Cris S. Cubero
Some B2B SaaS marketing teams suffer from what we call a middle-out problem. They have an abundance of content explaining how their product works because, frankly, that’s the easiest thing to write. But despite the high output, their pipeline remains stalled.
The reason is rarely a lack of features; it’s a failure to account for buyer stasis.
Most of your prospects are comfortably miserable. They know their current process is broken, but they’ve developed enough workarounds to feel safe in the status quo. To move them, you don't need more content. You need a sequenced system that respects how the human brain actually processes change.
At Kalungi, we use the Wow, How, Now framework to ensure every piece of content has a specific job in that psychological journey.
The first mistake SaaS teams make is assuming the buyer is already looking for a better way. We jump straight into explanations, shouting solutions into a void of "so what?"
But if your prospect is in stasis, they don't care how your API works or how many integrations you have. They only care about the fire they didn't realize was burning in their basement.
This is where WOW content comes in. Its job isn't to be flashy; it’s to establish relevance.
In an era of AI-generated consensus, WOW is your opinion competitive advantage. It’s the field-tested insight that disturbs the prospect's peace by showing them that their current way of doing things is riskier or more expensive than they realized.
Instead of writing another "Ultimate Guide to X," try sharing a specific, controversial take on your industry’s standard operating procedure. When you move the prospect from "comfortably miserable" to "actively curious," you’ve successfully cleared the first hurdle. You’ve earned the right to be heard.
We often hear CEOs ask: "How do I know if my buyers are in stasis or if they just don't like my product?"
The answer lies in the reaction to your "Wow" content.
If people are engaging with your "Wow" insights but not moving to the "How," you don't have a product problem; you have a sequence problem. You haven't built the bridge of trust yet.
We often hear from CEOs worried that pivoting to opinionated content will kill their organic traffic. The reality is that "Ultimate Guides" drive clicks, but WOW content drives branded search. Google’s hunger for keywords and your buyer's hunger for signal aren't at odds; they are a sequence. You use your "How" content to rank, but you use your "Wow" content to ensure that once they land, they actually care.
You won't see a "buy now" click immediately after a LinkedIn post. Instead, you look for qualitative signals: comments from your ICP, mentions in sales calls, and self-reported attribution. When a lead says, "I saw your post about why my CRM is lying to me," that is a higher-value metric for your board than 1,000 generic page views.
Once you’ve successfully shook the foundation of their stasis, the buyer’s mindset shifts. They are now paying attention, but that attention is immediately followed by deep skepticism. They’ve heard big promises before. If you keep shouting "Wow" without proving you can actually solve the problem, you lose credibility.
This is where you transition into HOW content. The goal here is utility. This is the "tree branch principle" in action—you are pointing to the rotting limb over their garage and then giving them a flyer that helps them fix it today. This isn't just a product tour; it’s an extraction of the sea of wisdom that lives in your team’s heads.
Think about creating high-utility assets like ROI calculators, health checklists, or migration playbooks. By solving a small problem for free through your content, you de-risk the relationship. You stop being a vendor trying to sell them something and start being a trusted guide who has already proven they can deliver value.
For a $50k+ ACV product, the split is vital. Your "Wow" often lives on social channels and in executive inboxes to spark interest. Your "How"—the deep-dive playbooks, ROI calculators, and technical frameworks—lives on your blog and in your nurture sequences. It serves as the educational "anchor" that turns a curious prospect into an educated buyer.
You can have a prospect who finds you relevant and trusts your expertise, yet they still do nothing. Later is always easier than now, and next quarter is the place where good SaaS deals go to die. The final piece of the sequence must answer a singular question: Why change today?
NOW content provides that clarity. It’s not about pushy sales pressure; it’s about helping the buyer visualize the cost of doing nothing.
This is where you deploy the hard data—peer testimonials, specific 6-month impact reports, and hard ROI evidence. You aren't closing them; you’re showing them that the gain is achievable and that their peers are already reaping the rewards.
When NOW content follows a properly sequenced Wow and How, the call to action doesn't feel like a sales pitch. It feels like the only logical next step in a journey they’ve already begun with you.
Your sales team likely wants "Now" content only—they want the case studies. To get Sales to value the "Wow" and "How," show them the data on sales velocity. Prospects who have been nurtured through a sequence arrive at the first call with 70% of their objections already resolved.
"Now" content works because the previous stages earned the right to ask for action.
Even with a clear sequence, many CEOs feel a final anxiety: the Subject Matter Expert (SME) bottleneck.
The best "Wow" and "How" content lives in the heads of your founders and engineers—people who have zero time to become full-time content creators.
This is where the concept of Syntropy becomes vital. At Kalungi, we believe your marketing shouldn't be about inventing new ideas; it should be about extracting the wisdom that already exists. We act as the translators. We take a 15-minute interview dump of raw human wisdom and turn it into a sequenced Wow-How-Now machine that runs in the background.
Acknowledging the speed of the market is easier when you have a proven system to filter the noise. When you have the right content in the right order, you stop being a commodity fighting for attention and start being the authority that defines the category.
Struggling with "middle-out" content that buyers ignore? In this masterclass, Kalungi Co-founder Stijn Hendrikse explains how to use the Wow, How, Now framework to reach your ICP.
You’ll learn:
If you're ready to move from founder-led hustle to a predictable growth engine, we invite you to apply for a T2D3 Growth Workshop.
In this focused 1:1 session, we will:
Apply for Your T2D3 Growth Workshop here
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