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The Most Important Slides Your Pitch Deck Needs in a Sales Pitch

Posted on by Rick E

The number of slides in your presentation depends on two things: your audience and the type of presentation you’re delivering. For sales pitches, there are some things you need to keep standard, like your company background, what you’re selling, etc.

Want to know the information you need for your slide deck? We’ve taken advice from renowned entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki and listed down the most important slide content of a sales pitch.

Company Background

Before anything else, let your audience know who you are. Prospects will be less likely to listen or invest in you if you don’t provide your background information. Give them an overview of your job description, and company. This should include its name and a brief of its history.

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This part of your pitch doesn’t have to be lengthy at all. It shouldn’t take more than one introductory slide. Use this as an opportunity to squeeze in your company contact details. Your goal is for potential customers to call you up after your pitch.

Value Proposition

Once you’ve gotten introductions out of the way, it’s time to go into your business plan. Describe the problem or opportunity and present your product as its solution. Don’t be vague about your descriptions. Discuss how your product solves the problem and highlight what sets you apart from others who offer similar services. Avoid wordy slides and lengthy speeches too. Diagrams and flowcharts will drive home your point faster. Also, take this as an opportunity to present a demo or a sample to give them an idea of what they’ll invest in.

People don’t just want to hear about how good you are. They want to see how effective your offer really is. Showing them your product at work can convince them of what you’re capable of doing.

Financial Projections and Current Status

While you’ll want to impress investors during your pitch, you should also stay factual and realistic. Run your audience through a feasible timeline of your project. Build up your journey from your current status to what you hope to accomplish, both in the long-term and the short-term. Prepare a financial forecast, possibly for the next three to five years. Include an outlook of what the near future looks like for other key metrics as well. Tell people how far you are in your timeline. Some updates you can include are how much funds you have and how you plan to allocate them to achieve your objectives.

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Once you have this information, explain the actions you’re taking to fulfill your forecast. Enumerate your present accomplishments, and expound on how they contribute to your business goals.

Assuring your listeners that you’re on your way increases the likelihood of them investing in you.

Seal the Deal

Your pitch deck’s content should reflect all the key points to discuss with your audience. An introductory slide establishes who you are and where you stand. After establishing rapport, explain your product or service to people. Without being too technical, describe its value and how it differs from any competitors. Have diagrams and flowcharts replace complex data. If available, give a demo or a sample to concretize your point. Give a three-to-five-year forecast of your product’s progress, and keep the audience on track of where you currently are in your timeline. Cover all these points, to give investors a better perspective of your business.

Once you’re done fleshing out your presentation content, it’s time to figure out your design. Consult with our pitchdeck.com experts today for a free quote!

References:

Kawasaki, Guy. “The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch.” Guy Kawasaki. March 5, 2015. www.guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-pitch
Markowitz, Eric. “7 Deadly Sins of Sales Pitching.” Inc. April 18, 2011. www.inc.com/ss/7-deadly-sins-sales-pitching
Okyle, Carly. “The Only 10 Slides Needed When Pitching Your Business (Infographic).” Entrepreneur. March 18 2015. www.entrepreneur.com/article/244098
“Key Performance Indicators.” Klipfolio. n.d. www.klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples

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Count from 6 to 10: A Quick Guide to Great Pitch Decks

Posted on by Rick E

We’ve previously discussed how the numbers one to five can make your business pitch decks count. This was based off keynote speaker Stephen Boyd’s tips to create a presentation countdown. With our own take on it, let’s continue counting from number six to number ten.

6. Presenting after SIX o’clock P.M.

Business professionals work eight hours on a regular basis. After a long day, only a few stay later than six o’clock p.m. to polish their paperwork, web designs, pitch deck slides, and the like. After all, we want to get back to our families and our lives, right?

Deliver your pitches as if you’re doing them after six in the evening. Embody the elements of fun, involvement, and learning to keep your audience awake. Treat your audience like close friends and family you’ve been longing to see. Sustain their interest from the beginning to end, no matter how late it is.

7. Seven Means Complete

According to the Bible, the number seven has three Hebrew roots: saba, shaba and sheba. These three biblical ideas are associated with oaths, perfection, and completeness. Whether you’re delivering a pitch to a potential client or discoursing a monthly report with co-workers, your pitch deck should contain complete data.

Providing evidence supports your argument or main idea. Maximize the use of graphs and charts, statistics, and other visuals for a more comprehensive discussion. Inevitably, your audience will have questions or clarifications which you can tackle in a Q&A session. However, it pays to address all of these possible questions from the beginning to make things easier for everyone.

8. Eight for Affinity

The number eight is drawn with two interconnecting circles. Lacking one circle, either at the top or at the bottom, means you have zero. Pitches are about making connections. Your business speech is useless without an audience.

