Mark: 0:00

when someone comes and talks to me about one of their prospective clients and they have an initial meeting scheduled with them and they're gonna go talk to them, the first thing that comes to their mind is, what are we gonna show'em? And they start putting together the deck. Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm Mark. This is John, and we are here today to talk about the problematic pitch deck. John, what are your, what are your, what are your thoughts on the pitch deck?

John: 0:53

I'm excited to beat it up. We haven't done one of these tear down episodes in a while, and, um, the pitch deck is one that I think is often misused, misunderstood, and, um, I think it's a, it's important for us to shine a light on it.

Mark: 1:06

Yeah, I think for a lot of individuals and organizations for that matter, this is almost a compulsory part of their sort of new business world, right? This is, I work with architects and they wanna show buildings. I work with landscape architects and they wanna show parks. but regardless of who they are, and you know, what their expertise is, is that they feel this need to, put this lengthy slide deck together. That they're going to show, and man, by the end of it, the prospective client is just gonna be head over heels in love with them, so, right. That's,

John: 1:46

They're not gonna be lulled to sleep at all. So, mark, let's set the table a little bit. Like, how do we end up in this position? Like why do, business development teams, marketers, sales professionals, lean on a pitch deck sometimes called like a capabilities overview deck, or capabilities deck? I've heard it call that before. but how do we, how do we end up here?

Mark: 2:07

in previous days, you know, this was a glossy brochure that you would bring along with, You to a, a client meeting and you'd slide it across the meeting room table. it transformed at some point, with, the emergence of Microsoft PowerPoint, you had a big screen, people started having better technology projectors and everything else. And so you would come into the room and, you know. Get the deck together and there'd be technology problems and the meeting would start 12 minutes late and, you know, whatever. Um, you know, I just, right. That was the, that was the funny part about it. But yeah, it, it, it, it came about with, the advent of, of presentations, with these decks. And it takes many different forms. Um. But what we're talking about today is sort of a tool that's used early on in the sales process. Often, you know, maybe even heck we could mix it up sort of at the end of the marketing process, the beginning of the sales process, where you're, thinking that the deck is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to a prospective client. So the technology came up. You could put big, huge pictures on a screen. you'd put words up there that someone would stand up and kind of speak to. And you know, in your 60 minute meeting, you'd take up 45 minutes of it, talking away. So it's ages old. So to a lot of people in the business world now, it's sort of how. We've always sort of done things right. It was get the pitch deck ready, the sort of genesis of it, was that we need to overwhelm the client with a ton of information and images and all the other stuff to where we will be the, undeniable top choice. Right. That was the, that was the thought. it's much, much easier to kind of hide behind the slides. So for, for people who are, you know, maybe less comfortable in this marketing and sales sort of thing, you know,'cause we, we talk about professional, the world of professional services and. While these people aren't sort of, you know, born marketers and sellers, right? So it was all too easy to kind of hide behind the slides. you'd have your pictures, the images would do the job for you. They would speak to your expertise, it was an easy way to help organize and navigate your. Thoughts and, It's an easy thing to lean on, right? So from my perspective, this is how we've always done it, right? Because PowerPoint's actually been around for a while and there's a lot of people in the professional world who haven't owned anything different. And lo and behold, it's pretty easy to high bond.

John: 4:48

Okay. So. It sounds like, it's been ingrained in firm culture for a while. Like predating the internet predating a lot of, technology and what we consider like modern marketing practices today. So, you mentioned, this is something that happens at the end of the marketing cycle and I like the way that you put that. We've got this new prospect in the pipeline. This is someone that we've met at a conference before. They've downloaded a couple pieces of content from us, maybe one of our research reports. They've listened to a couple podcast episodes and lo and behold, they've filled out a contact us for Alright, sweet. they've got a meeting scheduled for next week. Record scratch. Now what?

Mark: 5:30

Now what?

John: 5:31

this is where like a lot of teams would lean into that deck, but, let's dive into it. So, Mark, you've got a challenge for listeners. go and find one of your pitch decks and count how many slides are about you versus how many are about your prospects. And you can do this while you're listening to this episode. don't do this while you're driving. That's not, that's not good. Mark, we've come up with five reasons why slides don't sell and why the pitch deck. You should take it out behind the woodshed and give it a little beat down. So the first reason why slides don't sell that we came up with was number one, you're competing with distractions.

