What did HubSpot and Salesforce do that most category attempts do not?
The short answer
Both framed the world as an old game losing to a new game, and then made that frame a daily physical act rather than a campaign. Benioff put No Software on a logo, wore the button every day and asked employees to do the same, so a positioning claim became a repeated performance the market could see. Halligan and Shah coined inbound marketing on a hobby blog and then paired it with a deliberate segment choice (SMB, not enterprise) so the category and the customer reinforced each other. Most attempts fail because they announce a word and then behave exactly like the incumbent the next morning.
Go deeper, your way
4 hand-picked resources, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
🎧 Podcast
✓ Link checkedFreeIntermediate
Why we picked it
The founders describe coining inbound marketing as an old game versus new game framing, then choosing SMB over enterprise to defend it. Category creation and segment choice told as one decision, which is how it actually works.
Why we picked it
Covers how the No Software logo and button became a repeated physical act rather than a tagline. The lesson is that a category claim only sticks when the whole company performs it daily.
Why we picked it
The five part narrative structure (name the shift, name winners and losers, show the promised land, position capabilities as magic, prove it) that most modern B2B decks are downstream of. Concrete enough to rebuild your deck from in an afternoon.
Zuora's deck follows five steps in order: name a big shift, show winners and losers, tease the promised land, frame features as magic gifts, then prove it.
Never open with your product, your investors, your offices or your logos, open with the change in the world.
Buyers suffer loss aversion, so a pitch that only promises gains loses to doing nothing.
When marketing and execs repeat the same narrative, the rep gets air cover instead of pitching alone.
Why we picked it
The book that gave the discipline its vocabulary (category king, lightning strike, point of view). Read it as the ambitious end of the spectrum, not as a default plan.
