.

[00:22:39.020] – Joran

Yeah, but they combine the data indeed, as you mentioned with gamification, or I guess that is, of course, gamification, but they combine the data with the story. You have this, what is actually a bird which becomes sad when you don’t. Exactly. All the time.

[00:22:52.370] – Elliott

They were the masters of getting you back in. If it was any other app, it would seem sinister in this day and age. We’re curious about a screen time the negative mental health issues of it. But learning an instrument or a language, if you drop off, a habit needs to do it constantly. Most people who don’t learn something is that something happens, they don’t log in for three days and then they’re gone. They knew that’s where they have to make the app completely about… Streak is a very interesting thing. Why does anyone care about giving you Streak? But people do. And the Streak is a good example of understanding what your audience needs to come back very carefully done. And it’s been a fantastic feature.

[00:23:35.990] – Joran

Is it something more in B2B SaaS? Because you see a lot in B2C Duolingo, I use my fitness belt, I guess, to lock my calories, things like that. They also use Streak. I haven’t seen it that much within actual business software yet.

[00:23:48.230] – Elliott

I think you see it quite badly done. Progress is a really important human beings love to see that the more I put in, the more I get. That can be a difficult thing to visualize. I just bought a I’ve tried all of these things and different gimmicks, and it took me a while to see the value, but what they do is brilliant. And this is completely subscription. If I stop paying, the bracelet becomes useless. It’s a big price and a commitment. They bring health down to three things. Sleep, strain, and recovery. It’s genius because it can tell me everything. But I understand that if I sleep better, I’m going to feel better. I understand the more… If I don’t exercise, I’ll get weaker. I can’t keep doing either of them. I’m not letting my body recover. I log in to see those three scores every day. They’ve made it meaningful for me. I think that’s the thing is all of these successful things, they found a way to make it meaningful. You can only do that by understanding your ICP, their conflict, and understand how you can solve that conflict. I think it’s a nice connection to strategic storytelling.

[00:24:51.040] – Joran

You mentioned people love progress, so ideally, we take them on a journey within the app to get them to the conflict first and then to the end result they’re hoping for.

[00:24:59.430] – Elliott

Show them why it helps to engage with the product. Communicate in contrast. This is why you get a weekly report. This is how much time you’ve saved. This is how much money you’ve saved. This is how fast you’ve done it. To make it visual, to make it clear that you’re getting this value, constantly demonstrating your value to the customer and finding unique, incredible ways to do that, to prove it. These brands are able to, one, attract a lot of people, but then keep their churn to a of really low because the people who signed up a long time ago are still finding value even after using the product for a very long time.

[00:25:38.300] – Joran

Because you looked into many kitchens, especially with the agency where you work with different companies, are there any common challenges or obstacles while people try to implement a strategic narrative and any ways to overcome those?

[00:25:51.890] – Elliott

A big one is something I’ve noticed my whole career, physical products, digital products, sports industries, is the weak relationship relationship and alignment between sales and marketing. It’s amazing how you can interview a market and say, Tell me what value you create, who it’s for, and why you’re the best at it. Those are the three questions I always ask around a company. If you ask 10 marketers in a company and 10 salespeople, how different those answers will be. Then you’re trying to convince the people outside the company who you are, what value you create, who it’s for, and why you’re the best of it. If you find internally, how can you do it externally? Especially in this technical B2B SaaS world, you might have to speak to your customer. I read today on average 60 brand touchpoints before making a conversion, 100 if it’s an extra technical company. How much inconsistency is there? By the time you’ve got to 30 touch points, if sales are saying one thing and your website saying the other. I think that’s one of the biggest ones is I very rarely do a workshop with just marketing people because it’s not going to help.

[00:26:59.740] – Elliott

You need sales champions and product champions as well. The most important part is creating alignment. It might not be that we bring any insight. You’d be scared to realize how little time and some of these people at a company spend with each other and communicate where each other. And just being in the same room for half a day, how much value that can bring. That’s one of the biggest challenges is getting everyone in the same room so that afterwards, you don’t just have a fancy new strategic narrative. Everyone in the company is bored and ready to roll it out.

