Investor Decks Aren't Sales Decks (April 7, 2023)
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VC-backed startup Founders usually have effective investor decks with information about their mission, solution, total addressable market, revenue model, and traction. At UpTempo, we love seeing these slides to fully understand the company, the team, and the vision. But we often see Founders trying to use these same slides in their customer-facing conversations, which don't resonate with that audience. Investors don’t care about the same things as customers, and customers don’t care about the same things as investors! Selling is challenging enough - let’s not squander our golden opportunity in front of qualified decision-makers with the wrong messaging.

So, what do you think should be prepared for customer-facing meetings instead?

Sales meetings must be about discussion and discovery, not “pitching.” So, make sure you structure your time to be more about conversation and less about presentation. You won’t need more than 8-10 slides for an effective meeting. Guy Kawasaki’s 10 / 20 / 30 Rule is still applicable today.

With those 8-10 slides, we recommend Zuora’s framework, amplified by Andy Raskin’s 2016 post entitled “The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen.”
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• What is the significant shift in the world that makes your product necessary? Make sure it’s universal, indisputable, and inspires empathy. It should be something that would make anyone in your target market perk their ears and nod their head.
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• Why does this matter? What is the negative impact of the “status quo?” Studies show that very few companies reprioritize initiatives based on perceived gain. Their urgency comes from impending loss. So, help them understand what will be lost if they don’t respond to this universal shift.
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• Magic wand moment. Get the prospect to envision and talk about their happily ever after. Let them speak! This is not your opportunity to launch into all of the merits of your solution. This is their moment to articulate what they would be willing to buy if given the chance
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• Demonstrate how your product can help transition the customer to the new world. Oh, what a coincidence! What they just described is precisely what your company solves. How serendipitous! Now, if you let the framework develop, you have an attentive audience that actually wants to see 2 to 3 slides about the benefits that your solution provides to overcome the universal shift in their world.
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• Prove it! Draw on your customer success stories.  You’ll need to establish credibility, either with a couple of slides of value stories from your current customers or examples from your roles before your company's founding.
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• Next steps. Always have a call to action, whether it is another meeting with new stakeholders, a solution demonstration tailored to their use cases, a technical discussion, etc. It’s not a “good sales meeting” if it ends without pressing action items.
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In 2023, you’ll see more decision-makers in each sales cycle than ever before - internal collaboration is more prevalent, and budgets are tight. Make sure you’re maximizing every meeting by preparing slides that consider their roles instead of trying to repurpose your investor slides where they won’t resonate.
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