SlideMagic Blog

Three different ways to show off your client list, depending on what you want to emphasize:

1. Page of logos to show that they include the biggest names in the industry (here is how to design one)
2. Map with dots to show that they are scattered around the globe
3. Bar chart with sales number ranking to show how much you sold them (if you can share this information)

Mixing them up might not give the best picture: logos of completely unknown companies, a world map with lots of dots in New York City.

One of my clients is one of the finalists in a long RFP process full of long presentations, documents, meetings. After all this information, the client thought it was appropriate to send one last piece of PowerPoint: a simple recap of why they are the best choice in 10 slides.

It was probably one of the most convincing presentations of the entire process. It took very little time to write. It contained much more emotional arguments (we are fun to work with etc.) than all the previous material that was used.

The visual concept I used was designed for on screen reading. I doubled the width of the page to an aspect ratio much wider than 16:9. Reserved the entire left side of the chart for a sentence in huge fonts, and supported that sentence with a very simple picture on the right side. Just 10 pages.

PDF it, email it, and hope for the best.

Tom Tunguz claims that this is the origin of the elevator pitch:

The term elevator pitch originates from the very first demonstration of an elevator with a safety brake. At the time, elevators were hazardous, routinely plummeting down shafts when their hoisting ropes fell, destroying their payloads. In 1852, Elisha Otis invented a locking system that would catch and secure plunging elevator. Unable to drive much interest in his innovation, Otis organized a demonstration in New York City. He stood in the elevator as an assistant severed the hoisting ropes and the safety brake engaged. Otis’ innovation paved the way for humans to ride in elevators. Today, the Otis company’s products transport 7B people every three days.

If true, this is a more interesting tale than the story that I thought was the source: finding yourself next to your client CEO going up in the elevator and having 1 minute to sell your idea.

Some sectors of the technology market are “hot”, everyone wants to buy the products, all investors want to get in.

But writing that sentence explicitly in your presentation might just give the impression that you are in a bubble that is about to pop. Get the sizzling temperature of your market across without saying it directly.

In many cases it is hard to give a real example of the cost savings someone can achieve with your product or service. Data is not public, or in case of a startup, you might not have that many customers yet. “Making up some numbers” does not sound like an ethical alternative, but it is a good strategy if you stick to some simple guidelines.

• Explicitly say that it is a hypothetical example
• Create a highly realistic artificial customer (1 owner, 3 trucks, 1 warehouse, $x million in annual revenues, etc.)
• And most importantly: explain how you get to your cost savings. If possible break them down into a few simple categories, and use a highly simple and transparent way to quantify them (10 instead of 35 phone calls of 30 minutes each per week equals $x)
• Make the spreadsheet as complicated as you want, but start with a blank PowerPoint/Keynote page to explain your calculation.
• Add everything up and see whether the cost reductions make sense as a % of the total

The main purpose of the case example is to explain how you got to the savings, not the absolute point estimate.

If you are pitching to a big corporate, it is important to understand how their decision making process works. For example: going behind someone‘back and talk to her superior could back fire.

Big corporates can be big bureaucracies, but not all departments work like this. It could be that the junior team member you just skipped sits next to her boss who is forwarding the email she just received from you straight back at her. They do exist inside big corporates, proper functioning teams with an open work culture.

Some people who are very high up in the corporate hierarchy might actually not have that much decision power. It depends on the type of business. For example, someone can be global marketing manager of a big soft drinks brand, and have a lot of responsibilities. However, it could be that most tactical decisions are actually taken at the country level, in the local subsidiaries in wich the parent holds a minority stake. In short, understand how your big corporate target works before planning your pitch strategy.

I usually do not get draw into a fight, the exception was recently when a client asked me to design a presentation that was a response to a presentation by a competitor that was a direct attack on the company.

The competitor document consisted of 5 pages of dense text with long sentences written in a style of two children complaining in front of the head teacher: “She says, but that is not true, then I say, you see that I am right?”. Lots of quotes, lots of complicated arguments, no numbers, no visuals.

My design was different. One simple headline per slide, one simple fact or illustration to support it. I did not discuss any features of my client, did not repeat the sales story of my client. Just corrected fact after fact after fact. I think it works pretty well, it is just a bit a waste of all that negative energy that goes into aggressive presentations.

When you have invested in a great animated promotion video to put on your website, why not use it in your presentation? A good video can tell a relatively complex story in under 2 minutes. Most of these videos contain high quality art work that is great for use in a presentation.

Embed the video in your presentation (I prefer putting in the actual file rather than linking to an YouTube video) and create visual connections later on in the deck using screen shots of the video (either page-filling or small thumbnails).

Do not feel embarrassed that that video just cut your bullet point product explanation from 15 minutes to just 2, your audience will appreciate it.

Case studies in investor and sales presentations are most of the time hollow and fluffy quotes that were clearly the result of an email saying “Do you mind if I quote you saying that our solution is highly flexible and scalable?”.

Here are a few ways to make a case example real:

• Focus on one specific benefit, if you try to put your entire story in the mouth of your customer, you need 30 slides, not one
• Cut the fluff
• Be very specific, and very detailed, quantify if you can.
• Add an image of your client to make things more authentic.

Case studies can be more than a simple quote of text. If you want to show that your system can be installed within 6 weeks, why not show a bar chart of your last 10 customer installations, with the exact time it took to install the system?

Tell a real customer story.

Seth Godin wrote an excellent blog post about pitching to a large corporate: the lowest possible price is not always the most important selling point. If you are a startup, it might result in the exact opposite effect: you just reinforced the image of the small, unprofessional, desperate, unreliable, financially instable company that is too high-risk to do business with.

If all the above are in fact true for your company, there are still some easy ways to camouflage it, and become a credible business partner to a large organization:

• Show up on time, reply to questions promptly, confirm Outlook calendar invitations
• Fill out forms, purchasing orders, even if you already provided the data in a previous email
• List your real street address, list your real non-mobile phone number (can be a Skype redirect)
• Have an email address with your company domain (can be forwarded back to gmail)
• Use a decent web site template that contains more than an “under construction” place holder
• Use high res stock images in your presentation, as opposed to solen low-res Google image search results
• Get a professional photographer to make decent head shots of the team
• Do not use ad-supported free, or worse: pirated software
• Invest in business card paper
• Create a professional email signature
• Avoid Comic Sans
• Clean up your computer desktop and hid embarrassing family pictures
• Be careful with humor hardwired, written-down, in your slides, the company might not think it is funny
• Understand hierarchies, going behind someones back to her boss does not mean you made a successful move up the ladder