Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 84: 3 ways to improve the effectiveness of your sales deck

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84: 3 ways to improve the effectiveness of your sales deck · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your company has given you a great sales deck to use, but you just know that your prospects don't always enjoy hearing you talk all the way through the deck.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: How can you improve the way you use your deck in these early stage meetings?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that sales at B2B startups should be easier than we often make it, and that it's plain wrong that sales teams at startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams at their bigger and more well-known competitors do.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a seller or sales leader at a B2B startup, you're in the right place, especially if you're at a cybersecurity company.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, welcome to episode 84 of the podcast.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And today's topic is how to best use your sales deck in early stage meetings.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is a bona contention.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And some people believe that you should never have been able to use a deck early stage meetings.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some people believe you should use it all the time, and there's very various opinions all the way through the middle there as well.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when a few years ago I was coaching a seller down in Florida and ran a great meeting, did some really good discovery, got to the point where the prospect wanted to know what the company did and how they did it uniquely.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So he pulled out the standard deck, and it was only four or five slides.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And 30 seconds in, literally 30 seconds in, one of the people on the call just yelled out almost, you can skip the marketing bullshit and go straight to the demo.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and the seller handed it, handled it pretty well, actually.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: He could have paused for two or three seconds just to take in, did I just hear that?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then he explained, look, you want to know what we do.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's some foundational stuff that won't come out in the demo.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you can just let me go through these four or five slides, you'll understand that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll realize that it's time well spent.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what was interesting about it, frankly, was that the person who yelled out was the most junior person on the call from the prospect side.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe there was at least a CISO on the call, if not a kind of VP level type person in security, a couple others, and then this one person who yelled at.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, this is someone voicing a thought that many people are thinking, which is here comes a sales guy with his sales or marketing BS.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Half of it's probably not true.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna just talk at me for a while.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is this gonna be five minutes?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be 25 minutes?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is this person gonna try and tell me all the things I know already and claim it's all new thinking?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: All these suspicions are in their mind about what this is all about.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're suspicious.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: They worry about is this the best use of my time?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a disconnect between them and us by this deck coming out.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, it can create a little bit of tension between the seller and the prospects.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: When maybe the call has gone really well so far, it's almost like it deflates the room when here comes a sales guy with his deck, is probably the unspoken thought from the other side.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, you know, we know humans understand things better as visuals.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They understand diagrams, they understand things they can look at and not just hear.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we use the concept of a deck in order to make it not deflate the conversation but enhance the conversation?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: How do we use a deck so that a prospect during the use of the deck might actually think this is a good use of time and get value from the interaction?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, here are three ways that every seller can transform their effectiveness using a sales deck with these ideas.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, first one, number one, make it a conversation and not a presentation.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw something on LinkedIn in the last few weeks where that there was some one of these BS polls was out there, and I can't remember what it was about, frankly, but it was something to do with decks, I think.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the uh opinions expressed by a seller was you know, I would never want to pull out a deck in the first meeting because that's just me telling them all about us and what we do, and it's all about us, and that's what the deck's for.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I really challenge that assumption, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think a deck has to be all about us, and I don't think a deck has to be presented to someone.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: A good deck can be something that invites a discussion, invites a conversation, and it provides prompts or even guardrails around the conversation that both the prospect and the seller can play in in order to have a great conversation.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: It does require intentional things to be done, so you don't go into it with let me just talk at you for 10 or 15 minutes.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I do mean more than just the standard does this make sense type question that we like to drop in.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you go about doing this so that it actually does work and does make sense?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first thing that we have to do is explain to the prospect what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what it's gonna take to get there.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than just pulling out the deck, you can say, you know, if you've done some good discovery, you say, look, you know, I've got just five slides for this next part of our discussion.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're designed in a way that you and I can have a conversation about them.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not me presenting at you, but it will help us to answer some of the questions you've naturally got in your mind about what we do and how we do it differently and who else is doing it uh with us, right?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So just teeing up slightly differently is going to invite them into the conversation.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The next best thing you can do is start out by asking a question, right?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go into, well, here's what we do, and here's why we're named this.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really cool reason why we're called this, and here's all our logos and things like that, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Start out with a question and make it a maybe quite a philosophical question or a vision type question.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at how you handle your perimeter security, do you prefer to do this or do you prefer to do that?
