SlideMagic Blog

If you are pitching someone who is making a choice between you and your competitors, chances are high that that person in the end will have a better understanding of the competition than you, so be careful when describing them.

I am evaluating some SAAS vendors and over the past week I asked two companies to give their perspective on each other:

• Company A about B: ‘People who want something cheap, pick them” [In a second call I found out they are not cheaper]
• Company B about A: A pretty accurate description of pros and cons of each, a good prediction of how company A would pitch, and why in my situation, company B is the better choice.

Guess which company scored higher on credibility.

Startup competitions are different from regular investor pitches. Your are on stage to deliver a show to a crowd, not to a VC partner group. The jury members do not have to put their money where their mouth is. I asked a recent jury member for such an event to list feedback on investor presentations from the top of her head, without too much thinking. Here is the raw result:

• Have someone speak who masters the language. This is a back-to-back show, and if all candidates speak fluently, the one who does not will stand out negatively.
• Personality, attitude, enthusiasm, passion are far more important than professionally crafted slides.
• If you have to send a very junior team member to present, because the you, the CEO, has better things to do than to attend the startup competition, it is probably better not to show up at all.
• Contradicting myself, a presentation by (recorded) video was received remarkably well.

Startup competitions might suit some startups better than others. Things that score points for a big crowd: an unusual, non-typical, entrepreneur; an impact/green/environmental/healthcare-related company objective, a market that a non-technical audience can relate to, etc. etc.

When preparing for a startup pitch event, customize your slides and story and don’t bring your standard investor pitch to the event.

The best slide to talk about competition of your product or company depends on your specific market.

Most people first try to squeeze all competitors on to some sort of 2x2 matrix. This is a great option if there are 2 distinct axes, or 4 market segments.

You can add nuance by using a 3x3, creating 9 market segments. I prefer to put the competitors locked to the grid, and don’t get into debates about where they exactly sit on the spectrum.

But, if you have a hard time finding the definition of these 2 axes, the matrix is probably the wrong format to use. In many cases, the bottom left quadrant stays empty, and/or is meaningless. In these cases, try using a Venn diagram, which is basically a 2x2 matrix with that bottom left box chopped of.

In other cases, a simple bar chart my be sufficient. Rank you versus the competitors with one simple variable.

In most situations, I have to use some sort of feature table that can handle more than 2 dimensions on which to compare the competitors. Choose the comparison criteria wisely, avoid duplication, and give them the same level of abstraction/detail. Re-order columns and rows until you get homogenous blocks if “yes” and “no” cells.

Feel free to be inspired by the example layouts in this post. You can also click on the images, which brings you to the template store where I did the work for you. I frequently update the template store and try to tag slides with relevant keywords. A search for “competition” should bring up all the charts that I think are useful for visualising a competitive differentiation.

Today, I added a slide to the SlideMagic template store that shows how I usually visualise some sort of competitive comparison or product differentiation. I took SlideMagic itself as an example:

• A simple yes/no table
• Use the accent colour to emphasise features
• Sort columns and rows in order to keep as many “yes” boxes together in a nice pattern

The slide pretty much sums up how I see SlideMagic. In the app, it is really easy to change slides, in PowerPoint it can be a bit of an exercise to add a column in a 4x5 grid and keep everything nice and organised. Most online template stores try to hard with design that look horrible when pasted into a corporate PowerPoint template, and most of all, template stores are run by designers and not by former strategy consultants, so they won’t always have the charts you actually need most in a business presentation.

Feel free to “steal” my design and copy it yourself, or download it instantly from the SlideMagic PowerPoint template store. Have a look at other slides in the template store about competition and competitive advantage.

Photo by Alex Holyoake on Unsplash

They are different. The audience will put more value on:

• Entertainment value (“stunning” slides, unusual props, presentation style)
• Emotional connection to your business idea (not-for-profit ideas do well)
• Emotional connection to the speaker (is she sympathetic, an underdog taking on big bad forces in the world)
• Whether they actually remember you after a long morning of pitches (most of the audience will not take notes)

The professional audience will put more value on the business potential of your idea.

Focus on the objective: winning the pitch competition, which is different than receiving a cheque.

Art: Jean-Léon Gérôme, Police Verso, 1872

Click here to subscribe to this presentation design blog

Anat created another great chart this week to visualize how a company is going to kick the competition out of the game. See the example below with the client-specific details and colors left out.

The image is purchased from iStockPhoto, the balls are standard PowerPoint circles with some “extreme bevel” added to it, gradient shading in the back, the font is Planet Benson 2.

I attended an Internet industry conference today and witnessed presenters in the final of a startup competition: a few minutes to present your company to a huge audience with a ruthless timer ticking away.

• Putting your entire 30 minute story on 1 slide does not make it a 5 minute presentation
• Accept that you cannot tell all: ruthlessly cut nuances, side tracks, feature lists.
• “Waste” some time upfront in establishing a connection with the audience. Maybe a quick hand voting. In the first few seconds people are “trying to figure you out” and are not paying attention to the content. “Is that a Danish accent?” If you give the punch line during this time, It will not stick
• Assume your audience has absolutely no clue (about your company), but also assume that they are very intelligent at the same time. No buzz words. Clear explanations.
• Use facts, numbers. But use them only once. Five minutes is too short a time to repeat the succes of that major customer you won last week
• 500-1000 people is a huge crowd. Leave memorable contact details. “Out booth is outside”, or a very simple email address.
• Answer questions very, very briefly, don’t go off on a tangent, or repeat the presentation you just gave.
• Don’t run out of time. Definitely don’t make your punch line when bells start ringing and the screen behind you starts flashing to remind you that your time is up. Again the punch line will not stick

I am a bit late in discovering this blog post by Mark Cuban. To enter the competition, post your business plan (presentation) in the open for everyone to steal, and Mark will select one for funding. It will be interesting to see the candidates and ultimately the winning presentation/idea.

As a CEO you are paranoid with competitors who are doing things that are very similar to what you are trying to do. But that is usually not the competitive differentiation you need to emphasise in a sales presentation, especially if you are a tiny startup.

The real challenge will often be to get the client to break away from her current practice. Either a big established product, or maybe she is not investing at all in the sort of solutions you are trying to offer.

In my case as the CEO of presentation app SlideMagic, I could pitch it against other new and small presentation solutions that are out there in the market. But that is not the choice people need to make. I even would not consider PowerPoint to be my competitor for a feature-by-feature comparison. I am competing against the inefficient approach to presentation creation and delivery in corporations. And that is a real challenge :-)

Art: The Chess Players, by Thomas Eakins

In a startup pitch try not to define yourself early on through an explicit competitive positioning. Early in the presentation, you can mention how current solutions fall short, and you do something clever to fix that. But only later should you introduce the actual names of the competitors.