Andy Raskin: evaluation

Transcript context

…I know that well, so let me take us back on track and let's talk about just the high level framework here. So you talked about, it starts with this idea of tell people worlds changing, join this movement. What's the simple way to think about this, the pieces of this strategic narrative framework? A lot of times people will contact me, say, "Hey, I tried it, didn't work." Well, one very common thing, at least earlier was they would basically just take the Zuora deck, they'd get ahold of it and just put their logo on it. And so that's not going to work. One thing is we're not just saying, "Hey, the world is changing." And then sometimes I'll see, "The world is changing," and there'll be, "Used to be," and there's a long list of things and then, "Now it is," a long list of bullet points. What's really, I think key is naming it, naming that old game. The examples you saw, software, cloud, transactions, subscription opinions, reality. This very, very concise naming is really key. And it's hard because in making it compact you're losing completeness. So you can imagine you're in a meeting, someone says like, "Hey, how about we do transactions to subscriptions?" And someone says, "Well I don't know, there's a lot of things I don't really subscribe to. Subscription economy, really?" So we're always kind of overstating it in a way, but it's not a problem. I don't think people say like, "Oh that's wrong, subscription economy, because I still go to the grocery store and buy things. " So anyway, that's the first piece. The second piece is what I call naming the stakes. And there's a few ways to do this, but one that's really great if we can do it is to name the winners to show that winners are already playing this new game. So for instance with Zuora they're saying, "Hey, look, look at all the new winners," this is like 2015 so, "Airbnb, Box," all these companies, they're already doing this subscription thing. And by the way, overall they show this scary stat about the longevity of Fortune 500 companies. It's getting smaller, and so it's a little disingenuous, but basically they make this case that, "Hey, companies are dying, the ones that are winning are doing this." And so to the extent we want to make this life and death just like a movie. This is again, I'll make the parallel to Star Wars. So Luke, he spends the first 15 minutes of the movie belly aching. He wants to be a pilot, he wants to go out and have adventures in space. So Obiwan comes, he says, "Hey, we got this mission, this princess we got to go," and all this stuff, "Let's go. I'll teach you to be a pilot. We'll go have adventures in space." What does Luke say? He says, "Ooh, you know what, I can't really get involved. They got to go home. It's late." Who does this sound like? The reluctant buyer. So yeah, "I want to be innovative and all this. Ooh, you know what? I don't have budget this quarter." So how does George Lucas change Luke's mind? He basically kills the aunt and uncle, sorry, spoilers, it's been 40 years though. If you haven't seen it, you're probably not going to see it. Kills the aunt and uncle. Now it's pretty clear they're coming for Luke. Now the stakes are life and death. Probably he's going to be dead. But there is this other path that Obiwan holds out for him. Kills the aunt and uncle. Now it's pretty clear they're coming for Luke. Now the stakes are life and death. Probably he's going to be dead. But there is this other path that Obiwan holds out for him. And whenever I work with teams and I talk about this, so they're like, "Okay, I guess we got to then for kill the prospect's aunt and uncle," and basically yes, I mean figuratively. We got to show them that the future is not going to just be sort of okay. People talk about making it emotional and I've always wondered, what does that mean? Literally, what is the definition? This is for me the definition, is that the prospect doesn't see the future as sort of okay. They see it as split between a very negative outcome and a potentially very positive outcome. The third piece is what I call naming the object of the new game. I used to call it the promised land message, but I've changed it to this because I've found that it's sort of a little more fruitful. This subscription economy, transactions, it can get a little highfalutin and sort of big, but on the website when we just have to boil it down to a couple of words that's going to be clear right away, what can we say? And I find that what's the object of the new game really boils it down as kind of the rallying cry of the movement. So the example with Zuora, the object for a while was turn customers into subscribers. Very simple. It just sort of flows from it. Airbnb for a while had this one, live anywhere. If you think about-…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.