It is not the result of your company, product, or idea. Rather, it is a change that has demonstrably already happened (or demonstrably happening and unstoppable). The change that starts your pitch cannot be a change that you are bringing about, that you want to bring about, or that you think should be brought about. The change must be stated as a done deal-not the result of your actions What makes Luke finally go? The Empire destroys his home and kills his relatives, forcing him to acknowledge that he now lives in a fundamentally changed world-one in which the survival of everything he cares about is suddenly at stake. (“I can’t get involved,” he says, sounding eerily like an unconvinced enterprise buyer.) (Mythologist Joseph Campbell famously dubbed it “refusal of the call.”) In Star Wars IV: A New Hope, Luke whines about wanting to be a pilot and have adventures, yet when Obi-Wan offers him the opportunity to do exactly that, Luke demurs. The hero, called to action by an incremental change, initially hangs back. Yes, change happens over time, but how has it reached a tipping point such that your audience now lives in a different world?īy the way, there’s a similar dynamic in epic films and myths. Lately, when working with teams on change statements, I’ve found that the sketch below helps me elicit discrete (not incremental) ones. (Most of us still use email.) They work because their finality pries open audiences’s minds to the possibility that the rules of the game have changed in a fundamental, permanent way. (We still buy most things outright.) Drift’s change statement, too, is hyperbole. Zuora’s “subscription economy” proclamation is immensely powerful, even though it doesn’t quite stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Instead, declare a discrete change-a 0-to-1 disruption- even if it feels like you’re exaggerating. Trouble is, an incremental shift (“increasingly”) isn’t jarring enough to loosen the status quo’s iron grip. At first, I often hear statements like this: In my work with leadership teams, I start by asking them to articulate what has changed. The change must be a discrete, 0-to-1 shift The stakes for marketers and salespeople that Drift targets? Winners will engage through those channels, while losers will keep sending email. As this slide in a recent Drift presentation asserts, buyers now practically sleep with their phones: If it doesn’t, your audience is probably justified in preferring the status quo to whatever you’re pitching.įor example, the engine that powers Drift’s story is CEO David Cancel’s observation that buyers now communicate through always-on messaging channels like Slack and texts. Put another way, the change must create new winners and losers. The change must give rise to stakesīy stakes I mean opportunity and risk for your audience. Which is to say, it must meet the following five criteria: #1. More importantly, for the change to engage audiences, it must accomplish certain narrative work. Obviously, you have to express the change quickly and succinctly. Yet, in digging into inquiries like this, I’ve learned that great pitches start with change, but not just any change. To be sure, it’s always difficult to determine whether the fault lies in a framework or its application. My prospect told me to stop wasting her time and get to the point. Still, a number of folks have told me they started with a change but it backfired. By credibly asserting that the world has changed in a fundamental way, you offer a “non-salesy” reason to challenge the voice.
Why start with change? Because no matter what you’re pitching, your most formidable obstacle is adherence to the status quo - that voice inside your audience’s heads that goes, We’ve gotten along just fine without it, and we’ll always be fine without it.
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