Telling the Right Story

The most difficult thing for tech-led businesses is communicating what they do quickly and concisely to new people. This is true for any new product in any market. So when Better Boards wanted to combine their complex consultancy service with a scalable technology platform, two things were essential:

How do we create a simple, easily digestible sales narrative?
How do we avoid watering down the in-depth offering?

Going from hands-on to scalable…

Better Boards are experts in helping FTSE 100 organisations get the most out of their boards of directors. Unlike competitors, they combine data-driven recommendations with the expertise of their consultants.

There’s so much Better Boards could say. However, in saying everything to everyone, they would say nothing.

Some of the key decisions we made:

Deciding what not to say

“The three most important words in the English language are Objective, Strategy and Tactics
- Alistair Campbell.

One of our most successful workshops focuses entirely on these three words. We break down - to the atomic unit - what a business does and why. You can read more about our workshop approach here.

By defining the Objective (the Big What), the Strategy (the Big How) and the Tactics (The ‘Doing’), we can decipher what’s truly important in your sales comms, and - most importantly - what you do not say.  

Approaching comms like a newspaper

The objective of a newspaper headline is to ensure you read the first paragraph. And the objective of the first paragraph is to ensure you read the next.

Selling complex products requires a learning curve. So whether via the website, a presentation, or a face-to-face introduction at a conference, the first interaction is focused on gaining attention to hear more. The longer that attention is held, the more detail is provided. This is at the heart of our Storytelling.

Reach and Frequency

Our clients are often selling to complex organisations where multi-touchpoint selling is a must. Rarely is there one decision-maker and rarely are you in the room when that final decision is being made.

Our sales narratives are designed to be the backbone of all sales comms. It was essential that we built something to be the guiding principle for any newsletter, any sales pitch or any conversation. You want to ensure that everyone recalls the same key messages. 

“Our ongoing relationship with Gardn is fantastic. If you asked me at the beginning of the process whether our offering could be summarised on 1 ½ pages of A4, I wouldn’t have believed you. The structure of the narrative has made it very easy to sell via presentations, email, our website… we have a sales toolkit for success!”

The new iteration of better boards will be launching in late 2020, and we’re excited to see the new narrative in action!

To see some of the work we produced for Better Boards, please drop us a line here or by emailing