Overview Overreach
'That 20-slide vendor corporate overview was really uplifting,' said no once semi-engaged buyer ever.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any potential customer being riveted by how wonderful you think you are. Unless perhaps they are in the serious consideration stage of formal supplier vetting.
Yet time and again, I still see the digital reincarnation of the trad site-seller. A flip-book chock of mission and financial statements, roadmaps and woolly pet customer testimonials now in slide sorter form. Clicking around in share-screen mode from snazzy soundbite to superchart (if you're lucky).
It was pretty useless then, even more so now.
Especially given what I've started to see creep in.
Relative startups trumpeting the funding they've secured.
Yet the folly of a new venture prizing Angel half-belief above early adopter delight is another matter in its own (giga) right.
The rule is simple. When a prospect wants to know about how you got where you are, and where you wish to head, they will let you know. It can actually be a buying signal.
The cases of a prospect dismissing your advances, only to then let you in because you shout about a supposed contemporary status symbol you proudly exhibit are, let's face it, so seldom that any existence ought not be grounds for any sales strategy.
'...but Elon invested/uses/tweeted!' and the like might sound a great hook.
Despite any pull of your origin story among your own colleagues, nothing beats the ability to resolve an issue they have, they can acknowledge they have, and demonstrate the wherewithal to have it fixed, preferably by you.
Any such laurels you feel you possess are for me not openers, but closers.
When neatly aligning the values admired of both parties.
So don't bring 'em in. Certainly not early. Definitely not by way of elongated dating profile style corp overview. In fact, whenever you may catch yourself thinking about introducing one, the odds are it is too soon.
When credentials take precedence over the solution, the solution has been neither adequately proposed nor accepted.