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Founding Sales Decks

Sales decks that close (early stage) business.

https://www.foundingsales.com/

Sister presentation to Founding Sales - The Startup Sales Handbook

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Purchase singles and bulk copies of Founding Sales

Buy the book that the deck is based on.

The authoritative resource on startup sales for founders (and others*) in first time sales roles.

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Founder of TalentBin

Acquired (‘14) by Monster

Pete Kazanjy

Product Marketer / Product Manager turned Sales Leader

@kazanjy

(Find me on LinkedIn too.)

• First “rep” (founder turned rep)

• First “sales manager”

• First “VP of Sales”

• 20 sales reps ; 20 CS reps

• New Product Sales Leader

• 600 sales reps

​

​

Author

Founder

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Want to watch Pete present this deck live? Video below...

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Link to video recording of live presentation.

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There are a bunch of ways founders screw up their sales decks.

Sales Decks are Broken!�(Not really)

This presentation is an adaption of a chapter on Sales Decks from Founding Sales. (As excerpted on First Round Review)

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Your fundraising pitch is not your sales pitch.

Fundraising materials are for selling a piece of your company.

Sales materials are for selling your solution to a prospect who cares.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Demos are great, but not sufficient.

Demos are great...for demonstrating features. But they’re just one part of the sales presentation.

“We just do demos.”

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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What is the sales deck for?

Goal of a sales deck: Visually and textually present your sales narrative to your ideal customer in a way that convinces them to buy your solution.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Responses to Common Founder Objections

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • It doesn’t have to be beautiful.�
  • It doesn’t have to be comprehensive.�
  • It doesn’t have to take a ton of time.

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Realities

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Like your product, start MVP.�
  • It will change / grow over time.�
  • Something is better than nothing.

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Founding Sales Decks - Your Sales Narrative, Weaponized

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • The Problem and who has it
  • Cost of the Problem
  • Existing Solutions & their Challenges
  • What has changed
  • How your solution works
  • Quantitative Proof
  • Qualitative Proof
  • Company-centric Proof
  • Why this will be so easy (Customer Success)
  • Pricing
  • Appendix

http://firstround.com/review/To-Build-An-Amazing-Sales-Team-Start-Here-First/

(Google “First Round sales narrative - put it in Pocket ; ) ��(Also, example TalentBin master deck here)

The major components of your deck

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Founding Sales Decks - Some examples we’ll use

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Recruiting automation software for technical recruiters.

Simple financing for eCommerce providers and their customers.

Job-posting optimization software.

Sales-centric mobile email and CRM client.

Recruiting branding automation and SEO software.

Recruiting agency revenue acceleration.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Start at the beginning. Helps with qualification.�
  • Can be “fractal” structured - subcomponents.�
  • Teeing up the issues your solution addresses (via features)�
  • Can address multiple types of pains (user vs. managers)�
  • Can be inductive or deductive in approach. I like to go both ways.

The Problem and Who Has It

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

That’ll get your attention!

  • Very clear. Sales people not selling.�
  • Includes sub-pains: CRM updates, prep, follow up.�
  • Hints at opportunity cost: close rates, etc.�
  • Could have a sales manager slide to follow this (Pain points of another constituency).

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Frame all the issues that could be addressed in a holistic manner.�
  • Teeing up the specific subcomponents we’re going to address. (Top, middle, bottom)�
  • Fractal approach to slide creation: zoom in, zoom out.

Overarching example of business pain.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

Subcomponents of business pain, “zoomed in.”

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Detail of the second layer of the problem statement - crappy jobs page.�
  • Problem statement call out.�
  • This should probably be the second detail slide, not first.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

Subcomponents of business pain, “zoomed in.”

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Takes the broader framing, and dives in.�
  • This is a detail problem case from the first layer in the first slide.�
  • Calls out the pain point - prevent click through, drag on recruiting spend.�
  • Probably should be the first “detail” slide, right?�

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

“Zoomed in” unit pain

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Another detail pain, on the other side of the Google results.�
  • OK callout.�
  • Probably could speak to user frustration here, “Why be held hostage?”�
  • Could probably speak to the implications of “letting worst employees tell story” => reduced applies, misplaced job expectations.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

“Zoomed Out” Rollup pain

  • Roll up the implications of these unit pains. “Let’s bring it all home.”�
  • Summary of implications of unit pains. “Call and response” approach. Very gospel-style ; )�
  • Beginning indications of ROI metrics at bottom of rollup pain.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

Core driver of the problem case - varied per case.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

“Zoomed in” implications of problem case.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Detail proof of the abstract problem root cause described in prior slide.�
  • Explanation in sub-headline.�
  • Good specific comparison of good and bad cases.�
  • Add a little comedy. Why not!

