3/11/2025-Ditch your pitch deck

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?

Presenting a 23-slide PPT deck from A-Z in a pitch meeting should be illegal.

If you run your meetings via slide decks, you’ll deserve what you get: uninterested buyers and cameras off (if you’re on Zoom).

Slides and decks are a crutch for sellers.

Decks turn on buyers’ disengage buttons.

Use them, and you’ll ruin any chance of engaging your audience and building trust.

All you need to run a productive customer meeting is a strong ownership of your value proposition and a list of good questions.

Breaking old habits is difficult, but you can do anything once you set your mind. To move entirely off of deck pitching, you must adjust incrementally.

Today, start practicing running an engaging pitch meeting using only three slides.

Review your deck and choose the best three slides you’ll use in your next pitch meeting. Next, write down three open-ended strategic questions you’ll ask in that meeting.

Then, grab a BFF and practice using your three questions and slides in a mock pitch meeting.

Slides don’t make buyers buy.

Build your conversation skills.

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.

Although this one-minute clip is an ad promoting join me online meetings, it’s mostly a hilarious jab at deck presentations.

Do your customers prefer to be pitched at through a long deck, or would they rather converse about your solutions for their challenges and objectives?