On January 29, 1886, Karl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” A handful of people were set to gain much more than the average individual from this revolution. Among those were car tyre manufacturers and brothers Édouard and André Michelin.
By 1900, Michelin patented tyres were running a little under 3000 cars on the street. They would sell only as many tyres as cars would need. To increase the demand for cars (and consequently for car tyres), the brothers published a guide for French motorists, the Michelin Guide (also known as Red Guide).
Nearly 35,000 copies of this first, free edition of the guide were distributed; it provided useful information to motorists, such as maps, tire repair and replacement instructions, car mechanics listings, hotels, and petrol stations throughout France. It also had ads, of course.
If you haven’t realized by now, this was not just another content gig. It was the birth of the most prestigious recognition for chefs and restaurants that would outlast a century and make way into our present - The Michelin Star.
I know, this is your TIL moment (tweet about it). It was mine too.
I couldn’t find any evidence of how successful this strategy was in driving demand. But what was interesting was the genesis of Michelin star, and how it can help us think about our own demand strategy in B2B SaaS.
Bringing the Michelin scenario to B2B SaaS.
Speaking to founders and marketers in B2B SaaS is my full-time job, and very often I spot what I like to call a very myopic approach to demand, especially when creating content. We put a lot out there to talk about our product, our solutions, and spend way too much time trying to win the battle of convincing a buyer.
But to win the war of generating demand, Michelin was forced to think about how to drive up demand for cars, not for their tyres. “Our industry is directly interested in the continual progress of automobiles, on which it depends,” Michelin once wrote in an article.
They had to start thinking beyond the product, and about the ecosystem - The buyer and the end-user, their aspirations and motivations, and create content to help them succeed. They had to find a way to develop a content strategy that helps their buyers and users succeed, and as a consequence would help them win as well.
If Michelin focused on creating content around how good they are or how great their product is, it would have been difficult to move a single needle. Another VC tells the founder their marketing team sucks. Another marketer feels incompetent (or gets fired).
Doing the Michelin exercise for B2B SaaS
In 1900, it was very fairly easy for Michelin to see they had to think beyond themselves because the market was giving very clear signals. With most B2B SaaS products, we try to solve a much more complex demand problem with many more parameters and it’s not very obvious that we need to think beyond our product or solution.
Around the time I read the Michelin story [source], I was speaking with one of my friend-mentors, Apoorv. Apoorv is building Elevate, a platform that helps you design, implement, and track sales incentive programs without hassle (this is an important statement that we will soon change, remember this).
I tried to see if I could abstract a concept from them and apply it to Elevate. I put a rough structure to the aspirations of the three stakeholders - Elevate, Buyer (Head of Sales), User (Sales rep). Then I added the winning scenarios to get what you see above.
It took me quite a few takes to come to this final version, because the winning scenarios and the aspirations are both tricky. If you think about it, all the variables entered above can be rephrased and still be correct. But I had to stay objective, and keep them all measurable and in context.
The last paragraph wouldn’t make a lot of sense without an example. So here is one -
Elevate’s billing is based on the number of reps using the product. The true winning scenario for them would be when they enable sales leaders to increase the team size, hire more reps and implement Elevate across the organization to keep pushing the output per rep. If Elevate’s billing was based on revenue enabled, I’d probably have a different winning scenario.
I went on to match aspirations to winning scenarios and see if there were hints on what I wanted my brand to be about, what I wanted my content strategy to be about.
- Elevate helps sales reps with higher output.
- Elevate enables sales leaders to scale their teams.
Elevate helps you scale your sales with higher output per rep.
But isn’t that really obvious?
All of what you read right now feels like the adage in our world of saas - Copy needs to be benefit-first and not feature-first.
Maybe that’s what it is. But when I put pen to paper for some other products, I saw that it’s really difficult to make things that simple. And the exercise reinforces that in your head, helping you tie all your marketing messaging to that one statement. More takeaways I had from the exercise -
- I did see opportunities for a better understanding of the market, and to some extent more clarity on positioning, because you’re forced to ruminate about the market and second-degree effects.
- I also found this to be an interesting way of generating more content ideas to work on demand.
- It helped me reinforce the fact that my demand strategy, content marketing specifically, has to be so little about my product, and so much about the market and their aspirations. Everyone tells that to you, but you also need to keep telling that to yourself.
I am still trying to crystallise my thoughts here and share solid learnings. But I had a moment and I felt sharing it might encourage you to do the same exercise, especially if you’re in the very early stages of your product, or trying to realign your positioning.
If you or your team found something interesting, please hit me up and talk to me. I would love to know what this lens did for you, and if there is a more structured way to do something like this.
All I am trying to convey here is a nudge to think about your content strategy in a way that helps your buyers and users succeed, and in turn helps you win as well.
PS - I know I have horrible handwriting, no need to mention that.
