3/11/2024-Ditch your Pitch

In an age where building trust is your goal, why over-rely on slide presentations when you know they won’t contribute to your goal?

Directing a strategic conversation with your prospects in a F2F meeting beats a 32-slide razzle-dazzle PPT presentation any day.

It’s okay to share a few slides to present a complex idea, but in most cases, A-Z slide presentations are a dated selling form that ruins any chance of engaging your audience.

It’ll be weird not to have a crutch, but your pitch meetings will be better if you stick with strong ownership of your company’s value proposition and a list of good questions.

What if you sat down in a pitch meeting and the buyer said, "Please…no slides today."

What would you do?

Today, review your general presentation and select the best three slides from the deck.

In your next meeting, limit yourself to using only those three slides. It’s good practice for the next step of running a meeting with NO slides.

(Slides don’t get buyers to buy.)

Think of slide presentations as a crutch…a big giant seller’s crutch that props you up during pitch meetings.

But does your prospect care what’s on slide 32….or, for that matter, slides ONE through 31?

No. (Your marketing team cares more about those slides.)

In an age where building trust is your number one goal, why use a tool that doesn’t contribute to that goal?

Come to your meetings with a printed agenda, a notepad, a few pieces of collateral (for when you need to explain something complex or break up the meeting with a visual), and a list of smart, prepared questions.

That buyer will walk away thinking you know your stuff.

Even though this 1-minute video about client presenting is an ad for join me video meetings, it’s packed with humor and relevance about slide presos.

The three macro goals of client presentations are to inform, stimulate and, to a degree, entertain.

Decks can’t do that…humans can, though.