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The greatest sales deck I've ever seen (2016)
- mgamache 8y agoThis strikes me as similar to a lot of investor pitch decks. It's not a bad approach, but the 'visionary' parts might be difficult for some sales people.
- anoncoward111 8y ago"Name a big, relevant change in the world". Example given from Zuora, "We now live in a subscription economy". Except one problem: Instead of a nice solid color on the background of the slide, or a city skyline... ... it's a full shot of a skinny young blonde girl's legs. Like, can you sales guys be any more predictable and sexist? I'm sorry, this frat house behavior really needs to stop. There are so many better ways to make a visual impression without ever relying on sexual themes.
- notyourloops 8y agoDue to your comment, I checked out the slide. She's not skinny (seems normal/healthy), and I was expecting more legs. False advertisement.
- haolez 8y agoI just read the article and I don’t even remember the girl.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kowdermeister 8y agoI don't remember much, but her :)
- howlingfantods 8y agoThat struck me less like "subscription economy, wink wink, here's a hot chick and all the associated connotations of women and payment" - and more like "it's the subscription economy! everything is great! here's a happy person to represent the future potential"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wycy 8y agoIn what way is that a picture of legs? It'd be more accurate to describe it as a picture of a door.
- coldtea 8y agoYou know how they say there's no dirty words, just dirty minds? This comment reminded them of that. Talk about going around looking for a chance to be offended. This is just a stock image to add some human element. It's not 'let's put a sexy image there'. It could have just as well been some guy on the street or whatever. Nor does "skinny young blonde girl's legs." mean anything. She has legs. Most of us do. They aren't prominent, nor is she provocatively dressed. Or what that she's blonde? If is she was redhead or brunette one could just as easily talk about "skinny young brunette's girl's legs". It's not some sexual image, end of story.
- dantillberg 8y agoIn defense of the parent comment: It's absolutely a deliberate choice to include an attractive woman in that slide's background photo, just as it was a deliberate choice for the doors to be gold. I'd guess that people looking at the slide most consciously notice the conspicuous gold doors. But we all also notice that there's some sort of person standing there. That person is greeting us with a smile. We may not process it consciously, but many viewers of the slide are definitely also attuned to the attractiveness of the person. We might notice the bare legs, the skirt, the shoes, the braid of hair casually laying on the shoulder. The bit of midriff showing. Many readers will think "sexy" even if we're not aware of the thought. This choice is intentional, because sex sells. The majority of the intended audience is straight men, so this is probably an effective sales practice, but at the same time it strikes some of us as cheap. The body of the woman in this photo is being used as an object and simply as a means to an end. And the audience is being appealed to on a basis unrelated to the value of the product for sale. Try these ideas: - Imagine the same photo, but where the woman is dressed in [more modest] business casual attire, holding a binder with notes for an important meeting. - Imagine the same photo, but with an attractive sexy man smiling at us. Maybe he's showing some toned biceps or perhaps even a glimpse of abs. - Imagine the same photo, but with a middle-aged white man dressed in a suit and tie. - Imagine the same photo, but with a large black woman beaming confidence in formal business attire. In all of these cases (except maybe the abs), you probably wouldn't consciously notice the details, but they would definitely all color your subconscious impression differently.
- chasingthewind 8y agoI agree. That particular slide really struck me as being "attention grabbing" in a way that had nothing to do with the actual point they were making on the slide. It's a cool photo and visually appealing but I cannot think of a single thing about the image that has anything to do with the idea that "we are all living in a subscription economy." I can think of some slides that would evoke that. Like a slide with an animation of money flowing out of my pocket incessantly as calendar pages are torn off a calendar. :) I am feeling a bit biased against the "subscription economy" right now after only narrowly avoiding the "router as a subscription" that my internet provider wanted to saddle me with this weekend when I upgraded my plan.
- retube 8y agointeresting. but slightly off topic - do sales guys construct their own decks? surely decks need approval / sanctioning before distribution to prospects? don't firms have their own decks for sales people to leverage?
