1. I disagree with the underlying premise of the article - the deck is unimportant.
2. I disagree with the reasoning given as to why it works.
Firstly the deck is unimportant because - as the ex-employee quoted at the end said: the prospect is already sold thanks to the marketing and branding campaigns run by Zuora. The deck is superfluous.
Secondly, the reasoning that Raskin often gives as to why this works is based on the fact it follows the "storytelling" formula that Hollywood uses. He liberally uses examples of Star Wars and other films in his articles.
But we aren't characters in a movie.
Rather than looking to what motivates characters in a movie to act as a model for persuasive messaging, we are better looking at what persuades people to act in real life.
Arguably religion and politics are the most persuasive forces on the planet.
And the real reason Zuora's message works is that it follows the same formula (and has the same elements) as religious and political ideologies.
1. There's a heaven and hell (for Zuora, heaven is thriving and getting more customers and hell is losing one's business)
2. There's a devil which is stopping us getting to heaven and sending us to hell (for Zuora this is the traditional business model of single non-recurring purchases)
3. There's a doctrine that needs to be followed to get to heaven & avoid hell (for Zuora that's the subscription business model)
4. There's a leader that provides the tools and solutions necessary to implement the doctrine and get to heaven (for Zuora this is their solution)
Viewing Zuora's success through this model, through this lense, makes more sense than Raskin's model.
There are plenty of other examples. Hubspot is a great example - they used (unconsciously) this model to sell the concept of inbound marketing. Check out this article on the subject - https://bit.ly/2Ov3NCT
Seems as though you actually agree with the article's premise, which you mistook to be about the sales deck.
The point is that your messaging should be about what the buyer needs, not what your product does. You happen to have different packaging for it (as do I[1]), but overall it seems we're in agreement.
No business in the world needs another product or solution. No business needs a subscription-based business to thrive. Nor does every business need to do inbound marketing to survive as well. Plenty of businesses thrive without it.
What Zuora and Hubspot (and many others have done) is use the same principles as religion to sell an ideology to their potential customers - an ideology that makes them think that they need what is being sold otherwise a horrible end (hell) awaits them.
There are similarities in the language - yes we could say that Raskin's promised land is my model's heaven.
But there is a major and important difference.
Raskin's model postulates that the promised land (heaven) should be the point of the whole story. For him, the whole story should be geared towards selling the promised land. (look at his other articles, he states that the promised land aka heaven is the most important part of any story).
But this is wrong.
Heaven (Raskin's promised land) is the same for most businesses operating in the space. For example, if you sell B2B the heaven you'll be selling is the same as every other business in B2B - "more money".
What these businesses are actually selling is a new doctrine. That is the point of the story - to sell a new way of thinking.
Hubspot sold the doctrine of "inbound marketing". Their heaven (promised land) is more clients and more money.
Zuora sells the doctrine of "subscription economy". Their heaven is the same as Hubspot's.
Drift is selling the doctrine of "conversational marketing". Their heaven is the same as the other two.
David Allen is selling the doctrine of "getting things done". His heaven (promised land) is "more productivity" and this is the same as every other productivity coach in the world.
What enables these businesses to distinguish themselves from each other and their competitors is not the promised land (because it's the same as virtually everyone else's) but their doctrines.
My model is a more accurate explanation of what is happening. That's important because we use models to recreate them for our own situations - you need an accurate model in order to do it right.
As Dharmesh Shah himself put - their success came from creating a quasi-religion of "inbound marketing".
This is how this model views it - through the lens of religious and other ideological story-telling, and it more accurately fits what these companies have done.
I don't think it's necessarily about what the buyer "needs", as much as appealing either to a big "want" or avoiding a significant loss.
Many of these companies probably don't "need" a subscription model, so Zuora focuses on the negative they're avoiding (getting left behind). From my experience, convincing someone to avoid a loss is way easier than convincing them to pull the trigger on a big win. This is a huge reason why people continue to invest with money managers instead of doing the mathematically better option of buying index funds: the money manager promises to preserve capital, whereas the index fund lists shows that it outperforms manual money management on average (big win potential).
In many cases, you're focusing less on reason and more on emotion, and you use logic to drive it home. People are more emotional than logical ("nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"), but they need a logical argument to justify their emotions (IBM solves our problems and isn't going away, so the higher price is justifiable).
Speaking only for myself, when I'm an investor, I wanna know stuff like:
- cost of customer acquisition
- gross margins
- revenue growth
- size of market
- yada yada
That being said, a slick pitch deck is nice to see. It makes me feel good, which never hurts.
I only invest on the fundamentals of the business.
If a startup had great numbers AND their pitch deck sucked, I'd stikk give them the money. If I had specific thoughts on how their pitch deck sucked, I might offer suggestions on how they could improve.
From what I've read, that kind of stuff belongs at the end of the presentation. Get them on board with the vision and the problem, then justify it with figures they can use to justify buying in to your solution.
The original Star Wars script was heavily influenced by an analysis of ancient and religious mythologies, so it's not surprising that you're seeing the same themes.