Mark: 6:11

the screamingly obvious, part of this is we live in a distracted world, and it's kind of moving in the wrong direction at a pretty accelerated pace. people aren't actually sort of able to sort of center themselves and focus better these days. Obviously, if you are meeting with a prospective client, they have uh, either a few or, multiple needs concerns whenever else that are sort of top of mind And you show up with the deck, right? slide one. All of a sudden we, we mute those thoughts in people's heads and, any information we're trying to convey during that deck presentation, just kind of glances off because they've got all these things in their head that they need to get out. And we didn't let them do that because the deck showed up and we started clicking through slides and we didn't open up or present the opportunity for people to engage with us first off, you know, and, and I mean, heck, even if you come into your meeting with your slide deck and you ask people some questions initially that they get some of those things off their head. Sure, sometimes you do that, but inevitably when you kick into the slide deck. Other things start coming up immediately. And when people interject in a presentation, it's almost, disruptive. They're almost just like, Ooh, is it, is it okay? And you're like, um, yes, but actually not really.'cause I had

John: 7:42

we're gonna hold questions to the end. I, I need to get through this.

Mark: 7:46

yeah, yeah. I don't know. What's your, what's your spin on that?

John: 7:48

Yeah. You know, it's funny that, um, as we're talking about this, I'm finding parallels with, the attention economy when it comes to, like, YouTube videos and podcast episodes. holding people's attention. Like I, I always think about like information per second.

Mark: 8:02

Yeah.

John: 8:03

or value per second to the listener is another way to think about that. And, a similar theory can be applied to these presentations. Another thing to think about is, especially as these pitches are becoming more and more remote based, like as a Zoom meeting. People have different tabs open, right? You're not only competing with their internal thoughts, but you're competing with other web browsers and devices. So yeah, attention is scarce.

Mark: 8:31

Yeah. Notification overload, right? Yeah. You're competing with those distractions and the, deck is just fundamentally designed to march through at this particular Highly choreographed cadence as soon as the client starts to interject or something, it throws everything off.

John: 8:47

honestly, it's funny that I'm just now thinking of this, but it seems like these pitch decks or"capabilities" decks may be better served as like a recorded YouTube video,

Mark: 8:56

Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Yeah. Just something that people can consume on their own and they're much shorter or they're much more specific or whatever else, so, yeah, so, so we walk in the door just assuming that we're going to, garner, sufficient. Attention from our prospective clients, and we do not. So, yeah, big problem. So the second one we have here is slides replace conversation with broadcast. Right? So let's dig into that one.

John: 9:25

Yeah. So if you think about a slide presentation, when all the information that you want to convey to a prospect kind of bubbles up inside. But as you and I have discussed at length on this podcast, those conversations really need to be centered around the buyer and their situation. They also want to be able to share and ask questions. So when you bring a slide deck to one of these initial engagements, your default bias is to present and to convey information and to try to position yourself in the best possible way. Rather than involving your sales counterpart and listening to understand where they're coming from and why they're there at the table in the first place.

Mark: 10:10

Yeah, John, these are all screamingly obvious, right? And this one's a clear problem. you can hear this one from anyone out there. And even your little self that's sitting on your own shoulder is whispering in your ear saying. Hey, don't do this. Don't do this. Listen, ask them questions. that is happening and yet we, persist, right? we continue to build these decks. So yeah, It replaces this back and forth conversation with this broadcast media. You know, it's like you're standing in front of, the room with, the cheerleader megaphone. Up to your lips, just letting them have it. Right. It's just, I I love that visual.

John: 10:47

This is why you should work with us.

Mark: 10:49

right John, we're not the only one in the world's pointing out the absurdities that are happening out there, but yet they're still happening. So That's number two. Good one.

John: 10:58

Yep. All right. So number three, why slides don't sell. Slides alone, lack context. I like this one and we also have curiosity is required for this. So, mark, tell me a little bit more about why slides alone, lack context.

Mark: 11:16

Yeah. We can try as hard as we can to take of a stock pitch deck and throw some customization at it, But it still comes off as this prepackaged, thing that was done by the marketing department rather than something that was truly co-created with the client or customer in mind, right? So, they immediately think, oh, this is something that you created for someone else, not us. And now we have to sit through it and yeah. Great. we've reached the end of the presentation now, and oh, by the way, you missed a bunch of things that makes our situation, our organization different and our needs different and everything else. So, so you blew it. You big waste of time. And I talked about understanding and the statement of understanding and all this kind of ties into that, in that whatever information you start presenting to. A prospective client needs to be completely framed and encased. in your understanding of them and their situation. So yeah, there it is.