• 7:09
  unknown: Right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: When you're looking at your future in the next five years about your endpoint strategy, are you going down this path or you go down that path?
• 7:17
  unknown: Right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Invite something that might be a little bit help force them to think and then get them involved in the conversation from there.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So starting out with a question, I think is going to help drive the conversation.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think the idea of framing it in your number of slides coming up.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, play to the idea they're worried that you got a 35 slide deck, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think too many of us make the joke, oh no, I've only got 45 slides, you know, don't worry.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I hear that a little bit too often.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: But just start off at the start and say, listen, I've got uh I've just got five slides, simple as that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna invite a bit of a discussion, depending on how long the discussion goes, this might be about a 10-minute or 15-minute uh session right here, right?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna just make them feel a lot more comfortable of what's gonna happen next.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So do it as a conversation.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what I would recommend you do is that for every single slide, where are the intentional questions that you're gonna have for every single slide?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Don't leave it to chance that you're gonna remember or the right question is gonna pop in your mind, or even that the question that you usually ask is the most powerful question, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Think about for every slide that you're gonna use, how could I invite someone in by asking a really thoughtful, concise but thoughtful question that's gonna invite them to really have a discussion?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every slide you should have two or three of those lined up.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe one at the start, one in the middle, one at the end, whatever it might feel natural, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you don't use them every single time you go through every single slide, depending on the conversation, but be intentional about having great questions.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever gone back and looked at your calls in the gong or chorus or whatever conversation intelligence tool you use, and looked at when decks are presented or demos are given, look for where the bubbles are for when the prospect is engaged in the conversation, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Too often, if you look at that, what you'll see is tiny little slivers in the color bars of where the prospect actually says something.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet you that if you go in there and look at the question you asked before they the prospect responded with a tiny sliver, the question was really pretty weak.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was, does this make sense?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or am I making sense?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or is this hitting home with you?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you understand what I'm saying?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Terrible, very lame questions because you know, in 99 times 100, the answer is sure, or whatever variation off that to tell you to shut up and get going again, right?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So where it's done really well, what you see is you've got longer bubbles, but they've got long bubbles as well, right?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually responding in a thoughtful manner to your thoughtful question that drove that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So think about how you may each slide into a conversation and not a presentation.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I would say to do is to really intentionally make your slide deck all about them, right?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is counterintuitive because if you look at slide decks, they're written all about us, right?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what we do, here's the problems we solve, here's how we do it, here are our customers, here's our uniqueness, right?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's all us, us, us.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So ever's written the deck is written in a way that's all about us.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I would challenge you, as good sellers, to say, well, how do I turn this around?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when I'm presenting it and having the conversation, that it's actually much more about the prospect and people like the prospect than it is about us.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that seller that describing earlier, but I would never use a debt because it's all about us and it's all about me presenting.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I would say his presenting statement doesn't have to be true, and it's all about us statement does not have to be true either.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: My challenge to you is this: every time you bring a new slide onto the screen, you should be able to start off the discussion, the talk track you have with something about either the exact prospect you have in front of you or uh other prospects just like them.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be as simple as, you know, we've met with a bunch of CISOs, and what they've told us is that these are the things that they're things that they're challenged with, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: When you're doing the problem slide, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they're telling us.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not telling you, I'm just telling you what we've heard from people just like you.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, even better, right?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you've in Discovery, you've found out a bunch of their pains and problems.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: You first of all start that slide with, I thought it was interesting you said when we talked about this, that you had this thing and that thing, and you mentioned this and all the rest of it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not that dissimilar to how we think about this as well.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you look in your world, you told me you had this problem and that problem, there it is on the screen right there, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's very different than saying, here are the problems that you're likely to have and uh the problems that we solve.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very different way of approaching it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the other thing to do with yourself is to catch yourself.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you want to say, we do this, or we think about this, or we do that way, or we have this customer, and what we'll do for you, turn it all the way around, right?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our customers are able to get this type of result or this type of capability because of how we do what we do uniquely.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or put them into the shoes of a customer in the future.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: You said that you had a challenge with this.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: What you'd be able to do with our capabilities is this, this, and this, which would mean that you will get that, that, and that, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So just frame it very differently around them first.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about them.