Please delete your first three slides (or move them)
By Alan Armstrong
Raise your hand if your standard pitch deck starts a bit like this:
- About Us Part 0 (title page)
- About Us Part 1 (description)
- About Us Part 2 (management team or something similar)
- About Us Part 3 (customer logos)
- Market overview
- Problems we solve
- etc.
This is a recipe for boredom. The order is common, familiar, and self-interested, and it lulls your audience into an unengaged trance like some kind of pavlovian hypnotism.
Here’s what I want you to do: Delete the first 3 slides, or at least move them down in the deck. (You can keep the title slide for now.) Your first slide of content needs to prompt a compelling story about a client that you recently saved. The story should be illustrative of your core value to the market. When you’ve finished telling that story, tell the audience that you work for (or founded) this company because the client problem you described is so pervasive and so real, and you want save the rest of the market from similar torture.
Then you can talk about yourself, your company, how many hundred years of management experience you have, and how many bright shiny logos you’ve acquired in the first 2 years of business. But those are supporting points. They support your opening story, which grabs attention because you are here to solve a problem. Or help your audience achieve a goal.
I guarantee your audience will be more engaged, and it will improve your results. It’s a small change, really, with a huge impact.
But how many of you will really do it?
Related posts:
- Good PR or another bad pricing move?
- Here’s the deal with Biz Dev (Part I)
- So why do we undermine ourselves?
I have a great story in this regard. A sales rep and manager went to an important prospect meeting. Some senior people from the prospect were in attendance. About 15 minutes into the meeting (with the usual who we are, what we do etc.) slide deck in play, the Sales Manager notice the attendees were looking rather disengaged
He interjected and said to the sales rep, you know, why don’t we cut to the chase. Can you show slide 11.
Slide 11 was a slide describing customer successes and the value they received. It named actual customers. Once slide 11 was displayed, the prospects perked up in their chairs and read the slide.
The most senior person on the prospect side started asking pointed questions about some of those companies. He indicated that he viewed one or two of them as competitors so definitely wanted to know what they were doing.
In the end, the meeting went very well and after a few months of work, a very large deal was closed with that prospect.
From that point forward, the company “strongly encouraged” that every sales rep create a “slide 11″ with customer success stories they could speak to and use that early on in new prospect meetings.
The moral: The presentations are about the audience, not about the speaker, and it is stories that people relate to best, not just facts and bullets.
New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #prodmgmt
New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #prodmgmt via @AWArmstrong
RT @AWArmstrong: New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #prodmgmt
RT @sjohnson717: RT @AWArmstrong: New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #pr …
Follows on the leaders as storytellers piece I tweeted about yesterday: http://wp.me/pXBON-25J via @onpm
Was just suffering through this very thing this morning in a sales preso. Ack!
Got to chatting about it later on and I think this is a holdover from the days when you couldn’t readily get info on a vendor beforehand. You know back before there was an interwebs. The only source of information was maybe a Thompson’s listing (am I dating myself) and the corporate brochure you snail mailed out weeks earlier.
Nowadays, they’ve done all that work, know just about everything about your business. They’re looking so see – and fast – just how much you know about them and their business.
You got it! I think it was always a little self-centered to start with info about yourself, but definitely with the interweb it’s even more-so! Will you be making any changes to your own pitches Timothy?
RT @onpm: New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #prodmgmt via @AWArmstrong
Love the idea of starting a deck w/ customer logos. RT @jeremycrane: Delete your first three slides right now http://j.mp/gslGXd
Borra esas tres primeras transparencias … o al menos cámbialas de sitio (On Product Management) http://bit.ly/hCoFaZ
So true. Elevator pitch.RT@onpm: New Post:"Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #prodmgmt
Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/hzaFdj
RT @dmalenko: Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/hzaFdj
RT @onpm: New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" #Marketing #prodmgmt http://bit.ly/hCoFaZ
Please Delete Your First 3 Slides (next time you present your awesome product idea) http://zurb.us/dWpw9O
RT @onpm: New Post: "Please delete your first three slides (or move them)" http://wp.me/pXBON-25J #Marketing #prodmgmt via @AWArmstrong
Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/glM2nU
RT @cindyalvarez: Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/glM2nU
@cindyalvarez Thanks for the tips to stop boredom during a presentation. I have 2 big profile workshops soon. http://bit.ly/glM2nU
Is your corporate presentation more interesting to you or your prospects? http://lnkd.in/JMKkYT
RT @cindyalvarez: Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/glM2nU
RT @seanpower: RT @cindyalvarez: Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/glM2nU
RT @cindyalvarez @AWArmstrong: Please delete your first three slides http://bit.ly/glM2nU great minds think alike http://j.mp/h4tGEm
RT @seanpower: RT @cindyalvarez: Please delete your first three slides (or move them) http://bit.ly/glM2nU