Power of a differentiated narrative

How to write your brand narrative + best-in-class examples.

Reading time: 5 minutes

I hear this pretty frequently when talking to early-stage startups:

We have a great product. It’s unique. There’s nothing like it out there. It’s so much better than our competitor’s product. Our customers tell us this all the time. But (insert any one of the following statements) :

• Our prospects don’t always understand why they need us.

• Our sales cycles are long.

• We have trouble attracting the right kind of prospects.

• Deals languish in the pipeline and grow cold.

Sounds familiar? This post is for you, my friend. It might also be worth reading: How do you know your startup has a positioning problem?

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou may have been talking about a different kind of story, but the agony is still the same when a startup can’t tell its story well.

Brand narrative before sales narrative

What do most founders do when they think about telling their story?

They make a sales deck.

Wrong. ❌🙅🏽‍♀️

You get much better leverage when you first develop your brand narrative.

What is a brand narrative, you ask?

If your startup were a person who could stand in front of the room and talk about itself, what would it say? How would it talk about why it exists, what matters to it, and why those people in that room should care?

That, in a nutshell, is your brand narrative.

When working with a startup, I invariably start with the brand narrative. If you get that story right, it informs your pitch deck, sales deck, hiring, and all customer and stakeholder conversations.

Challenge the status quo

You’ve built a product that solves a pernicious problem. You chose to solve that problem because you were unhappy with the status quo. Correct?

Start your narrative with that status quo. Why doesn’t it work anymore? What has changed in the world, your industry, or how your customers live and work that demands a different solution?

💪🏽Pro Tip: Make this a simple, powerful, provocative statement. Not a long, drawn out story about what’s wrong with the status quo (scroll down for examples).

How are you different?

Ok, now your prospect is intrigued. Their curiosity is piqued. This is the perfect time to tell them how the status quo solves this problem poorly and how you solve it better. You solve this problem better because you are doing something meaningfully different than the status quo (scroll down for examples).

This difference cannot be superficial.

Example: Our competitors are 3x our cost. We are so much cheaper. This is not a great differentiation. Competing on price is a race to the bottom. You become a commodity. Even if you are 3x cheaper than the competitor, focus on value, not price.

Talk about how your approach is different. How you flipped the problem on its head and solved it in a unique way, how you disrupted intermediaries, or how you built a network effect that supports the customer, etc.,

💪🏽Pro Tip: This is where you show, don’t tell. Show how cumbersome, convoluted, and frustrating the status quo solutions are and how simple, fast, and effective your product is.

Are you significantly better?

Ideally, your product will make the customer’s life 10x better, not just incrementally better. Tell us what our life will look like once we start using your product. What changes? What improvement can we expect? Why should we value this improvement?

Example: Loom - Loom on, meetings off.

Before Loom, lots of unnecessary, time-sucking meetings. After Loom, fewer meetings. More time to focus on work.

Example: Peloton - Ride your way.

Before Peloton, drive or walk to the gym, pay for a trainer, or join a spin class. With Peloton, you work out where and when you want without sacrificing that instructor-led experience.

💪🏽Pro Tip: Quantify results if you can. Like time saved or cost saved. Can’t quantify it? Talk about emotional benefits - less stress? Less cognitive fatigue? More joyful? They are all valuable qualitative metrics.

Why should I trust you?

What makes you the right startup or person to solve this problem? What about your particular experience, background, or story makes you the right person to trust with my problem?

Founder background and experience, credibility of the founding team, investors, as well as marquee customers’ are all excellent social proof to help bring the prospect over the hump.

💪🏽Pro Tip: Use your customer’s voice here. Let them tell your prospects why you are better than the alternatives.

Examples of best-in-class narratives

Airtable

• Status quo challenge: Software shouldn’t dictate how you work—you should dictate how it works.

• Difference: Flexibly combines the best of spreadsheets and a database.

• Significantly better: Create your way. Flexible and highly customizable to match your workflow.

• Trust: Trusted by over 30,000 of the world’s leading companies.

  

  

  Upside Foods

• Status quo challenge: The way meat is made today is unsustainable. If done right, our favorite food can be a force for good.

• Difference: We create cultivated meat that’s good for people and our planet.

• Significantly better: Meet the new meat. Delicious meat grown directly from animal cells.

• Trust: Founded Memphis Meat in 2015. Investments from Tyson Foods. USDA approved.

Warby Parker

• Status quo challenge: Glasses are simply too expensive. We want to make vision care accessible to all.

• Difference: By going direct-to-consumer, we can provide higher-quality, better-looking eyewear at a fraction of the price.

• Significantly better: We can offer high-quality, affordable eyewear by cutting out the middleman.

• Trust: Free returns and exchanges, accepts insurance, excellent customer support, buy a pair, give a pair program for social good.