The Grandma Test: Making Complex Tech Solutions Compelling to Any Audience
Think about a piece of technology that your grandmother wouldn’t understand. Now imagine trying to explain it to her.
You wouldn’t start by listing out speeds and feeds. Instead, you’d start with why it matters, what problem it solves, and how it makes an actual person’s life easier.
That’s technical storytelling in its simplest form: It’s about taking complex, technical ideas and turning them into narratives that resonate — not just with engineers, but with buyers, decision-makers, and broader markets.
If you’re in tech by profession or even by hobby, it’s easy to assume everyone and their grandma is on the same page as you when you’re living and breathing this stuff every day. But even the most sophisticated audience still needs to understand how a solution fits into their workflow, solves a pain point, or offers a competitive edge.
That said, I’ve seen technical storytelling so bad it makes a 200-page product manual look like a thriller. Either it’s drowning in jargon, or it’s so watered down that it says nothing at all.
So, where do companies go wrong? And more importantly — how do you get it right?
Common Mistakes in Technical Storytelling
Even the best and biggest tech companies struggle to get technical storytelling right. Here’s where they often go wrong:
Being too technical with no clear value: If your messaging sounds like a
whitepaper full of jargon and acronyms, you’re losing your audience. Even a highly technical audience needs simplicity and a clear takeaway.
Not aligning storytelling with your sales cycle reality: If the majority of your deals are lost due to the speed of your product but you’re writing content about how fast your product is, we’ve got bigger problems to solve.
Focusing on features instead of outcomes. Saying “we have the fastest data processing engine” is fine, but I can guarantee you that “we reduce time-to-detection for security threats by 50%” will land better. It’s not about what’s new and shiny — it’s about why it's valuable.
Ignoring competitive positioning. If you’re pitching a new feature as groundbreaking technology but a competitor launched the same thing six months ago, you just look out of touch with your buyers. Technical differentiation has to be grounded in truth.
How to Get Technical Storytelling Right
Here’s what separates good technical storytelling from noise:
Start with the problem. Whether you’re talking to a platform engineer or a CIO, they care about solving a pain point. Lead with that and make sure you zoom out to provide a “so what” for the reader. The best technical stories make it impossible to ignore the problem because they frame it as urgent, solvable, and deeply relevant.
Tell a complete story. Even highly technical topics need a beginning (the challenge), middle (the solution), and end (the impact). Because who wants to read 1,000 words that send you into an existential crisis without helping you get out of it? One note I cannot stress enough: This shouldn’t be a sales pitch to the reader. Instead, it should touch on a challenge they might be facing, which allows for a vendor-neutral solution. This is ultimately the start of thought leadership. We’re creating a pain point that your product may solve and we’re talking about that openly without directly discussing your product.
Respect the buying process. Make sure the story reflects how customers actually experience the product, including its benefits — not just how marketing and/or sales wants to sell it. Aligning with customer success is the fastest way to understand what makes customers love (or hate) your product and why deals get won or lost. From there, you can drill down into the technology that enables real, desirable outcomes.
Balance technical depth with clarity. Your audience should walk away with two things: why this technology matters, and how it fits into their world. If it’s too surface-level, it won’t resonate with technical buyers. If it’s too complex, it’ll alienate decision-makers. The best stories meet both audiences where they are — without talking down or over-explaining.
What Happens When You Get It Right?
Good technical storytelling shows that you understand your audience. It helps create communities of users and advocates, bringing together executives, engineers, and decision-makers around a shared narrative. It builds credibility, meets users where they are, bridges the gap between users and buyers, and most importantly — it positions you as an innovator.
At the end of the day, even in B2B tech, you’re still talking to people. The companies that win are the ones that understand their audience — not just their tech.