The Art of Strategic Narrative: A Blueprint with 3 key Questions to ask & 6 proven steps

PMMs are storytellers. We set the context for the product and for the portfolio. When blending these together with the company vision it becomes the overarching strategic narrative that sets the company apart.

What is a strategic narrative? A strategic narrative or narrative design is a unique story that will guide the entire business activity. It says who you are as a company and where you are going, how value is created and what makes you unique.

What's product marketing's role in creating a strategic narrative? That was the question Harvey Lee and I had set to answer in Nov, 2022 at the product marketing trailblazers event.

Following the great response to the session, in this blog I'm capturing 3 key questions to ask and 6 proven steps for those in the trenches or entering the trenches of the strategic narrative.

Q1: Is there a strategy? Is the strategy differentiated?

"Here's our strategy..., the CRO, CPO and CMO agree this is the path forward. Now can product marketing develop the strategic narrative?" -- famous words NEVER heard by Product Marketing.

In many cases, the strategic narrative isn't created as a top-down initiative. And that's why the first question you need a clear answer to is who owns the strategy? When I partnered with our CEO to create the strategic narrative, he just returned to the company. He certainly had (and has today) a strategy, he certainly owned the strategy and had a clear view of where the company should go. The company passed the $100M revenue mark and it was time to become a multi-product company. The main buying center we were selling into was Marketing, and we knew other departments would benefit from our solution. Our strategy: Beyond Marketing.

"The biggest mistake people make is thinking that the story is just marketing. No, the story is strategy." — Ben Horowitz

Q2: Who is the hero of your story?

As I was listening to the CEO pitching "Beyond Marketing", I observed that we could explain "Beyond marketing", customers would understand the importance to other departments, and the benefits of it -- but we weren't getting enthusiastic head nods or an emotional connection that led to a sense of urgency.

"Enthusiasm" "head nods" "unlocking a sense of urgency" are measures to test your narrative.

"Beyond marketing" was OUR story -- our internal motivation but our champions never say "I need to go beyond marketing". To have a greater impact, we had to shift the hero of the story from us to the customer.

Sidenote: Strategic narrative is based on calling out "The New game" which should be something customers are thinking of already, but maybe there is an opportunity to coin a term for it.

The process of shifting the hero included months of work. Research, widening the funnel of the story, the supporting trends, the proof points and then cutting down to 1-2 slides describing the New Game and its value. Once these were tested (with prospects, analysts, customers, at events, in podcasts etc), we translated the success into decks that would be used by the various sales teams - yet again months of work.

But let's back up to the takeaway here...whether it's a corporate narrative or portfolio narrative or product narrative... a successful strategic narrative must rely on a strategy.

When it comes to the corporate narrative, that strategy is led by the CEO/GM (depending on the size of the organization).? It is very rare for product marketing to lead the strategy, in fact, in my opinion they shouldn’t. PMM is essential to the strategic narrative process, developing its storytelling supported by market and category research, voice of the customer, understanding the sales motion and aligning stakeholders. However, the main driver should be the CEO and the overarching narrative must resonate and align deeply with his/hers business vision.

Q3. Is product marketing positioned for success with an ability to influence?

A strong relationship, trust and collaboration with the strategy leader (CEO / GM), allows product marketing to facilitate the creation of the strategic narrative, to add to it, to capture its essence and innovate within the category / invent a new category / shape product naming and coin terms that will become synonymous with the organization and its purpose.

Every organization and PMM team is different and it is critical to understand how you are positioned for success and what is your ability to influence. For example, if PMM reports to the CMO, then they should naturally align with the CMO metrics. How does the CMO see their role in developing the narrative?

Don't get caught between a rock and a hard place, it isn't ideal to be the go-between what may be difference of opinions between the CMO and the CEO.

Another consideration is the process of obtaining buy-in. The relationship with the strategy leader is often not enough to drive the narrative adoption, obtaining buy-in is crucial.

How will you obtain the buy-in? Does the CEO/GM drive a top-down culture and will be driving the C-level alignment?

Often, CEOs prefer to obtain organic buy-in to the narrative. "If it's good enough, the sales team will use it" is the approach. Yet, rarely does change happen through organic buy-in, simply because it is human to resist change. You will find yourself working very hard, with what feels like pushing a rock up a steep hill when the CEO leaves it up to PMM to drive change.

