The Greatest Marketing (and Sales) Template I've Ever Seen

I love Andy Raskin's: "The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen" so much.

If you haven't read it yet, seriously, stop what you're doing and go read it right now.

(You're still here? It's over. Go home. Go.)

I now use Andy's 5-step marketing story template for every client project, across every marketing asset...websites, videos, sales decks, flyers, social media posts, everything.

It's that powerful.

Ironically, crafting a company story (or "Strategic Narrative", as Andy calls it) using this method is more work, not less, because it requires tightly fitting your story into 5 compelling steps.

And while the steps themselves are logical and simple to understand, the process of building out those steps is unintuitive and difficult to execute well.

But in terms of starting out with a clearly defined destination in mind - it simply cannot be beat.

Practically speaking, Andy's method provides a framework for neatly bucketing your company message into 5 discrete marketing "zones".

These five zones, applied collectively as a whole, form the basis of your company story.

Essentially, the method is a stripped-down, bare bones version of Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey".

This, by itself, isn't new.

Marketing "gurus" have been advancing the concept of using the Hero's Journey for company messaging for well over a decade now.

But exactly how to apply this classic storytelling structure to modern-day sales and marketing techniques, I believe, is Andy's greatest contribution.

He trims away all the fat, grabs the concept by the shirt collar, lifts it up 5 feet off the ground, then pins it against the wall so tightly it can't even think of moving left or right.

For the purposes of illustration, I wanted to take the face off the clock and share Andy's method and how I've made it work for me, using a recent client project for a Saas company that enables businesses to house their entire operations in a mobile "playbook".

• Step 1: Identify the Shift - or as Andy Raskin now calls it - “Old Game/New Game”.

This is where you identify a big shift or huge, undeniable and noticeable change in your prospect's world that makes them sit up and take notice. Things used to be done one way in their industry (the "Old Game"), and now they're being done different (the "New Game").

Andy wrote his now-famous article 4 years before the biggest shift most of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes - the way Covid-19 is transforming nearly every industry.

In this example, the shift is that more people are working from home now than ever before.

Note the difference here between traditional sales and marketing pitches, which typically lead with you focusing on your prospect's problem, which raises defenses or tends to yield apathetic responses.

(How many times have you heard - “We’re generally okay in those areas,”?)

Leading with your solution is also something prospects intuitively mistrust. 

Instead, Step 1 is where you invoke a big, objective change, something that is occurring in their industry (or the world), irrespective of your product or service, that will create winners and losers (i.e. "Huge Stakes" - see 2 below).

Sure, prospects can still lull themselves into complacence by ignoring the shift and refusing to take action, but you and they both know it's not going to go away, even if you do.

Get this step right, and it generates all the attention and interest for you, without any direct mention of problem or pain.  

• Step 2: Huge Stakes - (we're talking "life and death", figuratively and sometimes even literally)

Next come the “Stakes”. This is where you clearly articulate how the shift is going to create winners - people who choose to act...

And it will also create losers - i.e. those who choose to do nothing.

The brilliance here, again, is that you’re not telling your prospect what they should do; in fact, there’s no mention of your offering at all.

All you’re doing is just showing the consequences of acting - or failing to act and doing nothing - in the face of the huge, objective shift you brought to their attention above.

This step cuts to the heart of buyer’s inertia (i.e. “We’ll think about it” or “We’re good right now”).

Laying out the stakes in a very non-personal, objective way allows prospects to process the shift and come to terms on their own with the consequences of not acting - which actually might be more dire in their minds than you could ever articulate for them.

The best way to do this is by showing, not telling. Give verifiable, and preferably well-known examples of businesses that have already begun winning, as well as examples of business that have already lost.

(For e.g. at the very beginning of Covid-19, many restaurants realized they stood to go bankrupt if they didn’t come up with alternative models of food service, and quickly pivoted to curbside and contactless delivery. Many of their competitors have been shuttered closed since the end of March.