- empath75 8y agoSurely someone has to write the sales decks, and in a startup, there may only be a handful of people on the sales team -- or maybe even 1 person.
- kbuchanan 8y agoNo, in many companies, different sales people thrive on different sales strategies. Good sales decks are not feature reviews; like the article says-a deck is a launchpad for discussing a compelling narrative, which is why they’re only really effective as part of a presentation (as opposed to a downloadable resource).
- carlmr 8y agoI also think it's probably better if you have your own sales slides, because other people's slides might not fit your presentation style. I did prep a few sales presentations for my former boss though. He just didn't have the time. There is usually a review though. Depending on what industry you're in you can't promise certain things, and often the company wants a bit more control over outward presentation.
- GiuseppaAcciaio 8y agoIt really depends on the organization: the Holy Grail is to have a well developed Sales Support function that prepares decks for sales people from a data source which is pre-approved (some investment banks have that, it's awesome) so that the Sales people can focus 100% on doing their thing. In smaller, scrappier companies or just in less "sexy" industries, sales people are known to prepare their own decks and whether prior approval is sought is really to the mercy of the individual's integrity and savvy.
- ackfoo 8y agoThat this works is evidence that people are stupid and they suck.
- gk1 8y agoEveryone likes to think that sales and marketing doesn't work on them. More often than not, I find this attitude in people who have no decision-making authority anyway.
- fabricexpert 8y agoI see the point made here though. The actual sales pitch isn't for a moment talking about the actual solution, like in this deck what is being sold here? is it a SaaS product? Consulting services? Business Advice? How long will it take? What's the ROI? Who does the work? Does it work with our current systems? How much does it cost? What does the ongoing model look like? Of course you will go on to answer all of these in detail, but the deal is practically won by the time those questions are asked. And that's how you end up with poor software or massive enterprise consulting contracts that aren't helpful to anyone. Meanwhile the sales team goes off and hunts down a fresh client.
- kbuchanan 8y agoDon't forget that the sales narrative can also be _true_. In other words, giving context, perspective, and a vision is a necessary part of understanding the solution you're providing. How many companies have been bought and sold to others' dismay? ("How can surveys be worth $8 billion?!?") Context.
- chank 8y ago>Zuora came up with the phrase “subscription economy” to name the trend in which buyers increasingly choose recurring service payments over outright purchases. It's not a trend where buyers choose recurring payments, but where companies only offer services through recurring payments.
- jk563 8y agoGet where you're coming from, but I don't think they're entirely wrong. Whilst you can't buy Photoshop once now (your point), there are plenty of models where the choice is still there. Netflix and Spotify both have one-off purchase equivalents. You can still buy Jira as a one off purchase instead of SaaS.
- cyberpunk0 8y agoPlease describe how Spotify and Netflix offer these lifetime price one-time purchase options.. quite well hidden in their exclusively subscription pricing
- jakelazaroff 8y agoIn case it's unclear, the "one-off purchase equivalents" to Netflix and Spotify to which the parent refers are iTunes, Amazon, etc.
- jk563 8y agoSorry, yeah, this is what I meant.
- gowld 8y agoThose aren't one-off for the same product (full catalog unlimited access); those are pay-per-use instead of pay-per-calendar-month
- jakelazaroff 8y agoThat's true. Maybe magazines and newspapers are a better analogy: you can pay for single issues, but plenty of people still choose to subscribe.
- devonkim 8y agoSo basically anyone that can understand the basics of a good salesman from Wolf of Wallstreet can land deals better than the “moderate” personality types that have been shown to statistically deliver better sales results for most companies? Am I missing something about how those studies were conducted that this emotionally based rather than fact-based approach is better at conversion rates than a mix of approaches? On the flip side, is this why more successful people have a habit of defaulting to “no”?