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we just happen to be helping them get better on their journey of operating a great security program at that company.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the second one.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Make it all about them.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: The third one is make it punchy.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could be wrong, but I bet you there's no senior executive at a prospect that ever said, I really wish the presentation that sales guy gave was longer.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it's the exact opposite, right?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's tough though, because sometimes we believe and we're led to believe by people at our own companies, there's a lot of information we need to impart on these people.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be able to understand all this stuff, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd say a couple of things about that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: One is it doesn't matter what you think you want them to understand.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you gave them too much, they're not gonna remember half the things that you tell them.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna get it all.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's too much for them, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, you want to take control over what they're gonna remember.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You want to think about there's there's gotta be some very simple, straightforward, hard-hitting concepts we need to get across.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: What are those first?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's the important things we want to really have a discussion about?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe if appropriate, we can layer in a bit more information, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: But let's concentrate on the important things first.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I would think about doing if I were you is going back and doing a bit of analysis and and uh thoughtful look at your deck and figure out a few things.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, break it right down into the headlines.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's the punchy headline for each slide that you want to make sure comes across?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you find that the punchy headline is the same on too many slides, you're taking too long to actually go through it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, what I would encourage you to do if you had the leeway at your company is break it down and say, here, there's really some simple concepts you want to get across.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: One slide for each.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Challenge yourself.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Can you get that punchy point across in one slide?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And can you do it in under a minute for that slide?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you find yourself, well, it's super important and it's really complex, and we really need three or four slides to really do this justice.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And each slide is gonna last two or three minutes.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you, it's taking way too long to get your point across.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to think about a different way to get that point across because they're not gonna pay attention, you're gonna lose them, it's just too much.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, if you look at the bare bones of a sales deck that you might use in an early stage, either first meeting, second meeting, something like that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's only so many slides that really should be there.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: First one I would say would be the title slide.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't breeze over that.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a good way to frame a conversation.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: The second one is some sort of idea that the world is changing, there's something, there's a reason why a new way is needed, whatever that concept is.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's slide number two.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Slide number three is the problem slide.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a need for a new way, but we can't get there because there's some problems.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone wants to improve their efficiency around how they do this, but there's two or three reasons why they just can't do it with the current tools in the marketplace.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem slide should be there.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, if appropriate, you need to add one more on to the problem slide, which is one about a reframe.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if your value prop is that you've really thought through a completely different way to tackle the problem, you might want to give some rationale about why you know the root cause is not what you think it is.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: The industry's thought for many years that what they need is something faster.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, if we just tackled the root cause of the problem, it would be faster anyway.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't have to keep trying to iterate every year, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe there's a reframe slide in there.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Next slide would be what do we do?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the next one will be how do we do it differently than everyone else?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, you might wrap up with a credibility slide with some logos of customers and VCs, if that's appropriate, or if you get some well-known and smart people on the board or in the exec team.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the bare bones, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be able to drive a really good conversation around this with just those bare bones.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you gotta really question yourself if if the pressure is around you to add more in, well, what's it really gonna add?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And do we need to take something else out?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's the old thing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask someone to try and take in 50 points, you won't know which three to five they'll remember, because that's all they're gonna remember.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if you only give them three to five points to remember, you've taken control about those three to five.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really what you know, a punchy deck is all about.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Three ways to improve your effectiveness as a seller in early stage meetings.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, don't treat a presentation as a presentation, treat it as a conversation.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, make it all about them.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Frame everything you talk about firstly in the world of the prospect.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, make it punchy.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Challenge yourself to make it shorter, more impactful, punchier, so that someone at the end of that might say, That was that was really good.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I understood it.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's move on to uh the next part of the conversation.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully that's useful, and uh look forward to chatting to you soon.