(Photo by Norma Mortenson from Pexels)

• Step 3: Tease the Promised Land

The next step is called “The Promised Land”. The way this works is that you show (don’t just tell) what winning looks like to the prospect. It’s the natural progression - and blown-up version - of what happens to winners who act on the high stakes from the last section. 

So if the stakes were:

• either transform your business model and you will stay afloat,
• or sink if you do not... 

The Promised Land might be cornering market share that was previously out of reach, increased customer loyalty and trust, or in the below example, opportunities to scale and grow beyond your current, physical location.

Typically, an industry will have easily identifiable benchmarks for success. Your job is to put them into the context of having acted on the catalyst of "The Shift" and won - and show what the fast-forwarded, rosy future looks like for your prospect.

Said another way, winning is the first step on the journey, but the destination is The Promised Land.

• Step 4: Magical Gifts

Step 4 is usually where most sales people begin.

Features and benefits.

In Andy's method, this is the very first mention of your offering. We’re 80% through with our presentation before any mention of us or what we do, or how we can help the prospect.

How radical is that? 

Andy calls this step “Magical Gifts” because when the features and benefits of your offering are presented in the context of a huge, dramatic shift in your prospect's world, a shift that they must undeniably act upon or face certain business death....

And failure looms large - we can literally see the scattered caracasses of the losers from Step 2 all around us...

But success is sweet - we can see the clouded peak of The Promised Land from Step 3, thousands of miles off in the distance...

(Photo by Archie Binamira from Pexels)

And we know now that we must act...but we can't do it on our own.

We need outside help.

We need a guide, we need tools, and we need some badass weapons if we’re going to embark on this life or death journey towards The Promised Land....

Now in Step 4, your features and benefits take on much more meaning than just a better mousetrap.

They're representative of a movement.

They're the lightsabers that help Luke fight the Dark Side...or the spell books and potions Harry Potter and his friends use to fight He Who Shall Not be Named.

And they are the "Magical Gifts" that will help your prospect reach their Promised Land.

Seen in this light, you become the prospects mentor or guide, their Obi Wan or their Yoda or their Dumbledore, and the features and benefits of your product or service represent so much more than just a better or cheaper way to do something.

(Photo by Roman Koval from Pexels)

They're the custom-tailored "Magical Gifts" your prospect needs to get to The Promised Land intact, that only you can provide.

• Step 5: The Proof

The last step is the simplest and most straightforward. Proof.

That is, proof that people have followed this path and arrived at the Promised Land.  

Prospects don’t want to take our word for it, they want other people (and the more prominent those people are, the better) telling us about the stakes they faced, and how your magical gifts help them overcome them. 

If you already have satisfied, loyal customers that can go to bat for you, that’s ideal. Get them talking or quote them on vivid aspects of The Promised Land, i.e. what life from the winner’s circle looks like for them.

The below example is a quote from a new hire at a company that uses an online "Playbook" to onboard and train their new employees, before they even start the job...

If you're new in business and don't yet have testimonials from satisfied customers, you can still nail this step by using real-life examples from your industry of other winners who have already taken action in the face of the big shift, and are speaking to you live on location from The Promised Land.

Often that will be enough to demonstrate to your prospect that it’s possible to get there, and if you’ve laid out the first 4 steps up properly until now, you will likely be perceived as a competent and trustworthy guide worth following to the Promised Land.

• Postscript:

The beauty of Andy's method is that once your story is locked down, each step can be broken off at any time and applied individually to address specific sales and marketing concerns.

For e.g. you might want to write a whole blog post just on the topic of "The Shift" in your industry (Step 1), or post some client testimonials on social media (Step 5), or show off some cool, new "Magical Gifts" your company just released (Step 3)....

The result? Graceful intention and consistency, in all your sales and marketing assets, across all your channels.

As a marketer, finally finding a systematic, replicable, marketing story structure template I could use to approach each new client project with, in terms of:

• how to position my client,
• what their company message should be, and
• how to convey that story for the maximum possible impact....

I'm happy to say, I've arrived at my Promised Land.

Thanks, Andy!

Questions or comments?

I'll respond below.