John: 12:29

Because then you always have a a reference point and a reason to point back as to, you know, why you're presenting certain situations and certain recommendations. Yeah, that makes total sense.

Mark: 12:40

and I think there's a struggle for time really. people look at a, prospective client, they have this, this deck that they just, they've fallen in love with that's sitting right there and they're thinking, okay, great, we wanna show that thing, but we have to customize it so they start customizing little bits here and there. So then your brain goes to the point where it's like, wait a minute. if we're gonna show them anything in this, what do we show'em? Do we have to completely and totally customize this for our client? I'm thinking. Yeah. Yeah. It needs to be totally customized because they are different.

John: 13:18

when you say that I guarantee there's someone who puts together proposals and slide decks that is just like, oh my God, mark. I hate hearing that,

Mark: 13:27

Yeah, customized to me says something that's sharp and laser focused. So all of a sudden your 30 slide deck that's generic becomes five pages or five, five things that are hyper-specific and totally relevant to the client, and that nails it.

John: 13:46

that's exactly where I wanted to go with that let's take this 30 slide deck and then let's narrow it down to like five or less.

Mark: 13:54

Yeah, yeah, Okay. So that was the third one. The fourth one here was slides shift focus away from the buyer's reality.

John: 14:04

Yeah, like we talked about earlier, that inherent bias about wanting to talk about us, right? why you should work with us, how you can work with us, what are the next steps to work with us, right? these are all the things that as a business development person, you're thinking this is the information we want to convey. But that centers on you and your framework and your methodology and your offering. It doesn't include the prospect at all. Like you mentioned, like a statement of understanding or giving them opportunities to ask questions that can help you gain more information about your counterpart. So instead of. Understanding the buyer's reality. You're shoving a narrative down their throat.

Mark: 14:49

Yeah. what kind of comes to mind to me because, you know, you and I have perspective clients that we entertain regularly, in order for us to achieve the results that we have achieved historically with some of our previous clients, we have built sort of processes and frameworks. That is sort of how we do what we do, right? but regularly we engage with new prospective clients that have similar needs that we've seen in the past, but maybe some slightly different needs. And that initially, creates a conflict because we're sitting here saying, this is how we do things. And then our clients come in and say, yeah, but we need this other thing. And we're thinking, Hmm, my framework might work, but we gotta tweak it a little bit. So, Either the client thinks this doesn't apply to us at all, or they're like, oh yeah, I think we could kind of go along with this and this framework might kinda work, but that deviates them from their reality, right? They get, they get fooled into thinking that this is a solution that's actually gonna get them where they want to go, rather than being like, no, wait, actually no, this is not gonna do it. So, point is, you know, we have to meet'em in the middle and the only way can we can meet'em in the middle is don't come in with the deck and lay down the framework and start twisting the client's perceived reality into something that it's not.

Mark Wainwright: 16:01

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 16:03

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 16:17

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 16:27

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 16:33

and now back to the show.

John: 16:36

We've got one last one. And Mark, this is one that I know that you're very passionate about. the fifth reason that we have as to why slides don't sell is sending a slide deck, relinquish narrative control. So, mark, tell me a little bit about this.

Mark: 16:53

the key word here is sending the slide deck, right? Because the two almost always go together where it's, we're gonna go present the deck, either, virtually or in person whenever it is. So the deck is presented, as is always your 60 minute meeting turns into 56 minutes of you presenting and then the four minutes like, oh shoot, you got any questions? And the client never has any'cause they're like, oh, they probably should have asked us that at the beginning. You know, da da da, whatever else. And then the client not knowing anything else to say in that situation.'cause they've, you know. Been, you know, sort of clamped down the entire conversation. They say, can you send us the deck? And you say, yeah, right? So you're lazy and you push the easy button. And all you do after the meeting is you say, Hey, thanks for the meeting. Here's the deck. And you send them some PowerPoint meeting and that PowerPoint meeting gets forwarded, to the actual organizational leaders and decision makers and everything else, and it drops in their inbox and they click through the first six slides and they're like, what is happening here? Right? This doesn't apply to us.'cause everybody is engaging with that deck differently. Somebody looks at it on their phone, somebody flips through the, you know, whatever it is, right? So it completely misses that context and the narration that goes right along with it. So, it actually does more harm than. Good. So I would put my right hand up here, John, and say, I will confess, I have been in situations where I need to have some type of a visual aid, and you know, in a previous life, John, I was absolutely guilty of the pitch deck for sure. I think we all were, you know, the best path towards the solution is recognizing that you have in fact contributed to the problem, right? So we have all contributed to this. Occasionally I will use visual aid, to convey information. people will ask me if I will send the deck and I'll say no. Right? typically I will have recorded that.

