The Elements of SaaS Soul: SuperPowers

Part 2 in our series exploring how soul drives sales in B2B SaaS, using a SaaS Brand Strategy approach to Category Design

‍

"Strategy is primarily a human activity in a technological context."

- Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge

‍

One of the persistent challenges of brand strategy in B2B is the square peg/round hole tension from forcing consumer brand definitions and frameworks into a B2B environment.

This is largely why a category design approach to brand strategy works in B2B, but more on that later.

The definition of brand is indeed different between consumers and B2B markets, but let’s start with what they have in common: A brand is a combination of the product and the reputation.

Reputation is anchored on a value proposition greater than the performance of the product and/or service. Wherein consumer, that reputation element is an expression as an aspirational, idealized self, in B2B terms, reputation is rooted in utility.

In SaaS, especially start-ups, the "brand" as most approach it starts and ends with the product. Yes, you need a kick-ass product, or kick-ass product in progress, but that is only part of the story. Because here’s another element B2B and consumer share: Reputation drives choice, especially in a commoditized market.

The product-first-and-only approach is made apparent in the benefit-focused copy: faster, cheaper, easier, more efficient. Yet, think of the companies that have elevated beyond the product and how they are described. They are “responsive”, they are “helpful”, they are “creative”. These are human traits layered on top of product/feature/benefit attributes.

These traits rise to the surface ultimately because the company meets natural human needs in a usually sterile product performance-focused environment.

We refer to these traits as your SuperPowers.

SaaS Brand SuperPowers are human traits intrinsic to the company, to the culture. Think of them as the DNA strands of your organization, imbued at the earliest stages of development, and hard-coded into its existence. They are end states, not the means to an end, gleaned from qualitative stakeholder interviews designed to expose the key human motivations at the foundation of the business.

How you behave, appear, act, and most importantly, why are all driven by your SuperPowers, which in turn develops your reputation.

For DRMG, there are usually four super powers, with three critical and one core Super Power at the center of the entire organization. One of DRMG’s SuperPowers is creativity. We are potent strategic thinkers, writers, and editors that bring order to what seems like chaos, to capture and distill the sentiment or theme into the correct word or phrase and decipher the meaning at the core of the company. Think tincture: pure and distilled.

We then align your Super Powers with how and why the world needs them in order to inform the purpose of the entire organization. It’s a larger pursuit. It has meaning. It has value.  This is what insulates orgs from commoditization, and provides the platform to define and build your reputation in the market.

Sales, and how meaning beyond product performance drives sales, is ultimately the key outcome we are after, and there has to be a way to connect meaning with sales. By aligning the organization around the SuperPowers and figuring out how and why the world needs them, you establish a distinct, ownable, and scalable culture of innovation, service, and value. This ultimately becomes the story your customers will tell and sell about you.