I was flying home from a meeting last week watching this old, tired media thing called television when an advertising spot caught my eye. The advertiser was Domo, and it showcased a young woman (“I’m not a C-Anything-O” ) in the process of sending her boss an email about using Domo across the company. The ad shows some pretty cute scenes of office workers and warehouse workers at work, all of whom, according to the advertisement’s tagline, could use a little Domo “for the good of the company.”
Hmmm. This “for the good of the company” tagline was all over the Domo user conference I attended in March, and like any good tagline it definitely caught my attention. Also all over the DomoPalooza conference was the term “storytelling”, which also caught my attention. Storytelling for the good of the company…. it got me thinking.
It’s clear with two months and an easy half dozen subsequent conferences under my belt that Domo is on to something, and that something is really about the next new imperative in enterprise software. Enterprise software desperately needs to connect to real people – business people, Not-C-Anything-O people, people who do something other than manage tech and sit in a corner office with their feet on the desk. That connection to the rest of us has to be radically different than what used to pass for how software companies have traditionally connected to people.
This is because the people that enterprise software companies used to connect to were all in the CIO/tech part of the business, and the language of speeds, feeds, feature/functionality and next new thing was all that it took to get a techno/nerd audience on its feet and in the mood to buy. Complexity – give me more. Obscure standards – can’t get enough. Customization to the nth degree – bring it on. And user experiences? Really? Come on, we’re techies, we’ll figure it out.
What impressed me about Domo was that they have cracked the code on what has to happen next in enterprise software, and that’s about two core concepts, both exceedingly simple and, to be honest, a little timeworn. And both spectacularly lacking in all too many companies’ pitches to their customers.
The first is an articulation of purpose through the hero’s journey, and the second is the identification with that purpose through storytelling. In other words, it turns out that answering the question Why is my software important, and how can I make the people who use it important too? is the best way to think about the transition from techy selling to people selling, and Domo is a great example of how to do both extremely well, and what the rewards of doing them well can provide.
Why do we care about heroes and stories? The purported role of enterprise software has evolved significantly this century, from a “technical solution to a business problem” to a “business solution to a business problem.” Being business first means that enterprise software’s ability to connect with the broadest possible audience of users, and influencers, and buyers, is now its greatest challenge.
Companies and concepts that fail at that challenge are all over the place. Selling AI/ML and IoT, or hyping blockchain, or pushing platforms without business context, is a road paved with good intentions and scant success. Selling tech for tech’s sakes has been an acknowledged fools errand for a while, but as there were always sufficient fools around with sufficient budget, the techy approach worked well, or at least well-enough (ever wonder why there’s so much shelfware? Techy selling is a definitely an important reason why) that too many companies still revert to that outdated model.
Today the stakes are entirely different. Tech is increasingly less differentiating by itself, particularly to a line of business user. But if tech can enable new business processes or opportunities, engage more users and employees, and give everyone a positive experience in the process, we’ve at least got some material to use to begin talking the language of business.
A positive experience turns out to be the key, and that’s where Domo has succeeded especially well: They really have customer CEOs who really run their business – or least key parts of it – from their phone using information served up by Domo. And they really have “Not-C-Anything-O” employees doing some amazing things with Domo to make them more effective, intelligent, and better, “for the good of the company.” Which, for those of us who believe that most employees show up at work motivated to do a great job despite the primitive tech at their disposal, is a tremendous win/win for any company.
Why is Domo doing so well? Using Domo is a way for employees to become heroes, and who doesn’t want to be a hero? Heroes take purpose and turn it into accolades and laurel wreaths, they get respect, maybe even a promotion, and they clearly get job satisfaction. In the age of the “war for talent”, that alone is worth fighting for.
That’s why storytelling is so important. If we want a world full of heroes to worship and emulate, we need stories. You can’t talk about heroic journeys with bits and bytes, and endless droning demos, and spec sheets and checklists. You have to tell the story of the hero’s journey, and that story is what will engage and maybe even spur the reader to action. I heard lots of great stories at DomoPalooza, told by regular people who took Domo and make their mark uncovering a pot of gold or solving a particular problem, and every story had some part of the classic hero’s journey in them.
The hero’s journey is a literary concept – a meme, if you will – that is at least as old as Homer’s Odyssey, which is of course the archetype of the heroic journey. In the world of literature Joseph Campbell, the modern master of mythology, created a 17-stage journey that we’re not going to review here. But some of the key stages relate very closely to what needs to happen in enterprise software marketing, and what Domo and its customers were so good at articulating.