John: 18:53

yeah,

Mark: 18:54

So I will send them the recording of the entire meeting. that will incorporate everything.

John: 19:02

It gives them the context.

Mark: 19:03

Yeah, the initial, the setup, that'll include the conversation. It'll include the back and forth. It'll include the q and a. It'll include the few visual aids that we inserted into the conversation, so it gives someone that receives the file that wasn't able to meet the meeting, the full context of what happened during the conversation, and I am shocked. Shocked still to today, right, John? We're we're in 2026 now, right? This is, we're, we're, we are, we are living in the future. You know, this is, the space age, you know, I mean, like, we're here and people still send decks all over the place, devoid of any context. So, yeah. Sorry. Did I, did I rail on that? A little too hard.

John: 19:50

No, you know, mark, I enjoy when you go on those soap boxes because it's, it's an interesting and contrarian point of view. I think a lot of sales professionals probably in their comfort zone, maybe successful, might say, we can send a PDF and that's fine. That's worked for us. In my own personal experience, there have been situations where scheduling just didn't work out right. I, wasn't able to meet with my counterpart in the right amount of time. The way that I've handled that situation was not to send the deck, but to actually like record, like you mentioned, a presentation of the proposal, the recommendation, the different options, because I wanted to have that context and set up too. And yeah, there, there are tools. I mean, zoom, you can just record yourself on Zoom and send that over,

Mark: 20:37

Yeah. Brilliant. I have done that as well and it is not hard, and it is 10 times. more impactful when you do that, right? I mean, folks, if you gotta use the, let's call'em visual aids.'cause I'm not gonna call it the deck. If you gotta use something and it needs some context around it, then record it. Right? Screen capture, record, you know, shoot, if you want to actually get fancy, get some slightly better recording, equipment, that makes, the video and the audio. come over better, but yeah, do that. Do that. Totally.

John: 21:14

So we, we kinda waded into what actually sells instead of sending the deck. And, and leading on the, the slide presentation, we mentioned visual aids used sparingly. I think we've, sufficiently hit that point. I think we've talked about the importance of those live synchronous conversations around presenting the visual aids that you do have. So another couple of the bullet points that we have here around kind of like, okay, well if, if we don't use a slide deck and we only have a few visual aids, like what do we do? this bullet point here that we have is reflection and synthesis of what the buyer has said. So I know we talked about this a little bit and touched on it in terms of understanding, but what does that mean to actually reflect and synthesize what the buyer says?

Mark: 22:03

Yeah, that's, mirroring and, and reflecting and, it's almost impossible when you're in a situation where you've got the, slide deck up. Right. that just presents this barrier to presenting information, having them react to it on hearing their reaction, and then reflecting back to them, their reaction and sort of summarizing that part of the, conversation. Right. And this is what these active live back and forth two way conversations are about, is that we're constantly, sharing information, receiving reactions, synthesizing the discussion, summarizing and then kind of moving on and, and, and, you know, constantly checking and rechecking understanding comprehension. and the deck is a huge barrier to that. So yeah,

John: 22:45

yeah. And then just to add on to that real quick, um, you mentioned the statement of understanding as something that should be presented if you are presenting different solutions or different recommendations, that's something to anchor the conversation. That's another way to reflect and synthesize more of like the accumulation of knowledge over the course of like many historical conversations

Mark: 23:08

Yeah. And, one of the caveats that's important to, call out in this conversation that we're having, John, is that there are people out there who are visually oriented, meaning that there comprehension, increases. You know, when they're able to take it in through their eyeballs instead of their ears. So sure, these visual aids are, are very helpful. And if we're trying to include information that is somewhat dense, this stuff helps and to tie that sort of statement of understanding into all of this is that. You know what we want to do right off the bat. If we are coming into a prospective client and we've gained some level of understanding of them, their needs, their situation, their desired outcomes, all that sort of stuff is immediately right off the bat. Number one agenda item is to share that with them. Oftentimes, that's shared just fine verbally, but if you have to bring visual aids to that, you can. Right? So you can, have that up on the screen and you can talk about it. here's the stuff, read it. What do you think? Let's talk about this. Tell me more about this one. Tell me more about that one.