Command interest by connecting with them on a personal level. You can best engage an audience by exuding a credible aura, by appealing to their emotions, or by challenging their intellect. Building networks after your business pitch is another way to solidify your core message, and get viable results as well.

9. Nine for Anticipation

Where there’s nine, an end is anticipated — nine is followed by ten, ninety-nine makes way for one hundred, and so on. Anticipating unforeseeable circumstances in your talk is a good pitching skill. Don’t make your audience tune out because you panicked or lost your train of thought. Always be prepared for whatever can go wrong in a speaking engagement.

Planning ahead increases your chances of foreseeing or dealing with such problems.

10. Perfect Ten

There’s no denying that the number ten connotes perfection. Ten is a rounded number, which is why our counting system is based on the power of ten. We rate things with one being the lowest and ten being the highest. Striving for perfection is the best mindset for succeeding in your business pitch.

Make sure that your pitch deck design has the perfect font combo and title slide. Reinforce it with confident delivery and compelling content. Always aim for a deck that will get a perfect ten rating.

To Sum It Up

Use numbers six to ten as your guide for delivering fun, complete, engaging, planned, and perfect business pitch decks. Remember the importance of connecting to your audience, sharing complete and pertinent data, appealing to emotions, anticipating crises, and striving for perfection.

Need a pitch deck to give you an edge? Check out our portfolio for inspiration, or contact our slide design experts for a free quote.

References

Boyd, Stephen. “Public Speaking By Numbers.” Speaking-Tips, August 17, 2011. Accessed June 10, 2015.

3 Ways Altruism Impacts Your Sales Pitch Skills

Posted on by Rick E

Chances are, you’ve been brought up to value altruistic behavior. This might have even turned you into the successful person you are now (or hopefully, will become). It may also have highly positive ramifications for your sales pitch skills.

First, let’s define our word of the day.

Altruism is a desire to help other people. Characterized by a lack of selfishness, anthropologists claim that civilized societies came about because altruism incentivizes cooperation. It is unfortunately not a universal trait, with several difficulties preventing people from practicing self-sacrifice for the greater good. The frequent barriers to showing selflessness include laziness, compounded by a feeling that the benefits are minimal.

Showing concern for others inspires other people to care for your welfare in kind. Here are specific ways that altruism can improve your speaking skills for your next sales pitch:

Altruism Makes You Relatable

Audiences are more likely to listen to speakers they relate with. Showing them that you care for their well-being promotes social connection. According to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, this “fosters a heightened sense of interdependence and cooperation in your social community.”

You can increase their involvement by using words that convey a collaborative theme in your pitch. You want to say sentences such as: “We want to start a partnership where we both profit greatly through cooperation.” or “This proposal hopes to begin a mutually beneficial partnership that yields income for all parties.”

Tell your audience that what benefits you, which, in turn, benefits everyone.

Altruism Makes You Happier

Neuroscientist Emiliana Simon-Thomas cites a report that shows how altruism has positive effects on an individual’s health and happiness. This doesn’t mean that people only feel good because they think they’re supposed to. In fact, the effects of unselfish acts are reflected in neural studies on the brain.

These studies have also shown that charitable actions activate the same areas of the brain that are related to receiving gifts. It’s clear that doing good does good for you, too.

As opposed to egoists, who think more selfishly, altruists put the wellbeing of others before their own. Projecting this positive aura has the added benefit of putting people in a good mood. Related to our earlier point, this also makes it more likely for them to pay attention.

Altruism is Contagious

In addition to how selflessness can make you happier, it also triggers an area of your brain linked with the processing of moral behavior. This rewards your brain, making it more likely that practicing altruism will feel good in the future.

This creates a positive feedback loop (or as Sonja Lyubomirsky puts it, “a cascade of positive social consequences”) which hopefully leaves an impression on your listeners to inspire them as speakers. Being good to others makes them try to be better towards everyone else.

Conclusion

Altruism is a key trait that has helped our ancestors survive the harshest conditions – enduring the hardest challenges through greater cooperation. It takes a little step to show the smallest amount of care for the welfare of others. The benefits could snowball into something greater – to the benefit of you and your pitch.

Unsurprisingly, being kind to your fellow human beings is unambiguously good for humanity. Being kind to others makes you appear more relatable, which makes your audience reach out to you more. Doing good deeds doesn’t only make other people happier – it also makes you, yourself, feel better.

Even better, doing good for one person will cause a chain reaction, wherein people will pass the good deed on to other people. This is especially advantageous for you if you started it, as people will be able to trace the initial seed of goodwill back to you.

What’s good for humanity is also good for your sales pitch skills.

References

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “Happiness for a Lifetime.” Greater Good. July 15, 2010. Accessed August 20, 2015.
Simon-Thomson, Emiliana R. “Is Kindness Really Its Own Reward?” Greater Good. June 1, 2008. Accessed August 20, 2015.

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