Here goes a quick synopsis of the journey, courtesy Wikipedia and my 7-grader’s English class notes. I’ve added some Cliffnotes of my own in case you have trouble understanding the relevance of the classic journey to telling the story of how something like Domo can make a difference:
- The call to adventure. “The hero lives in the ordinary world and receives a call to go on an adventure.” In some cases, the hero initially refuses, based on “reasons that work to hold a person in his or her current circumstances.” Translation: We have a business problem and you’ve been nominated to solve it, and you might not be all too happy about it.
- Meeting the mentor. This is often a supernatural force that presents the hero “with one or more talismans or artifacts that will aid him in his quest.” Translation: You’re at DomoPalooza watching CEO Josh James being preternaturally hip and showing how you can dance Asian fusion style too.
- Crossing the threshold. “The person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown…realm where the rules and limits are unknown.” This phase often involves setbacks or self-doubt. Translation: You’ve started to find a solution and finding that your company’s inertia and its “we’ve always done things this way” culture is a huge barrier to change.
- The struggle with temptation and ultimate power. Campbell gets all Jungian with woman as sorceress/temptresses and powerful Oedipal father figures, but the key point here is that there is often an easier and less fulfilling path that can derail the quest (you have to use the BI tools we already licensed), or a powerful entity (the CIO wants to talk to you about why this project needs to be under her aegis) that can destroy the quest, and both have to be surmounted for the hero to succeed.
- “This is the point of realization in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure.” Translation: The pilot worked and management was impressed.
- The Ultimate Boon. The quest is achieved, the hero gets what she went looking for. Translation: You’re on mainstage at the next DomoPalooza being interviewed by Josh about the project.
- The Return and the Magic Flight. Change is hard, and going back to the status quo is nearly impossible. Translation: Now it’s time for some change management to wean people off the older tools and get more budget to make Domo a company standard.
- The Master of Two Worlds. The hero has now transcended the world of the past and the world of the future. Translation: Really, you need this translated?
(In case you didn’t notice, Campbell’s formula would serve as a decent template for a case study.)
How did DomoPalooza connect the dots in the hero’s journey? Some of speakers on stage were themselves big, inspirational heroes, more along the lines of C-Something-O people. We heard from Simone Knight, the VP of marketing strategy and intelligence at Univision, who not only talked about the opportunities for driving new business at Univision but also chaired a customer panel moderated by a fellow customer. When was the last time you saw that? We also heard from Omar Johnson, the former CMO of Beats by Dre, who recounted what being employee number four at Beats was like. Both great, inspirational speakers.
But the story that really spoke to the power of Domo came from two retail analysts from Philz Coffee, who waxed eloquently about their heroic journey to make Philz’s store leaders better at doing their jobs by providing them with highly usable analytics that fit Philz hipster San Francisco Mission-district vibe. The sense of heroism was carried over in my one-on-one customer meetings, under NDA, that showcased how ordinary people, more of those Not C-Anything-O people, didn’t just get the job done, they did it using the “talismans and artifacts” of Domo, and became the masters of two worlds.
Cue applause.
This connection to people isn’t just fun, it’s fungible. I’ve written in the past about how Salesforce.com’s Trailhead is pretty much the gold standard in making heroes out of Not-C-Anything-O people, such as Salesforce admins, who as a result approach Trailhead with the fervor of a religious revival. (At Dreamforce last fall Sarah Franklin, who runs the Trailhead program, was given a standing ovation at the first-ever Trailhead keynote. How often do you see that?)
This is why I’m impressed with how Domo has managed to transcend the stodgy, moribund world of tech marketing, which unfortunately likes to place Domo in the convenient but highly limiting “BI Tools” bucket. BI tools are techy tools, and are generally the domain of the IT department, which has basically made a virtue out of not meeting the real needs of business users in their quest for intelligence and action. That’s why BI is not the place for Domo: Ordinary business users don’t get all excited and passionate about BI tools, particularly those last generation tools that Domo’s local heroes are successfully supplanting, despite their “struggles” with “temptation and power.”
Is this all it takes, just tell some good stories? No, Domo has some work to do, particularly in continuing to expand beyond its core marketing LOB base into other lines of business. And of course it has to overcome an entrenched bias in the analyst community for over-simplistic categorizations like “BI Tools” and other artifacts of a 20th century tech taxonomy. These issues will be a lot tougher to crack than they may seem on surface, but that just means the call to adventure is even more compelling and achieving the quest is even more rewarding.
And who doesn’t like a good story, especially one where everyone lives happily ever after….
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