Reimagining The “Corporate Deck”

We’ve all done it—we’ve victimized our prospects and customers with the “Corporate Deck.” And we’ve be been victims of sellers pitching us their versions of the deck.

We know how these “glamor” pieces work. They are all about corporate vanity and follow almost the same format:

1. The first few slides tell the customer who we are and how great we are. They show things like how many people work in the company, how many countries we we are in, how great our financial performance has been, our market cap and claims of being a unicorn. Lots of facts, figures, charts. Inevitably the charts show growth curves that go almost straight up.
2. The slides may include quotes from customers and analysts, “This is the best company in this category we have ever seen….. They are in a class by themselves….. The competitors might just as well shut their doors…..”
3. Then there are the “logo charts.” These include all the cool companies and logos that are (or may have been) a customer. These always have the biggest most impressive companies one can imagine (It’s always interesting to see that competitors, often, list the same companies/logos. It turns out that every giant company is everybody’s best customer. These logos include not only the giants, but a few sexy unicorns, and the cool kids.
4. Then once we’ve finished bragging about the company and why people “worship the privilege of giving us their money.” we get into the “our products are great.” Chart after chart that goes through our products. Describing they are the most advanced on the market, they have more features/functions, more capability than anything on the market. (And I’m seeing these charts being updated to say, “And ChatGPT underlies all our products.”)
5. Then there are the “putting it all together” slides. The very best company in the world, the very best products in the world, what could be better!
6. Then, potentially, the closing slide: “And you have the opportunity to give us your money—maybe we will display your logo (if you are interesting enough).”
7. On each page of the deck, the logo stands out and the company name is mentioned as much as possible–as if the audience may not know which company is preening in front of them.

We’ve all seen them, we’ve all presented them. They all follow the same formula. Pages 1-5 do this, 6-9 to this, 10-15 do this….

And we all know how the victims in these presentations respond to them. More insanely, when we sit through a presentation some company is giving to us, usually we are thinking about the pitch we will be giving to someone tomorrow.

We’re bored sitting through them and ebullient presenting them.

But what if we reimagined the corporate deck?

What if we took the same standard table of contents for the deck, but reconstructed it. What if we created a corporate deck, but made it all about our customer!

The first few slides would be about the customer, how they have performed and their success. The next few might be about their markets, great customers they have acquired. These slides would be celebrating the customer, what they have achieved. Presenting these would demonstrate that we recognize this accomplishment.

Then then next few slides in the deck, where we would usually position the, “These are our great products slides,” we might position “Great opportunities the customer has in front of them.” We could identify growth opportunities and that might bridge into our observations about how we can help them address those. They might be problems or challenges the customer faced, but reimagined in the context of, “What if, together, we could address and eliminate those problems?”

These charts might help the customer reimagine what they could be, what they could achieve, how they can continue to grow, how they might improve.

The format about the charts would be all about the customer. Every chart would have their logo, the charts would celebrate their people.

Since the charts are about the customers, it wouldn’t include anything about us or our products. The objectives of this reimagined “Corporate Deck,” would be a celebration about what they have achieved and what might be. It could help them think, “We need to take advantage of this, we need to address this, we must change.”

Of course, to put together this new “Corporate Deck,” we would have to understand the customer. We would have to know their performance, their key priorities, strategies, their culture and values. We would have to understand future opportunities they have—if they committed to changing. We would have to understand challenges they might face and what it might mean if they addressed them. We would have to understand how they can grow and improve, how they can achieve even greater levels of success and what it would mean to them.

But, as sellers, that’s our job, so we should be able to put that together in a very compelling presentations.

Corporate decks that celebrate how great we are represent pure conceit and are irrelevant to the customers we force them on.

Corporate decks that celebrate the customer, demonstrating ideas for them to grow and improve, provoke discussions about them and how we can help them achieve that future.

Which do you think customers will respond to?