[00:27:30.800] – Joran

I think that’s the most important part, right? They’re actually bought into it rather than marketing just to see, Hey, here’s our new narrative. Go out there and do it.

[00:27:38.370] – Elliott

There’s nothing worse. You can imagine crossed arms when you go to sales and what’s marketing done now? And especially if it doesn’t ring true for them. Okay, we’re going to focus on this. My last five customers converted because of the other thing. It doesn’t make sense. That’s why these alignments work because at least companies, you’re going 100 miles an hour. It doesn’t feel like you’ve got the time to take a day off to do an alignment. You’ve got to keep going. But Actually, I think it can save you so much time once everyone’s on the same page. Usually, the answers are already in everybody’s heads. It’s just bringing them together. Ai is a massive help. I encourage we do it as, Oh, wow, but to record all of our calls with AI transcripts. That really gives marketers no excuse because it’s tough to listen to 100 hours of sales calls. But if I can program a GPT that can then read all of them and report back to me on some patterns about why people are why they’re saying yes, why they’re saying no, why they went with one competitor, why they went with another, then that’s going to help.

[00:28:35.930] – Joran

It’s like a big opportunity right now. What is a big risk for opportunity? Ai came at the beginning where competition is going to be more fierce because you can spit out a tool within a second. You can actually use it to summarize hundreds of conversations within minutes. What do you see as a big risk opportunity?

[00:28:54.390] – Elliott

I think AI is both the risk and the opportunity. I always like that Simpsons episode where Homer says, beer, it’s the cause and the solution to all of life’s problems. Ai is becoming that thing. It’s going to make the market more complicated. The audience is going to get more diverse and products are going to get more homogenous. But then at the same time, the opportunities created by are just an incredible leveler. We have a great experience in this because companies come to us to ask them to build AI automations and workflows. We’re already getting a good understanding of what people want to build That gives us a good understanding of where the market’s going and what products are going to be important in the future. Good example I gave before about positioning. There’s no reason why positioning needs to be fixed now. It can be dynamic. We have software solutions that can check 100 landing pages, and anytime messaging changes, it can come back to you and say, Hey, one of your competitors now is focusing on something else. But if you program that into your own GPT, which has already got an understanding of your own positioning, then what an incredible resource that is to be one step ahead.

[00:30:02.410] – Elliott

The other one I mentioned, Personas. What if your Personas could be challenged by AI after every call? Your transcripts are automatically brought into an API and become a little bit more dynamic. So there’s all of these great opportunities right at the surface now, it’s going to get loud. Then I think that’s where you’re going to see the companies that embrace not the vision of AI. I think people are at the sake of the vision, but the execution. The nuts and bolts of building workflows and experimenting. The thing that makes me excited, especially as a product marketer, I think product marketing is a great place to do that. Because the whole point of product marketing is to understand and represent the voice of the customer. I think those are the people who should be building these workflows and these AI agents, because that’s our advantage is that the AI agent doesn’t know that, doesn’t have that experience, and needs us to build it. I think it could be a nice exciting new chapter for marketers as well.

[00:30:57.710] – Joran

I love how you presented updating things based on the information you get. We have a way to track what competitors are doing on the website. I get select notifications, but we don’t do anything with it. Or you have conversations with clients or customers and think we might have to switch, but then you never actually change certain foundations. I really like it.

[00:31:16.350] – Elliott

It becomes dynamic rather than static. That was the problem. It’ll go into most companies and ask any one of the company, What are your three personas? And they’ll go, I remember that workshop or that document. But can they quote it one, two, three? No. But if they’ve then got it to a point where they can approach the company GPT, say, I’ve got a meeting this afternoon with persona 2 in this industry. Could you update this deck or copy or pitch according to everything you’ve learned when you spoke to this type of customer before? Straight away, sales are going to be using personas, and it’s going to get a lot easier to do that. These are exciting opportunities for marketing to get a lot more scientific.

[00:31:59.010] – Joran

I love this example. We’re going to wrap up on the topic strategic narrative. If you had to summarize your best advice on creating a strategic narrative in one or two sentences, what would you say?