Andy Raskin, a thought leader I highly recommend to follow (if you don't already), speaks frequently about the importance of C-level alignment and agreement to the strategy as the a must-have foundation. In his posts he shares insights and examples of how to work through the process of C-level alignment. A comment on one of those posts paints the picture: "Even when you have a CEO involved in the process, if they are not 100% driving this all the way through execution and ensuring everyone in the company is on board and telling the same story. Making sure sales doesn’t make modifications to fit what they want or go rogue. And the CEO themselves is telling the same story every single time and not making changes each time they tell the story… It won’t work. And as a marketer trying to drive this, you will be beyond frustrated." (by Tanya Thompson)

If your company/unit is going through change and a new strategy is evolving, you may find that answers are not as black and white, that it's a process of experimentation. Landing the strategic narrative may be a non-linear process which requires time, growth mindset and?iterations to ideate, learn and normalize. Here are vision video examples resulting from our process of iterating on the narrative: Strategic narrative V1, Strategic narrative V2

The makings of the narrative pitch - 6 steps

As the lynchpin between product, marketing and sales, product marketing is in the position to interpret and translate the narrative into useful elements for each team. For sales, it's a pitch deck. For marketing, it's an update to the tagline, boilerplate, company description, vision video/blog, update of the homepage, demand generation campaigns. For product, it may be an updated naming, portfolio description and roadmap framing. So where should you start?

It makes tons of sense to focus the strategic narrative on the sales pitch deck as the most usable by-product that will provide quick feedback.

Andy Raskin, mentioned above, calls out a framework for using the strategic narrative as a tool for sales which I've used, iterated on and evolved with feedback from sellers. Below are the steps and examples of how they were used:

1. Name the new game (and the old one) - name the undeniable change; the new game speaks to the undeniable change customers are going through. It does not have to align to a new category, it could be an extension of a category or clarity for a focus area within the category? - - 1 slide

• We used the term "Customer economy" it wasn't our vision of the undeniable change. And it was different from the term we coined for the new game which is "Connected Customer Experiences". Customer economy is a term we got head nods for and it helped create that first bond with the listener.

2. Show there are life-and-death stakes (winning and losing) - 2 slides

• We used a story that described what a broken experience felt like and we countered it with our vision of connected customer experiences.? C-level and functional managers alike connected with this story. But many on the sales members were not comfortable delivering it. By listening to chorus I could see that a more functional slide is often used. It's quite common, we all know that stories leave a memorable impression but as with jokes, just because I know the joke doesn't mean when I deliver it, it's funny.

Another takeaway from the sales team was that these slides can come across as preaching while their objective is to build credibility, set up for a wider discovery and develop a sense of urgency. With that in mind, to ensure the customer is involved and feels this conversation is about them, I added Discovery to the flow.

3. Discovery – understand the impact of the shift for the customer.

• We flipped around one the slides that described why experiences were broken and presented typical challenges. Instead of sharing our POV, we turned it into questions that could support discovery. “Your Strategic Objectives” or “Status Quo” framing worked well.

4. Define the object of the new game (buyer mission) – what does the winner’s circle look like? Present the value with tangible results and ROI - 2 slides

• In a highly competitive market (which is the case for most), all your competitors will be presenting ROI slides. Prospects seek proof, not just promises. This is a great opportunity to build trust by addressing it. How will you prove that they can be as successful as these stories you are sharing? Actions speak louder than words.

5. Present obstacles to winning the new game - what are the essential capabilities that must be executed exceptionally well to achieve the winning state.

• We developed this critical piece that connected our narrative to our portfolio and differentiators, but without talking about us. It's not framed as a POV, rather a natural recap of the conversation that frames what must the customer execute on exceptionally well to get to the winners’ circle???
• This element of the deck is the set up that made the entire story click with the next steps in the deal cycle i.e. the functional discussions and demos.

6. Show how you help overcome the obstacles (optional)

• A high portion of first calls our sales team has is with prospects who have done a fair bit of research and they are quite knowledgeable. They may have met a couple of our competitors and they want to quickly dive into how we are different and why we will be the better solution for their needs. They may be quite impatient with the narrative. For these type of prospects, we had to slim down the narrative to minimum and focus on what winning means to them, and the framing of what are the essential capabilities they must execute on to reach the winning state. Then this section marries our differentiated capabilities with those we had agreed they must execute on.

Developing a strategic narrative is an ambitious goal which requires a true combination of art and science.

It is a game-changing undertaking that will ultimately impact every team in the company, and change takes time. Observing change and reluctance to it helped evolve elements of the narrative. It is too easy to fall in love with a good story, yet there is nothing like evidence from the front line to see how well elements of the story actually work.?

Assessing the three questions will help you set your own expectations as you enter this process - and then take a deep breath and go for it.

If I had to answer the three questions when I started, I would say yes to Q1 (we had a strategy), as for Q2 the initial hero was a blend of us and the customer, and it was a phase we had to go through. Only in the second round did we fully shift to the customer. And the answer to Q3 would not be ideal. Thinking through the third question would have been eye opening for me, helping me realize that our organic buy-in approach meant that it would be a longer process, with many more opinions and iterations than planned... and yet it was worth it, we got there at the end and indeed it was game-changing.