Andy Raskin

Slide titles should be descriptive conclusions, not generic category labels.

"Make the title the takeaway of the slide so that the person looking at it has to do zero work to take away. So example, you'll sometimes see, 'The problem,' or, 'The team.' Replace, 'The team,' with,..."

Traditional problem-solution positioning often leads to 'bragging' rather than engagement.

"The traditional structure, the way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think the way most people did is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain, I have a solution, a tr..."

Effective positioning frames the product as a response to a fundamental shift in the market paradigm.

"Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world, and I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game. The archetypal example of this, I think in the business world, is what Benioff..."

Concise, even if slightly hyperbolic, naming of market shifts is more effective than exhaustive bullet points.

"What's really, I think key is naming it, naming that old game... This very, very concise naming is really key. And it's hard because in making it compact you're losing completeness... we're always kin..."

Strategic storytelling focuses on leading a movement rather than just solving a functional problem.

"This structure really is about defining a movement, and that's very different from, 'Hey, I'm going to solve your problem.'"

A brand needs a 'rallying cry' that defines the ultimate goal of the new market reality.

"The third piece is what I call naming the object of the new game... 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..."

Content marketing success is a result of long-term consistency punctuated by high-impact 'peaks.'

"What I find is like, yeah, there's this a while where you're writing and it feels like you're talking to nobody and then gradually it grows and you'll have these peaks, but then over time is where the..."

A strategic narrative serves as the foundational vision that aligns all company functions.

"The one thing I say is it's this one story that the CEO uses to drive success in marketing, sales, but also product. That it becomes like a north star, strategic north star for product roadmap, for fu..."

A clear strategic narrative acts as a filter for prioritizing feature requests.

"We are constantly getting feature requests through sales, through customer success. And we had sort of no way, bar to decide well what do we take on, what don't we take on? And this clearly has become..."

Enterprise sales require a high-level narrative to align diverse stakeholders within a buying committee.

"I think it does really play well in this enterprise sales context because also we have a group buyer there. So it's not just one person who's doing some research. This whole group has to have a unitin..."