[00:32:10.700] – Elliott

The strategic narrative is basically understanding what story that you can tell better than anyone else. That is going to be the secret to standing out in the crowd. That would be my clear-cut advice.

[00:32:25.270] – Joran

Yeah, cool. Thank you. Regarding this podcast, we always ask two final questions. When we talk about growing a B2B SaaS, what advice would you give a SaaS founder who’s just starting out and now trying to grow to 10K monthly recurring revenue?

[00:32:39.830] – Elliott

This is the era of experimentation. Don’t fall in love with anything that your company is doing. Leave nothing off the table to be chopped off, whether it’s your brand name that you love, whether it’s your most important product that you think has product-market fit, your messaging, your favorite customers. This is the age to be brutal because you still got a very great opportunity to change direction quickly and need to be non-biased to do that. So try not to fall in love with anything and keep an open mind that it doesn’t matter what succeeds, you just want to succeed. So keep an open mind about that.

[00:33:18.260] – Joran

Love it. Haven’t heard this one before. Be brutal and keep experimenting and don’t fall in love of it. Yeah. Let’s say we pass 10K MRR and we’re going to make a huge step. I know we’re going to grow towards 10 million ARR. What advice would you give a SaaS founder here?

[00:33:33.430] – Elliott

This is where start to believe in brand. It’s a very difficult thing to do, especially for founders, because it’s the one thing that you might not get clear ROI on every month. No matter how a lot of people tell you about how you detect a great brand, it’s really tough. It happens in the background. But all you have to ask yourself is to look at your favorite and most successful companies and competitors, and I guarantee you they have a strong brand. That’s why you have to learn to be uncomfortable that, yes, we’re in this age where we want to measure every single little detail, but that might harm you because one of the most important things to long term growth is brand, and it’s not that easy to measure. You have to have a little bit of trust in that area, I believe.

[00:34:22.280] – Joran

Cool. Nice. Let me see if I can summarize. So we go all the way to the beginning. Storytelling is your way to stand out. Common mistakes It’s too much talking about the product early on, not presentation of features or focusing too much on them. Weak alignment between sales and marketing. When we go the opposite route, best practices, have the product tell a story, make sure you have a strategic narrative, so follow the angle, logic, emotion, credibility. And it’s also, as you mentioned, differentiated value, ICP and social proof. If you have this, it needs to be translated into battle cars and all kinds of other internal documents. It’s not static. Keep updating it. When you are going to write a good story, make it like the universal story structure, which in the Disney movies, the best way to do this is communicate in contrast, conflict sells a lot better. Then, of course, bring them on a journey and with something positive. After hearing the story, you have to feel different. And in the end, constantly show the value. People love progress, so try to embed that into your product. When we go to 10K MR, don’t fall in love with anything your company does.

[00:35:28.730] – Joran

Be brutal. Keep experimenting. When we go to 10 million AR, start to believe in brand, and it’s not easy to measure, but do it. It’s a way to stand out.

[00:35:39.920] – Elliott

That’s impressive. I can’t believe you were able to do that.

[00:35:42.360] – Joran

No, I love it. Cool. Mention it a little bit a couple of times. You wrote a book. You have a course. Tell me more about that and where people can find you.

[00:35:50.370] – Elliott

The book is a digital book. I wrote it with no sleep during paternity leave as a way to stay sane. If you add me on LinkedIn, more than happy to send your audience a free copy so they can start The workshops, if you need help, contact me on LinkedIn. I can give you more information about how you can get started and start developing your strategic narrative. Also, yeah, ohwell. Io, working on all things digital product and AI. If you need a hand, get in touch with us there.

[00:36:16.360] – Joran

Cool. I’m going to make sure we’re linked to your profile. If there’s a direct link to the book, we’ll add that as well. Same with the course, so people can find it directly. Thanks again for coming on. If people are listening on Spotify, leave us a review or the poll we add in Spotify so I can always learn if you actually love these episodes or not. And again, Elliott, for coming on.

[00:36:37.500] – Elliott

Thanks. Thank you so much. Enjoyed it.

[00:36:40.500] – Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show, if you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about reditus, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.