Steve didn’t just read a script for the presentation. He’d been telling a version of that same story every single day for months and months during development—to us, to his friends, his family. He was constantly working on it, refining it. Every time he’d get a puzzled look or a request for clarification from his unwitting early audience, he’d sand it down, tweak it slightly, until it was perfectly polished.
He talked for a while about regular mobile phones and smartphones and the problems of each before he dove into the features of the new iPhone.
He used a technique I later came to call the virus of doubt. It’s a way to get into people’s heads, remind them about a daily frustration, get them annoyed about it all over again. If you can infect them with the virus of doubt—“maybe my experience isn’t as good as I thought, maybe it could be better”—then you prime them for your solution. You get them angry about how it works now so they can get excited about a new way of doing things.
when I say “story,” I don’t just mean words.
Your product’s story is its design, its features, images and videos, quotes from customers, tips from reviewers, conversations with support agents. It’s the sum of what people see and feel about this thing that you’ve created.
When you get wrapped up in the “what,” you get ahead of people. You think everyone can see what you see. But they don’t. They haven’t been working on it for weeks, months, years. So you need to pause and clearly articulate the “why” before you can convince anyone to care about the “what.”
That’s the case no matter what you make—even if you sell B2B payments software. Even if you build deep-tech solutions for customers who don’t exist yet. Even if you sell lubricants to a factory that’s been buying the same thing for twenty years.
If your competitors are telling better stories than you, if they’re playing the game and you’re not, then it doesn’t matter if their product is worse. They will get the attention. To any customers, investors, partners, or talent doing a cursory search, they will appear to be the leaders in the category. The more people talk about them, the greater their mind share, and the more people will talk about them.
A good story is an act of empathy. It recognizes the needs of its audience. And it blends facts and feelings so the customer gets enough of both. First you need enough instincts and concrete information that your argument doesn’t feel too floaty and insubstantial. It doesn’t have to be definitive data, but there has to be enough to feel meaty, to convince people that you’re anchored in real facts. But you can overdo it—if your story is only informational, then it’s entirely possible that people will agree with you but decide it’s not compelling enough to act on just yet. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.
So you have to appeal to their emotions—connect with something they care about. Their worries, their fears. Or show them a compelling vision of the future: give a human example. Walk through how a real person will experience this product—their day, their family, their work, the change they’ll experience. Just don’t lean so far into the emotional connection that what you’re arguing for feels novel, but not necessary.
And always remember that your customers’ brains don’t always work like yours. Sometimes your rational argument will make an emotional connection. Sometimes your emotional story will give people the rational ammunition to buy your product. Certain Nest customers looked at the beautiful thermostat that we lovingly crafted to appeal to their heart and soul and said, “Sure, okay. It’s pretty” and then had a thrilled, emotional reaction to the potential of saving twenty-three dollars on their energy bill.
everyone will read your story differently.
That’s why analogies can be such a useful tool in storytelling. They create a shorthand for complicated concepts—a bridge directly to a common experience.
That’s another thing I learned from Steve Jobs. He’d always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful. Everyone had CDs and tapes in bulky players that only let you listen to 10-15 songs, one album at a time. So “1,000 songs in your pocket” was an incredible contrast—it let people visualize this intangible thing—all the music they loved all together in one place, easy to find, easy to hold—and gave them a way to tell their friends and family why this new iPod thing was so cool.
Because to truly understand many of the features of our products, you’d need a deep well of knowledge about HVAC systems and power grids and the way smoke refracts through a laser to detect fire—knowledge almost nobody had. So we cheated. We didn’t try to explain everything. We just used an analogy. I remember there was one complex feature that was designed to lighten the load on power plants on the hottest or coldest days of the year when everyone cranked up the heat or AC at once. It usually came down to just a few hours in the afternoon, a few days a year—one or more coal power plants would be brought on line to avoid blackouts. So we designed a feature that predicted when these moments would come, then the Nest Thermostat would crank the AC or heat up extra before the crucial peak hours and turn it down when everyone else was turning it up. Anyone who signed up for the program got a credit on their energy bill. As more and more people joined the program, the result was a win-win—people stayed comfortable, they saved money, and the energy companies didn’t have to turn on their dirtiest plants.
And that is all well and good, but it just took me 150 word to explain. So after countless hours of thinking about it and trying all the possible solutions, we settled on doing it in three: Rush Hour Rewards.
Everyone understands the concept of rush hour—the moment when way too many people get on the road together and traffic slows to a creep. Same thing happens with energy. We didn’t need to explain much more than that—rush hours are a problem, but when there’s an energy rush hour, you can get something out of it. You can get a reward. You can actually save money rather than getting stuck with everyone else.
Quick stories are easy to remember. And, more importantly, easy to repeat. Someone else telling your story will always reach more people and do more to convince them to buy your product than any amount of talking you do about yourself on your own platforms. You should always be striving to tell a story so good that it stops being yours—so your customer learns it, loves it, internalizes it, owns it. And tells it to everyone they know.
A good product story has three elements:
It appeals to people’s rational and emotional sides.
It takes complicated concepts and makes them simple.
It reminds people of the problem that’s being solved—it focuses on the “why.”
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