The passion that the best founders have for their businesses can be intoxicating, and inspire a talented team to get on board and make their vision a reality.
However, not all founders do a great job of explaining their company and/or products to those outside the business – especially when it comes to putting together a sales deck. Finding the best way to communicate an inspiring idea to a potential customer takes time, and it can be hard for a lot of people who are used to relying on their own passion and personality to sell that vision to others.
This lack of clear communication can happen for several reasons. Below are some of the more frequent causes and how to improve:
Causes:
- Background: Usually, founders tend to focus on the part of the business where they have the most background and expertise. For example, people with a stronger coding and tech background may be inclined to use more technical language when describing their product, which may not be easily understood by the average buyer/consumer. If a founder doesn’t happen to have much experience in marketing, it can become challenging to figure out the clearest and most compelling way to explain their business.
- Time: Being a founder is hard work. There’s almost never enough time in a day and a lot of decisions that demand immediate attention. Each is important in its own way, but you can never lose sight of how important a sales deck is; it is a tool for bringing in money.
- Pride: Yes, pride can get be a good thing, but not when it has you putting every single little thing about your company in a deck. The inclusion of too much detail muddies the point, confuses people, and wastes time.
How to Improve:
- Test, Learn and Optimize: Put something together, get feedback from people outside your business and from outside your world. If your non-tech family member gets it, you’re on the right path.
- Start with Why: Forget the How for a bit, and focus on the Why – specifically, why you exist. If you can explain the why, it will unlock the door for deeper conversations and other points to be made. Most importantly, it will inspire and evoke emotions that drive action in your consumer.
- Delegate: Allow someone else on your team to develop the first draft, and build from there. Delegating will give you another chance to understand what others on your team think is important, and it gives you something to react to. They might have included things you never considered important, but which stand out as a key point to others.
Also consider hiring someone or a service to review your sales deck.
Finally, and most importantly, best of luck with what you’re building! Try different things, fail, gather feedback and keep going.
Also published on Medium.