- GiuseppaAcciaio 8y agoI wouldn't think this as an "either / or" approach: in my experience, a sales pitch and a deck are very rarely the deciding factor in closing a sale, however they can help tremendously. The key aspect here is that a pitch like the one described is usually made to very senior people in an organization, who have little time and mental bandwidth to endure through a list of facts and figures and shudder product features: getting them invested in the result that would come from adopting the product/service is the ultimate goal, not closing the sale at that stage. You still need to do all of the good (i.e. fact-based) salesman work, but that is done at a different time: either ahead of the executive presentation (in which if you did things right you may have the buyer on your side in making a case for using your product/service), or as a consequence of it. To me what's interesting is not the deck itself, but the focus shown by the company on sticking to their marketing points and on enabling their salespeople to do their job more effectively (you have no idea how many times I have had to figure out on my own what to answer to a prospect that was asking "what makes your company/product/service different from any of your competitors?"...).
- empath75 8y agoYou can't present facts to people if they aren't paying attention. This deck is merely to get attention. The numbers come afterwards.
- dajohnson89 8y agoGood write-up -- is there a link to the actual deck?
- michaelmcdonald 8y agoThe author literally says directly in the article that the person he received the deck from asked him to not publicly share the deck.
- emilfihlman 8y agoIrrelevant. If the deck is available and discussed, we might as well take a look.
- andyraskin 8y agoAfter I published the post, Zuora released a version of the deck that I assembled from their public slides at https://www.zuora.com/resource/best-sales-deck-ever/ https://www.zuora.com/resource/best-sales-deck-ever/. It's not the deck I got from their ex-salesperson, but IMO what you can learn from it is similar enough.
- Persuadem 8y agoI disagree with two things in the article. 1. I disagree with the underlying premise of the article - the deck is unimportant. 2. I disagree with the reasoning given as to why it works. Firstly the deck is unimportant because - as the ex-employee quoted at the end said: the prospect is already sold thanks to the marketing and branding campaigns run by Zuora. The deck is superfluous. Secondly, the reasoning that Raskin often gives as to why this works is based on the fact it follows the "storytelling" formula that Hollywood uses. He liberally uses examples of Star Wars and other films in his articles. But we aren't characters in a movie. Rather than looking to what motivates characters in a movie to act as a model for persuasive messaging, we are better looking at what persuades people to act in real life. Arguably religion and politics are the most persuasive forces on the planet. And the real reason Zuora's message works is that it follows the same formula (and has the same elements) as religious and political ideologies. 1. There's a heaven and hell (for Zuora, heaven is thriving and getting more customers and hell is losing one's business) 2. There's a devil which is stopping us getting to heaven and sending us to hell (for Zuora this is the traditional business model of single non-recurring purchases) 3. There's a doctrine that needs to be followed to get to heaven & avoid hell (for Zuora that's the subscription business model) 4. There's a leader that provides the tools and solutions necessary to implement the doctrine and get to heaven (for Zuora this is their solution) Viewing Zuora's success through this model, through this lense, makes more sense than Raskin's model. There are plenty of other examples. Hubspot is a great example - they used (unconsciously) this model to sell the concept of inbound marketing. Check out this article on the subject - https://bit.ly/2Ov3NCT https://bit.ly/2Ov3NCT
- gk1 8y agoSeems as though you actually agree with the article's premise, which you mistook to be about the sales deck. The point is that your messaging should be about what the buyer needs, not what your product does. You happen to have different packaging for it (as do I[1]), but overall it seems we're in agreement. [1] https://www.gkogan.co/blog/buyers/ https://www.gkogan.co/blog/buyers/
- beatgammit 8y agoI don't think it's necessarily about what the buyer "needs", as much as appealing either to a big "want" or avoiding a significant loss. Many of these companies probably don't "need" a subscription model, so Zuora focuses on the negative they're avoiding (getting left behind). From my experience, convincing someone to avoid a loss is way easier than convincing them to pull the trigger on a big win. This is a huge reason why people continue to invest with money managers instead of doing the mathematically better option of buying index funds: the money manager promises to preserve capital, whereas the index fund lists shows that it outperforms manual money management on average (big win potential). In many cases, you're focusing less on reason and more on emotion, and you use logic to drive it home. People are more emotional than logical ("nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"), but they need a logical argument to justify their emotions (IBM solves our problems and isn't going away, so the higher price is justifiable).
