Why the Hero's Journey Fails in B2B

I've yet to see any real evidence that the hero's journey works, especially in big or enterprise B2B selling. For any myth or story structure to work, you have to start with a willing suspension of disbelief. For a while, somebody who doesn't know you has to believe you might be able to do something. And there's very little willing suspension of disbelief in B2B.

It's a term from high school English literature. You stop expecting things to be real or verifiable, long enough. You never sit down at a superhero movie and say, everything I see about this guy fighting a dinosaur on a space station had better be not only true but verifiably true. You're willing to be entertained and accept that a dinosaur, extinct sixty-five million years, is on a space station. How did it get there? I don't know. How did the space station get there? We don't know. Why are they there together? No idea.

And yet on Monday morning you tell a prospect, not only do we have excellent quality, but our prices are some of the lowest. They say, good quality and low prices? That doesn't seem very believable. There are companies with great quality and low prices. But skepticism is built in.

That's why you shouldn't bet the farm on the hero's journey in B2B marketing or selling. You'll get kicked hard. The skepticism is too baked into the process. If you're selling to tiny companies, sure. Not to companies of any heft or size.