What The First Twelve Narrative Assessments Taught Me About B2B Storytelling
From pre-funding teams to public companies, the patterns are the same.
After completing the first twelve narrative assessments, here are the five truths I keep seeing … and how to use them to build a narrative that actually moves revenue.
1) Your Origin Story Is Your Competitive Moat
The strongest differentiation isn’t a feature list. It’s the specific struggle that forced you to invent a better way. Competitors can clone products quickly; they can’t clone why you had to build yours.
What we find: teams bury the “oh-no” moments (near-failures, hard pivots, breakthrough realizations).
Do this: document three moments you’d tell a friend over coffee — the risk, the turn, the lesson — and make them the spine of your About page, sales deck, and founder videos.
2) Stop Being the Hero of Your Own Story
Most B2B content casts the company as Luke Skywalker. Your buyers don’t need Luke; they need Yoda.
What we find: pages filled with “we, we, we,” while customers are offstage.
Do this: rewrite one core asset using a guide frame:
Hero: your customer
Villain: the status quo risk they can’t ignore
Gift: your method, not just your product
Path: the smallest next step to progress
3) Raw Material Beats Polished Fiction
AI can accelerate; it can’t substitute for source material.
What we find: teams skip interviews and jump to manufactured copy that sounds like everyone else.
Do this: run 3–5 customer interviews before writing a word. Ask, “What changed after we started working together?” and “What almost made this fail?” Transcribe, highlight verbs, build your message map from the phrases customers actually use.
4) Measure More Than Vanity
Likes aren’t a strategy. Tie story to revenue through four levels:
Awareness (remembered): aided/unaided recall, branded search, direct traffic lift
Engagement (held attention): time on page, scroll depth, reply rate on outreach
Conversion (moved revenue): demo requests per asset, pipeline sourced, win rate lift for deals exposed to narrative assets
Advocacy (others tell it): testimonial volume, case-study reuse in sales, referrals
Do this: pick one metric per level, baseline it this month, and review it with sales every two weeks.
5) Small Teams Can Build Systems That Scale
You don’t need an army; you need an operating system.
What we find: “random acts of content” produced by 3–5 overstretched people.
Do this: install a light narrative OS:
Pillars: 3 themes you’ll own for 12 months
Story Arcs: repeatable outlines (Problem → Stakes → Shift → Proof → Path)
Characters: founder, customer, practitioner—each with distinct POV
Cadence: a simple waterfall (anchor post → sales enablement → social threads → email) that ships weekly without breaking the team
Start This Week (90 minutes)
Origin sprint (30 min): founders list the three “oh-no to aha” moments that founded the company.
Interview sprint (30 min): schedule 3 customer calls; lock in the questions; set a transcript template.
Measurement sprint (30 min): choose one metric per level; add to a shared dashboard with sales.
The Bottom Line
Most companies try to win with volume. More posts, more pages, more noise. The teams who grow faster install a narrative operating system: clear origin, customer-as-hero framing, real raw material, revenue-linked metrics, and a small-team cadence that compounds. It’s not about publishing more. It’s about knowing exactly what story you’re telling, why it matters to this audience, and how every asset advances that story toward measurable outcomes.
If you want a pragmatic, 12-month roadmap built for a 3–5 person team, Sightline’s Narrative Assessment maps your origin, reframes your story around your customer, and installs the operating system to scale it.
When You’re Ready: To replace “random acts of content” with a narrative that sells, let’s talk!