John: 24:13

That was fascinating when you brought that up when we were planning for this meeting, and I, and I'm glad that you brought that up. Now, mark is, uh, one tactic that you use from time to time is if you do have a slide or a visual aid with a dense amount of information. It makes sense to, and there's more text on the visual aid than you have time to read. You'll actually like read the headline and say, okay, let's all read this together silently.

Mark: 24:39

Yeah, and anybody who's worked with me chuckles a little bit on this because throughout any information,'cause a lot of times I do, you know, you could call it a lecture, right? Might as well call it a lecture. where I throughout the course of working with a client, I will be conveying information both verbally and visually, right? And I will do it in a deck because all the work I do largely is, is virtual. so I will frequently insert these pregnant pauses into my presentations. And someone who's fiddling with their phone, on the side or whatever else, all of a sudden snaps too, you, I can almost feel it, right? They're just like, mark, just, he just stopped talking. So there's a, pause there and that's when I let people read slides because our brains cannot process auditory and visual information at the exact same moment. of course we watch the car driving past us and hear the car driving past us. All that stuff is synchronized. But as we're reading new information to us on a slide and someone is speaking in our ears and we're trying to read it. the wires get crossed, So I let people read a slide and then I'll circle back and we'll talk about it. Then people can share their thoughts on it, things like that. So yeah, that's a tactic. Sure.

John: 25:52

Yeah, I think it's worth bringing up right there. And, I think it also dovetails nicely into, one of the last bullet points we have here, which is, having clear options and trade-offs. this speaks a little bit more to kind of like what you were just talking about with, if you want to convey dense information than it becomes more about information design than really like flashy pictures about past projects and capabilities and things like that.

Mark: 26:21

Yeah, you lose some agility when everything's baked into the, presentation. So this, definitely gives you the opportunity, to deviate from that path if you need to, because you know, someone can bring up something new. There could be a piece of information included that needs to be edited, you know, oh no, actually that's not right. Part of your understanding wasn't correct. Whatever else. So, it's good to be taking that information and, just the mentality of a slide deck is a very singular, sort of prescribed, very planned path. And, particularly early on in the sales process, John, you cannot come into these conversations thinking that, oh, this is exactly how it's gonna go.'cause inevitably it veers off course

John: 27:03

Mm-hmm. And buyers don't appreciate a cookie cutter solution like we talked about.

Mark: 27:09

Yeah, a visual aid to me is some sort of a graphic that supports a conversation. that lets people's brains interpret the information they're seeing a little bit differently than how you are saying it. So maybe it's a reinforcement, maybe it's some sort of a framework or a model.

John: 27:26

A chart or a visual or some market statistics?

Mark: 27:29

Yeah, those are helpful as well. We're not talking about 40 slides,

John: 27:35

No,

Mark: 27:36

just a few, so, yeah.

John: 27:38

wait, when you say just a few, a few dozen. Right.

Mark: 27:41

Not a few dozen. Right. Just a, just a few. John, we have a call to action. What is our call to action, John?

John: 27:49

No more decks. Don't ever do another deck.

Mark: 27:53

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

John: 27:55

anymore. Turn it into a YouTube video and then use visual aids instead.

Mark: 28:00

Yeah. A YouTube video, heck turned into a conversation. If you need some sporting information, sure. But take the leap, lose the deck, and just engage with your prospective clients in a conversation, right? It's, it's, yeah, just do that

John: 28:19

hashtag ditch the deck.

Mark: 28:21

It's a huge challenge for some folks. this could like rock, some organizations who are just used to it, but it's like, yeah, ditch'em. hopefully there are people that have listened to us long enough that they were way ahead of us. On this episode, John, they were like, oh yeah, we never do decks. It's all, it's all conversations. Which is smart. Way to go high five, but for the rest of you, ditch the deck.

John: 28:42

are. Excellent. Well, mark, this has been a fascinating conversation. Hopefully all the listeners out there are ditching their slide decks and turning them into YouTube videos. Until next time.

Mark: 28:52

Until next time