In my career I’ve been on a relentless search for the best sales pitch deck. Because of that, I’ve sat through more sales pitches than I can count. Want to know what I’ve noticed about a lot of the pitches?
They suck.
If you want to know what’s wrong with your pitch deck, you’ve come to the right place.
Companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars training each of their sales reps to know how to make cold calls, write emails, and handle objections. They train on how to use Salesforce or Hubspot, Outreach, Gong, and countless other tools in their tech stack.
So why do so many sales pitch decks suck?
The truth is most pitch decks are missing 3 key elements:
Clear Narrative Framework
As much as we’d like to try and convince ourselves that we’re rational beings, we’re not. We’re complex and emotional humans. And with all of that complexity there is a desire to find purpose and stories in all that we do.
I can’t tell you how many pitches I’ve listened to that talk all about the features of a product and completely skip over what that means in the larger picture.
Your sales pitch deck is not a high-school essay. It’s a story. It needs to move your listener. Otherwise, it will always fall flat.
High-School Essay Pitch
- Intro (who we are, mission, vision, values)
- Transition (Because of all that, we wanted to create….)
- Body (Features X,Y,Z)
- Transition (Because of X,Y,Z you probably should buy)
- Conclusion (Here’s our pricing)
Storytelling Sales Pitch
- The Big Thing – (The world has changed. Whether we like it or not, it’s not going back to “normal” any time soon)
- Successes and Failures (There are going to be winners and losers and it all depends on how we adapt to the change)
- Happy Ever After (There’s a chance though – if you adapt well and invest in the right areas, you’ll reach your happy ever after)
- Defeat the Challenges (Because we know you want to get there, we can help you overcome your biggest hurdles by doing XYZ)
- The Proof (Here’s how we’ve done that for people like you)
Can you see how the second pitch evokes emotion, it makes your client feel how big the stakes are, and it positions you as a guide and a helper, rather than a salesman. And that’s just through the outline! Imagine what it’d look like when you really flesh it out.
Transformation > Features
As I mentioned previously, we are no where nearly as rational as we might like to think of ourselves. If we were, pushing features in your pitch deck might be the best method to close a deal. However, because we crave stories, purpose, and narrative frameworks – what we’re actually looking for is an answer to a single question.
How will this transform my life?
When you’re creating your pitch, remember that either knowingly or unknowingly this is what your client is asking.
Sell the transformation, sell the before/after, sell the new beautiful world of possibilities. Ditch the features. Features can be posted on a landing page for everyone to read. The transformation shows that you know who you’re talking to and what they are looking for.
Scientific Design
A beautiful pitch deck is not necessarily a good pitch deck. Turns out there’s a science behind a good sales pitch deck. It all revolves around Cognitive Load Theory.
What’s Cognitive Load Theory and how can you use it to your advantage in your sales pitch? Well, without nerd-ing out too much, I’ll give you the 100,000 foot view. If you really want to dive in deep to this check out this video.
CLT states that our working memory can only hold a finite amount of information at any given time. It’s our job as designers, storytellers, and sales reps to ensure that we’re not overwhelming our audience with too much information on each slide.
When we try and put multiple thoughts on a single slide or overwhelm our audience with too much content, we end up losing them.
I know – everyone wants a 10 slide pitch deck. Somewhere along the way that was what was decided as the magic number.
The problem is, most people end up with 30 slides worth of content on those 10 slides. So we’ve got to be scientific with what actually lives on each slide. If it’s not directing people in the right direction, either cut it out or put it somewhere else.
Your clients and your “closed won” column will thank you.
If you’re ready to take your pitch deck to the next level, get in touch with our team today. We’d love to help!