- michaelt 8y ago#1. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the World #2. Show There’ll Be Winners and Losers Is it common someone will invite a Zuora sales rep to give them a presentation, if they don't _already_ think they want to launch a subscription product? I would have guessed most people attending sales presentations would be looking to fulfil a need they had already identified.
- Bartweiss 8y agoI assume someone involved wants to launch a subscription product, yeah. And that person probably doesn't care about hearing how subscription products are really great. But since this is B2B, it's pretty likely that not everyone at the buyer's company is convinced on the project and looking to buy a product. They might want to in-house everything, or not want a subscription product, or just be someone up the chain who doesn't know about the topic at all yet. It's one of the weirdest things about enterprise sales - it's not just informing people that products like yours exist, or pitching your merits over competitors. Instead, it tends to mean bolstering the business case someone at the company is already making. (Actually, that might well be why the guy at the start of the story failed. I've seen people sell their product to employees as the best option for their needs, then lose out because management decides there's no need at all.)
- ww520 8y agoEnterprise sales typically involves some "champions" inside the customer's companies looking for solutions to problems they currently have. They do have the need already and vaguely know what the needs/goals/benefits/challenges/costs are but not in crystal clear terms. They are looking for "experts" i.e. you to come in to spell those out and educate them. They are evaluating a bunch of companies and technologies. You have to make your sales pitch stand out of the pack to get the deal. Part of the sales process is to identify those internal "champions" and supply whatever materials/ideas/education to them to make their jobs convincing the others inside the organization easier. A good sales deck like the one in OP makes a huge difference. I remember going in with a sales guy to a big bank customer meeting once to pitch our pre-alpha product (yes, we were still building it). My God, his sales deck was amazing. I was convinced myself after listening to his presentation and wanted to buy our product. We got the multi-million deal at the end, admittedly with lots of help from engineering during the sales. :)
- drieddust 8y agoCan someone explain why this is so much noteworthy? All I see is random messages pasted onto random backgrounds. I am not from sales or marketing though.
- floatrock 8y agoMy first freshman physics class consisted of random symbols scribbled onto a random blackboard. I was not from a physics background though. The learning new stuff you're not familiar with is why it's noteworthy.
- drieddust 8y agoUnderstand but the article fails to do that for me. I do want to learn this stuff. Do you have any book/blog suggestions?
- floatrock 8y agoThe topic comes up relatively often on HN. Here's a thread from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18241160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18241160 You may or may not resonate with this particular article's theory, but I like seeing things like this posted here because you can collect more and more examples. The textbooks will take you only so far though... ultimately you need to go take the in-person exam.
- sfilargi 8y agoDo you have any proof that the subscription economy trend is driven by the consumers? You totally jump the gun there!
- gowld 8y agoIt's a narrative flourish irrelevant whose accuracy is irrelevant to the pitch, except that it sounds attractive to say "customers want this" vs "customers are powerless to reject this". For a business, it matters that the trend exists; the cause doesn't matter.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoHmm, the cause does matter. If customers want it and you're not giving it the risk is they'll go elsewhere to find it; that's why it is sold in that way, to apply pressure: "if you don't do this you'll lose customers" hits the businesses who are already succeeding. If it's "other companies are selling the idea to customers that they should move to a subscription model" then the company you're pitching your subscription service assistance to can decide to promote the purchase model instead of going along with convincing customers to buy in a different way.
