What Severance gets right about your buyer

Severance’s innies and outies can teach us a thing or two about B2B marketing.

If you’re not familiar with the Apple sci-fi-psych-mystery show, the premise is basically an exploration of the thought that practically every adult thinks at one point or another: it would be so much easier if I could fully “detach” from the outside world while I’m at work.

Severance’s exploration is literal. Lumon’s employees undergo brain surgery to fully divide their work self (their innie) from their personal self (their outie).

Of course, we find out (spoiler) that it’s not easier to be fully detached from the outside world. Innies are burdened with their own emotional and mental challenges, even though they only “exist” within the walls of the Lumon building.

The more I think about it, the more I think B2B marketing writes to Lumon’s innies. Which could be a reasonable approach, except that the procedure doesn’t work. Innies have feelings too.

Case in point, in our recent healthcare SaaS study, only 4% of the 121 homepage heroes studied mention any sort of emotional benefit. The rest focus on functional benefits (like making money, simplifying your tech stack, or saving time).

4%?! When selling into healthcare orgs?!

Healthcare can be quite literally life or death, with many professions facing sky-high burnout rates (not to mention other mental and physical health challenges). And 96% of the companies studied decided (whether they meant to or not) to leave prime marketing real estate emotionally empty.

“But our buyers really just want to save time.”

I’m sure they do. But why do they want to save time?

What’s going on in their life that makes them think they need to save time in the first place?

Is their team constantly staying late, because there aren’t enough hours in the day? Is their team complaining about their horrible work-life balance? Is the team burning out? Are they seeing increased personal FMLAs across their team? Or maybe the team is facing higher-than-normal churn rates that not only hurt team morale, but also disrupt the buyer's day, because they’re stepping in to fix things (or bridge the gap) more than they’d like?

Knowing why your buyer wants to save time is just as important to your messaging strategy as knowing that they want to save time and how you’re uniquely positioned to help them do so.

(Obvs ^^ this ^^ applies to other industries, and to any of the other commonly used functional outcomes we see in B2B marketing too.)

Behind most functional benefits, there are emotional benefits. Those emotional benefits sit below the surface, and you need to listen for them. Depending on how your sales team sells, the buyer’s desired emotional benefits may surface in discovery calls. Or you may hear them during onboarding. Or, you may need to find them yourself, using a strategically placed single-question survey or by running JTBD interviews with new customers. The juice is typically worth the squeeze because, combined with your other critical messaging strategy components, emotional benefits can lead to differentiated messaging. And, bonus, it’s also likely to resonate more because you’re more fully acknowledging the reality of your buyer (showing you “get” their world).

Lumon tried to surgically divide work and life… and the feelings still got through. Your buyer doesn’t work at Lumon. It’s high time we start acknowledging their feelings in B2B marketing.

‘Til next week,

Carolyn