Deck Hell

If you need to write it down to remember it, your audience won’t remember it either. https://t.co/JKFoPx6Te2

— Luca Dellanna (@DellAnnaLuca) April 11, 2024

There was I, thinking there's no way this kind of thing happens today in our Solutions space.

Any such properly ran '1-hour meeting' in our setting has long abandoned the constant presence of slides continually flipping by.

Especially at the dizzying cartoon rate above of screen refresh every seventeen seconds.

There's a few reasons why we may be passed peak overflowing deck ubiquity.

The eventual dawning that crafting such is a devious productivity trap.
Alternatives specific to circumstance gaining mainstream cut-through, from the likes of Amazon's corporate ban in favour of couple 'o page written report to brevity templates like PechaKucha and 10-20-30.
The thematic exhortation to understand a 'slidedeck' and 'presentation' are not the same thing.

As well as the realisation that a standard deck is seldom fit for purpose in a selling situation.

These past four years now, I've undertaken plenty of work with Enterprise sellers on how, and when, to deploy slides over video.

The bulk in the realm of tending towards creating a single slide for ultimate impact.

The rest, let's term them experience enhancers, can be split into three broad types.

Saying what you're going to do next. Asking a question. Delivering a 'metric'.

I'm quite a fan of the 'sectional title' slide. Putting something up briefly that shows you've put a bit of effort in. Particularly when incorporating both verbal and visual tones of your prospect.

These can also cover 'asking a question' direct. Yet better to have some kind of graphic or image which represents or alludes to it that can encourage engagement. Even then annotating on-the-fly if need be.

And then you can always have proof on hand that you've done something similar, for someone else, with aplomb beforehand that's of great appeal to your present audience.

These all pretty much also feature a single slide. Similar to how I typically try to find that one chart or diagram that makes you look like you really understand. There are times too when a detailed investigation or explanation requires the lovely technique of progressive disclosure to make you distinct and your point stick.

In the main though, these can be made ahead of time, relatively quickly, ripe then for the wonders of SDR (sales data re-use), with just a modicum of editing for next time 'round.

Anything else, and best to use that flipchart behind you or hand-held clipboard to write and draw on.

Despite my preference being to only show a single slide at a time, and remembering the best sales video calls will likely have seen you show no slides at all, you are perfectly allowed to have a pre-prepared slideware doc on hand.

I have some with a hundred slides-plus. And can merrily open one up in screenshare mode and flick through in reader view to double-click on the one with key relevance for that moment.

Prospects like that kind of approach. Especially if done for just a single point. One that truly sets you apart and maps beautifully to their aims.

The days of clicking through a carousel in entirety are long gone and forever consigned to the bin now we're getting ever videoing-savvy.