How to Build A Better Sales Pitch

Last week we had a look at the poor old sales pitch deck and how it drives truly miserable selling and buying experiences all around, and generally squanders the time of very expensive people.

This week I’d like to propose a new approach to the sales pitch presentation. Let’s lose the 20-slide decks. Let’s forget about the stacks of dead trees and let’s leave our poor Subject Matter Experts at home.  A great B2B sales pitch deck needs to tell your prospect just five things:

1. Here is an existential threat to your business
2. Here is why it is urgent to get this fixed
3. Here is what the world looks like when you fix it
4. Here are the steps to fix it
5. Here is how we are qualified to fix this for you right now

That’s it. No About Us. No logos. No big reveal.

For those of you clutching your bosom in horror, next week we’ll take a look at some of the stuff we’ve removed and why it doesn’t matter. For today, let’s unpack the five slides you need to put in the sales pitch deck.

The Existential Threat Slide

What keeps your prospect up at night? Probably all the rambling thoughts they indulge as a way to avoid the Really Big Thought. That thought is: what if I f*ck up this company? Nobody wants to be the CEO, CFO or CMO who murdered the brand and tanked the company.  They want to be the hero immortalized in a meeting room named in their honour, not the embarrassing footnote that required a special meeting of the Board.

Looking at their business, what is the Closet Monster they fear the most? Is it a low-cost alternative to their product or service? Is it some sort of regulatory change that will muck up their cost structure or render their product illegal? Is a new business model going to leave them in the dust? Are they in a race to the bottom with their pricing?  Is a much larger player moving into their space?

All businesses have a Closet Monster or two, some of which are more imminent than others.  Many of these companies are only dimly aware of what’s in the closet, while others obsessively plan around their biggest threats.

A good Sales Squirrel will have had multiple discussions with at least one person in this company if you’re at the point of pitching the Corporate Overlords. Their job is to know what is scaring the crap out of the C-suite. If they don’t know that, make them reschedule the meeting and go find out.  In the meantime, read the analyst and investment reports on the company or industry. Take a look at what their customers are saying on Twitter and other forums.  How are their competitors positioning against them? What are employees saying on Glass Door? This is all findable stuff, and is core to the Challenger selling model Matt Dixon has been on about for years.  If you haven’t read The Challenger Sale, start there.

Opening with an acknowledgement of a Giant Problem demonstrates that you understand their business and you’re not wasting their time with chit-chat while you figure out how to vacuum their wallets.

The thought bubble over the Overlord’s head should read: “These people understand my business.”

The Urgency Slide

Many businesses are keenly aware of their Closet Monsters and equally confident they have them totally under control. Which may or may not be true, and you are likely not well-served to spend your time arguing about whether or not they are locked and loaded for something bad.

The point of this slide is to create a sense of urgency. If you’re lucky, the urgency is already palpable, and could well be the reason you’re in the room in the first place. In this case, you won’t need to spend too long on this slide and you can all agree violently that things need to be taken care of. This is where you click the little thingy to move to the next slide.

If there is not any particular sense that the Closet Monster is an urgent matter, you will need to find a way to suggest that either the people in the room are unaware of something that makes it urgent or that the best practice is to get on with solving it before it becomes an urgent thing.  In my experience, the second scariest thing for CEOs is the threat they haven’t thought of yet.

Once again, the fact that you are in the room with senior people should play in your favour. You are there because someone thinks you are going to fix something or create something of value. Possibly you are just related to someone important, in which case, you might want to leverage the heck out of it.

It can require a bit of creativity to connect whatever it is you do with the looming Closet Monster. It can be as simple as showing how you can take cost out of their business so they can fund a defense against the threat, or it could be that you can make them competitive enough to vanquish the monster should it appear. Perhaps you can help them identify a safe place to retreat to if the monster gets loose. If you can’t honestly figure out how you are or could become essential to this company’s survival and success, then you likely don’t belong in the room with them. In that case, cancel the meeting.

The thought bubble over the Overlord’s head should now read: “I can’t push this off to next year.”

The Shiny, Happy People Everywhere Slide

Even a CEO gets sick of hearing about all the doom and gloom, which is why the mid-point of your pitch is a happy place. It’s where you show them a vision of the future where the Closet Monster is gone or at least under control and where that CEO’s legacy as a hero is solidified for all time. The prospect’s competitors are weakened, cash flow is strong, employees are happy, customers are willing to recommend and unicorns and rainbows do their thing.

This would be a good place to talk about a couple of your success stories (no logos, please), or to show how this approach has helped another company just like theirs to find their happy place. You need to paint a picture of the future that is as believable as it is compelling.

The thought bubble over the Overlord’s head should read: “Bring me the rainbows.”

The Yellow Brick Road Slide

Here is where you get to be a little bit technical. I said a little bit. No room for Feature Puke in this deck. Here is where you connect the thing you are selling to the thing the C-suite can now believe is possible.

This is a great point at which to tell a success story. Start with the achievement and work backwards:

“let me tell you how we helped xyz solve their supply chain problem and become the top performer in their industry,” (the rainbow)…

 “when they implemented our solution, they were number 6 in earnings per share and top suppliers were cancelling lines of credit”(the urgency)…

“ all because their outdated supply chain management systems were slower and more costly than their competition, which was circling for a takeover” (closet monster).

As you tell the story, highlight the success factors and the conditions that existed to make it all possible, such as a dedicated project manager, wonderful client-side teams, brilliant executive sponsorship and all that.

Provide a simple overview of the process and timelines and offer to have someone send a more detailed critical path next week.

The thought bubble over the Overlord’s head should say: “This is not going to be as hard as I thought.”

The Sign Here Slide

At long last, your poor Squirrel can do a little bit of a sales pitch about your company. This is where they can talk about the fabulous project team, the company’s track record, all the innovation and the flexible suite of products that will make everything all right. This is where they do what Squirrels do best, which is ask for the business.

The thought bubble over the Overlord’s head should now read: “When can they start?”

There you go: five slides, which should have no more than a few words or pictures on them, and which your Squirrels can get through in about 30 minutes. That’s six minutes a slide, which allows easily for late starts, interruptions and questions.

No handouts. No product sheets. No printed decks.  That’s what the follow up is for.

Next week we’ll look at how we wean ourselves and our Squirrels off the other nonsense.

Related Posts

Getting Commitment Requires Primal Selling and Quiet Marketers
Four Ways to Get Sales Off Your Back and Out Selling

Interesting Things I Found This Week

We’ve all seen this sad depiction of how projects go so wrong. It’s on a wall in every office in the world.

Thanks to the folks at Project Cartoon, now you can make your very own version, customized to the way your company fails to meet your customers’ expectations.  If you make a good one, please share.

How sad to lose David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Glenn Frey all at once. Sadder still is that brand marketers thought it would be a good idea to ride those hashtags. Jay Baer has called them out beautifully in this post and offered great guidelines for not screwing this up in the future.

BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter