Your Journey Through the Playbook
This map shows you the complete path from understanding buyer shifts to delivering remarkable stories. Each phase builds on the previous one, creating a comprehensive approach to becoming worth talking about.
Understand the New Buyer Reality
Before diving into techniques, understand why everything has changed. AI-informed buyers arrive with research done, opinions formed, and expectations higher than ever. These chapters set the context for everything that follows.
Introduction
The Uncomfortable Truth and Our Path Forward
8 Seismic Buyer Shifts
Understanding the reality of the buying journey and how it has changed
Running the BTD Playbook
Overcoming the 5 Buyer Shifts and Winning the Conversation
Understand Your Buyer Before Sharing
Before you touch slides or write talk tracks, you need the right mindset and deep understanding of your audience. These chapters help you break old habits, define remarkable outcomes, and build relevancy that resonates.
From Vendor to Valued Partner
Four shifts that change how buyers see you before your first slide
Think Buyer First
Identify and break content-first habits, reframe with an audience-first mindset
What Will They Say?
It is not what we will say, but what they will say that determines our success
Know Your Buyer
Deeply invest in understanding our audience, boosting session meaning and value
Discovery in the Age of AI
How AI killed the old playbook and what to do instead
Design Experiences That Capture Attention
This is where most demo training stops, and where this playbook goes deeper. These chapters cover everything from building trust through presence to engineering memorable moments to creating truly interactive experiences.
An Experience Worth Sharing
Create moments buyers remember and retell
Building Trust Through Presence
Connect through authenticity and empathy
Structure for Clarity
Make complexity digestible with rhythm and grouping
Engineering Memorable Moments
Create peak experiences with magic and callbacks
Boost Engagement with Interaction
Transform presentations into shared experiences
Deliver Stories Buyers Can Retell
Your champion just left your demo. Now they have to explain your solution to everyone who was not in the room. These chapters teach you how to wrap features in stories, integrate metrics without breaking the spell, and prove your claims live.
Features Scatter. Stories Travel.
Why your champion cannot retell your demo and how to fix it
Story Fundamentals
Your product means nothing until it means something to someone specific
Why Stories Win Deals
Your champion just left your demo. Now they have to explain your solution to everyone who wasn't in the room
Weaving Metrics Into Story
Anchor data to human transformation
Show, Don't Tell
Prove what you claim with live demonstration
The Research Behind What Works
Understand the neuroscience behind why some presentations stick and others fade. These chapters reveal how memory, attention, emotion, and participation create the conditions for your message to travel.
How Your Brain Actually Remembers Things
Understand the 93% vs 13% story advantage
What Captures & Keeps Attention
Master cognitive load and novelty triggers
Why Emotion Beats Logic (Even in B2B)
Leverage the 90% emotional decision truth
How Messages Spread (or Die)
Enable your message to travel through organizations
Why Doing Beats Watching
Activate the generation and IKEA effects
Evolution of Communication
How we went from perfect connection to digital isolation in 100,000 years
Tools and References to Help You
When you need help or inspiration, these chapters have you covered. Practical strategies for common blockers, consolidated workbooks, and storytelling inspiration.
Get Unstuck
Break through blockers with practical strategies
Workbook Collection
All workbooks from the book in one place for easy reference
Storytelling Inspiration
Learn from master storytellers who have transformed how audiences engage with ideas
Personal Context and the StoryPath Platform
Learn about the author behind Burn the Deck and the platform built to help you apply these principles at scale.
