Open with a change in the buyer's world, not with your company. Name the shift, show that it creates winners and losers, describe the better state your best customers now live in, and only then introduce your capabilities as the things that get them there. Finish with evidence that you have done it before. Features presented cold are noise, the same features presented as the means to a promised outcome are compelling. And keep the deck short enough that most of the meeting is still a conversation, because the deck is a spine for a discussion, not a document to be read aloud.
4 hand-picked resources, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it Koomen took Optimizely to $100M ARR and breaks the enterprise funnel down for technical founders who find the pitch meeting unnatural. Useful precisely when your deck has become a feature tour.
On Y Combinator Startup Library by Pete Koomen Talk
Open ycombinator.com →Why we picked it Raskin explains why a narrative has to align the whole company, not just the sales deck, which is exactly the trap teams fall into when they reposition. Good on movement building versus category creation.
On Lenny's Podcast by Andy Raskin ~75 min
Open lennysnewsletter.com →Why we picked it The five part structure here (name the change, show winners and losers, tease the promised land, introduce features as gifts, prove you can deliver) is the standard cure for a feature-tour deck. Millions have read it because it works on the first try.
From Medium (Mission.org) by Andy Raskin ~12 min read
Open medium.com →Why we picked it Evidence instead of folklore: 'did I catch you at a bad time' converts at 2.15% and leading with context converts at over 11%. If you are learning outbound, start with the numbers rather than a mentor's habits.
From Gong Labs by Armand Farrokh ~8 min read
Open gong.io →How positioning and messaging reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Understand your customers, our Starting Up track.