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

“Zoomed in” implications of problem.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Knock-on implication of previous pain. �
  • Good callouts of bad, worse, worst implications�
  • Both rollup stats and unit examples.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Extension of first type of business pain.

  • Proof of the implications of one of the core pains.�
  • “Do you find you have this issue?”�
  • Could have better callouts. Relies a lot on presenter comment.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

Extension of first type of business pain.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Rollup “zoom out” of that previous implication.�
  • Third party data source as validator / benchmark.�
  • Sneaky color usage.

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Founding Sales Decks - The Problem and Who Has It

Anecdata can be helpful too.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - The Cost of the Problem

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Get to the nuts and bolts, dollars and cents.�
  • Document the costs or opportunity costs of the pain point.�
  • Should correlate to the pain points you discussed - cost per each.�
  • Generalities can be good, but per-unit costs can be good too.�
  • In the absence of costs, can use proxies. �
  • Make it as easy as possible to make personal to prospect.

The Cost of the Problem

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Founding Sales Decks - The Cost of the Problem

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • This is where we frame the pain points we will say our solution fixes.�
  • Make sure to tease out the individual pain points. �
  • Later we’ll correlate our solution and its features to resolving these costs (or opportunity costs).

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Founding Sales Decks - The Cost of the Problem

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Indicating the magnitude of pain and likelihood of resolution.

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Founding Sales Decks - Existing solutions and their challenges

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Touchy topic. Don’t want to bring in competitors per se.�
  • But helpful to frame off of industry standards.�
  • “X is broken” does not count. That’s lazy.�
  • Can be actual products that are in-market, but can be services / internal behaviors, too.

Existing Solutions and their Challenges

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Founding Sales Decks - Existing solutions and their challenges

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Quantitative indicators.

  • Enumerate quantitative measures of the shortfall. (e.g., search results, response rates, etc.)�
  • Correlate those quantitative / qualitative shortfalls to the buckets of pain points.�
  • Can do so for each of the “standards” or a rollup of them.

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Founding Sales Decks - Existing solutions and their challenges

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Qualitative indicators.

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Founding Sales Decks - What has changed

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • What changed to create and scale this problem?
  • What changed to enable this new sorcery?
  • Visualization / data / etc.
  • Helps with “Why now?”

What has changed?

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Founding Sales Decks - What has changed

Overarching Change

Examples

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - How the solution works

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Fractal model of messaging buckets & supporting features.
  • Tie to messaging buckets of pain.
  • Not a demo (do the demo), but can stand in.
  • Conceptual visualizations. Feature Visualizations.
  • Screenshots / Animated Gifs of actual product.
  • Features and correlated proof points.

How our Solution Works

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

Concept Visualization

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Conceptual representation of how the solution works.�
  • Nail the concept so everything else that follows has a solid bedrock.�
  • Visual and textual explanation. �
  • Visual unit proof example.

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

Current World v. New World

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Visual comparison to something that the user likely already knows.�
  • “See, we’re like this well known and solid thing, but in this different way!”

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

Overarching “story” and chapters

Sub-chapter (“Zoomed in”)

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

“Fractal” approach

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

“Chapter” detail with value props.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Aggregation of screenshots that tell a story.�
  • Good value prop callouts. �
  • ROI arguments.�
  • Conceptual visual, too. “Oh, I get it. Multiple mails. Nice.”

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

Chapter detail (mediocre value prop use!)

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Can be as simple as a screenshot and header.�
  • Though probably better handled in Demo.�
  • But in a pinch, and can be used in Appendix.

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

Concept Visualization

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Flow charting can cut two ways. Avoid too much complexity, but with simplicity can be great.�
  • Great call out at the top “Looks like a credit card” (comparison to something that is well known and known-good.)

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Feature Visualization

  • Conceptual visualization of a feature.�
  • Hybrid of screenshot approach and conceptual approach (nice if you have design resources!)�
  • But could be done in a more MVP way too, and be ok.

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

Quasi-demo

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • If your product is fairly simple, you can have a quasi demo.�
  • Better of course to do a true demo, but good for a takeaway (show the boss), or if your product craps out during demo.

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Founding Sales Decks - How the Solution Works

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Demo

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Founding Sales Decks - Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • ROI proof (in dollars and cents), tying back to cost of business pain (prior section) �
  • ROI precursors if $$$ ROI proof isn’t there.�
  • Correlate to your features (which were correlated to pain points, right?)

Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

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Founding Sales Decks - Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

  • Points back to the numbers that your narrative framed caring about.�
  • Ideally closest to the money.�
  • Can be blinded, but nice if it has a name on it.�
  • In this case, could be nice to tie to value outputs. Reduced media spend, reduced staffing agency fees.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

  • Example of pure monetary outcomes, with specifics.�
  • Great ROI callouts.�
  • Humanizes it. Can be blinded or can be identified. You can speak to more info.�
  • Make it easy for them to model that ROI proof onto their situation. (“OK, so I have X many widgets…”)�
  • This could be better with “HIRABL will drive around $10k in recovered fees per recruiter, per year.”

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Blinded ROI proof points

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Founding Sales Decks - Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Can be ROI precursor data, too.

  • What are the precursors to ROI for you solution?�
  • Compare the status quos / industry standards.

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Founding Sales Decks - Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Richer ROI precursor “Model”

  • This is a little busy, but it’s detailed.�
  • An “ROI model” addressing key business actions taken by users.�
  • Great for sending along later for “the boss” to read.�
  • Good “Greek” and “Russian” material.

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Founding Sales Decks - Quantitative Proof of a Better Solution

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Aggregated customer results can be good too.

  • Show them what will happen for them, based on the aggregation of what has happened to those who have come before.�
  • Again, boil it down to the units of output. Ideally with a rough takeaway metric.�
  • E.g., “For every million dollars in annual revenue, Affirm will drive around $100k of additional spend.”

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Founding Sales Decks - Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Stories�
  • Reputation issuers�
  • Appeal to authority

Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

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Founding Sales Decks - Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

  • Testimonials correlated to value props. Ideally with #s.�
  • Focus on your key segments and verticals.�
  • Write it for them. Make them sound awesome. Send them a gift card.�
  • Doesn’t have to be a “success story”, but can be.�
  • Pull out the $$$. This one would be better with that information.

​

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Customer “stories”

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Founding Sales Decks - Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Anecdata!

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Founding Sales Decks - Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

  • Press Mentions: These folks pay attention to you.�
  • Analyst Coverage: They pay attention to you.�
  • Investors: You’re not going away.�
  • Awards: You can apply for these.

​

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Company Reputation

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Founding Sales Decks - Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

  • Organizational Gravitas: Not the common case, but maybe.�
  • Funding / Investors: You’re not going away anytime soon.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Founding Narrative

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Founding Sales Decks - Qualitative Proof of a Better Solution

  • Have all manner of segments and verticals�
  • Careful: They may know some of these folks.�
  • Don’t worry about permission to start. But bake it into MSA.�
  • But you can’t send it.�
  • Be careful of disappearing logos.

​

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

The “Logo” slide

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Founding Sales Decks - Why this will be so easy

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Make it easy for them.�
  • Make it clear there is a roadmap.�
  • WIFM (What’s in it for me?)

Why this will be so easy.

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Founding Sales Decks - Why this will be so easy

  • Skepticism: They’ve seen these promises before.�
  • Work: Are you creating work for me?�
  • Systematized: Is this already solved?

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Follow the yellow brick road

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Founding Sales Decks - Why this will be so easy

  • Skepticism: They’ve seen these promises before.�
  • Work: Are you creating work for me?�
  • Systematized: Is this already solved?

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Follow the yellow brick road

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Founding Sales Decks - Why this will be so easy

  • Human face: Take advantage of your staff.�
  • WIFM: What’s in it for staff and decisionmakers?

​

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Follow the yellow brick road

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Founding Sales Decks - Why this will be so easy

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

MVP!

“Features” of “Why so easy!”

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Founding Sales Decks - Pricing

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • They’re going to ask. So have it.�
  • Keep It Simple, Stupid�
  • Peak “rack rate” - you’re going to discount

Pricing Slides

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Founding Sales Decks - Pricing

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Appendices

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • Objection slides.�
  • “Choose your own adventure” slides.�
  • Edge case slides.

Appendices & General Points

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Founding Sales Decks - Appendices

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Objection Handling

  • Have an answer to every question. (Like with fundraising)�
  • Second time you hear it, make a slide.�
  • Great for time of presentation, pulling together into “custom deck”, and later for one-off emails.

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Founding Sales Decks - Appendices

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Edge case features

  • You will have questions / features that apply to 10% of user base.�
  • Don’t have to be in the main deck, but have available.