- martokus 8y agoThe actual Zuora sales deck was uploaded to SlideShare after the article was written in 2016. Here it is https://www.slideshare.net/ryangum/zuora-sales-deck?qid=f2495ef7-92bd-4d7b-aed1-dbfaadbe0d73&v=&b=&from_search=9 https://www.slideshare.net/ryangum/zuora-sales-deck?qid=f249...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- njudah 8y agoI learned much of what I know about product marketing from Tien (CEO of Zuora); as this thread demonstrates its hard for a lot of product / developer folks to understand why its such an important part of any non-consumer offering, as so much of customer development culture is focused exclusively on metrics and optimization. Immodestly I did a presentation on the topic at Heavybit a few years ago for those that are interested in the topic: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/platform-marketing-with-dropbox-and-salesforce/ https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/platform-marketing-wi...
- jerrre 8y agoAny pointers where to start, if I haven't read/seen anything (nor even heard about) Tien, but I find it interesting to see what he has to say?
- amjaeger 8y agoAmusing note, The "what is the common thread" slide literally shows the promised land. It's a picture of Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.
- jaxtellerSoA 8y agoFantastic post! But can we please, please stop calling power point presentations "decks".
- linkingday 8y agoSure, but we can't call them PowerPoint presentations either.
- asdff 8y agoHow about "Presentation?"
- Antonio123123 8y agoPresentation is the process. You can have a presentation without using a deck. The term you are looking for is Slideshow.
- SkyMarshal 8y agoHonest question, what’s the difference?
- icelancer 8y agoHe is just grumpy and doesn't like the term, for whatever reason.
- jccalhoun 8y agoThey just reinvented Monroe's Motivated Sequence.
- yodon 8y agoThanks for this - the writeups on Monroe's Motivated Sequence help me understand why this deck works, and this deck helps me understand Monroe's sequence (without this deck, it I came across most of the writeups on the the sequence, I would have ignored them because they illustrate it so poorly)
- gnicholas 8y agoThere's a lot of griping about the "subscription economy" here. In light of this, the fact that their sales deck is (apparently) successful indicates that it is indeed highly effective. That is, it sounds like they have an uphill battle, and apparently this deck has helped them gain ground. I'll give these techniques a try and see if they work for me (even though the clickbait title irks me).
- anime_forever 8y agoLOL this comment thread, what is everyone even talking about? people fighting over different vr headsets and whatever size phone they prefer in the context of a powerpoint presentation hah
- contingencies 8y agoThe author misses the significant issue that this ultra-simplistic approach works only with the simplest USP businesses: established markets with a single environmental factor driving change and a single paradigm shift in response. More complex businesses, blue ocean (new market) businesses, businesses combining insights from multiple trends or with multiple layers of innovation will find this approach completely infeasible.
- andyraskin 8y agoCould it be that your description of Zuora as a simple USP/single driving change business is actually a testament to the simple way they tell their story? I'm the author of the post, and every business I consult with is, as you say, "complex...addressing multiple trends or with multiple layers of innovation..." That hasn't stopped any of them from crafting a similarly simple story -- starting with a single change. Usually that means either (a) focusing on the most important one; or (b) naming a change that subsumes many of the others. Getting leadership teams to align around one change isn't easy, but I'm getting better at it :)
- contingencies 8y agoIt could be, but it isn't.
- TestAccount2521 8y agoThis is a test comment
- sj3k 8y agoneat deck. unrelated but Zuora is a piece of junk. Im glad I dont have to deal with it anymore.
- manigandham 8y agoSales is a complex art, and a story that resonates is extremely important. People don't remember details, and they don't buy numbers or features. They buy solutions, and sometimes that's an answer to a problem that they didn't know they had. Marketing to create customers requires that your audience agrees with your premise in the first place, otherwise you'll never get to step 2. However, of course everything is contextual and this approach is more about opening deals, especially at large enterprise organizations. This is not something you would send to a prospect's IT department, and is not meant to compete with a price-features matrix, but rather it forms your company's brand and creates trust and familiarity in your market. I met the author Andy Raskin a few years back. He's a great guy and definitely understands marketing, and I highly recommend taking his course in SF if you get the chance.
- astrostl 8y agohttps://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-watch-this-328b95c2fd0b https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-watch-... Year earlier, same author, same story, different source claimed. It’s like this guy is plagiarizing himself?