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Founding Sales Decks - Structured for Extensibility

Bare bones vs. Fractal vs. Rich.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Structured for Extensibility

Bare bones vs. Fractal vs. Rich

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Structured for Extensibility

Bare bones vs. Fractal vs. Rich

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Production Value of Slides

Production Value of Your Slides: Don’t worry about it, never gate content on production value.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Production Value of Slides

Production Value of Your Slides: A little bit of shine can be nice.

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

Template Slides

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Founding Sales Decks - Content Management and Deployment

Content Management and Deployment: Janky PPT Github; Clearslide / Docsend; Deck for Presenting, Deck for sending

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

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Founding Sales Decks - Your Sales Narrative, Weaponized

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • The Problem and who has it
  • Cost of the Problem
  • Existing Solutions & their Challenges
  • What has changed
  • How your solution works
  • Quantitative Proof
  • Qualitative Proof
  • Company-centric Proof
  • Why this will be so easy (Customer Success)
  • Pricing
  • Appendix

http://firstround.com/review/To-Build-An-Amazing-Sales-Team-Start-Here-First/

(Google “First Round sales narrative - put it in Pocket ; ) ��(Also, example TalentBin master deck here)

The major components of your deck

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@kazanjy on Twitter

(Find me on LinkedIn too / �petekazanjy@stanfordalumni.org )

Writing

@foundingsales

Pete Kazanjy - Product Marketer / Product Manager turned Sales Leader

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Founding Sales Decks - Why this will be so easy

https://twitter.com/foundingsales

  • All text.�
  • Took founder 30 minutes to make.

Example MVP Deck

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Nova Overview

William Dinkel (will@nova.ai)

CEO and Co-founder

(805) 258-6539

NOVA.AI

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Product & Company Overview

NOVA.AI

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What is the Problem?

  • B2B sales is hard — increasing revenue targets demand an increasing volume of deals
  • There’s a fixed number of accounts, you’re battling your competitors for precious facetime
  • As a result, these decision-makers are suffering from communication overload
  • How do you stand out and break through the noise?

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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How Do Companies Solve this Problem?

  • One solution is to ignore the problem and try to compensate by increasing volume (e.g., spamming, over-aggressive cold calling)
  • However, that won’t scale — at best, you’re kicking the can down the road, at worst, you’re alienating your key contacts and getting locked out of target accounts

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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How Do Companies Solve this Problem?

  • Being more personal and more targeted is the best way to cut through the noise. However, it is:
            • Very time consuming/costly
            • Difficult to track and scale
            • An imprecise science (at best)
            • Requires constant team training & retraining

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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The World has Changed

  • AI and Machine Learning technologies are evolving and making things possible that we never dreamed of
  • At the same time, the amount of data and information we have on people (e.g., on social media) has been exploding
  • Computers can now communicate with humans in new and amazing ways. And help salespeople in ways they could not previously

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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Introducing Nova

  • Nova is a personalization and intelligence platform that dramatically improves prospecting effectiveness
  • Nova removes guesswork by identifying and leveraging what is working within your company — and by leveraging millions of events across all of Nova’s customers
  • Nova uses data to guide your team toward the tasks, workflows, and activities that drive the most effectiveness

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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Nova Features

  • Nova makes personalization immediate and seamless

Nova digitally researches every contact, looking for demographic indicators (like education) & events (like product launches) then crafts personalized emails for you.

  • Nova show you which personalizations work better

They all are better than nothing — but Nova helps you focus on the best. Nova has a database of millions of these events already and can predict what will work.

  • Nova gives guidance on how you can improve

Nova shows reps how they can get better over time, and shows managers how each of their reps are performing.

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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Nova’s Effectiveness

  • Nova-personalized emails achieve 3x the open rates and 8x the response rate
  • Because the personalization is done by software, it doesn’t take any time out of your day

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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Competitive Intelligence

NOVA.AI

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Nova and Yesware

Nova only

Yesware only

  • Email tracking
  • Email templates
  • Email scheduling
  • Simple reports
  • Integrated contact management
  • Send later
  • Mail merge with automated follow-ups
  • Salesforce sync
  • Segmentable efficiency �reporting
  • Segmentable contact reports
  • Auto-Personalization
  • Salesforce automated status updates
  • Click to call
  • Presentation tracking
  • Salesforce sidebar

Feature Comparison

NOVA.AI

NOVA.AI

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Twitter: @kazanjy

(Find me on LinkedIn too.)

Founder of

Acquired (‘14) by

Author

@foundingsales

Pete Kazanjy - Product Marketer / Product Manager turned Sales Leader

  • First “rep” (founder turned rep)
  • First “sales manager”
  • First “VP of Sales”
  • 20 sales reps ; 20 CS reps
  • New Product Sales Leader
  • 800 sales reps