The best presentation to sell your products and services

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A few months ago, my friend Tim started a new sales job at a C-stage startup that had raised over $60 million from investors. He's one of the best salespeople I know, but shortly after starting the job, he emailed me to say he was having trouble making sales.

“I've managed to get a few small clients,” Tim said. “But with the big companies, my pitch falls flat.”

Tim and I met for lunch at a restaurant to review his presentation.

After having my fill of the buffet, I asked Tim, “At what point do customers drop off?”

“Usually a few slides into the presentation,” he replied.

While Tim went to the buffet for more, I pulled out my laptop and launched a Powerpoint presentation.

“What is this?” Tim asked.

“This,” I said, “is the best sales presentation I have ever seen.”

5 Elements of a Brilliant Product Story

The presentation I showed Tim was from a company called Zuora, which has gone public. It sells a subscription billing platform called SaaS. If you pay for anything in the U.S. on a recurring basis (like enterprise software), there’s a good chance Zuora facilitates that transaction.

I received this presentation from a former Zuora salesman who said it helped him close the biggest deals of his career.

Tim and I went through the presentation and identified 5 elements that enabled salespeople to achieve outstanding results. We are publishing them in a logical sequence.

1. Name a big, significant change in the world

Don't start your sales presentation by talking about your product, your headquarters location, your investors, your customers, or yourself.

Instead, name the undeniable changes in the world that:

a) are of great importance

b) create a huge sense of urgency for your potential customers

The first slide of almost every Zuora presentation – sales or otherwise – is some version of this:

Zuora coined the phrase “subscription economy” to name the new world that merchants must navigate—one in which buyers increasingly choose recurring payments for services rather than outright purchases. Zuora typically accompanies this phrase with a slide describing the history of the change:

Note the subtle but important difference from what most pitches advise – starting with “the problem.” When you state that your customers have a problem, you put them on the defensive. They may not be aware of the problem, or they may be uncomfortable admitting that they suffer from it.

But when you highlight changes in the world, you get your prospects to talk openly about how those changes affect them, how they scare them, and where they see opportunities. Most important, you get their attention. As Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee says:

what attracts a person's attention is change. …If the temperature around you changes, if the phone rings – this attracts your attention

2. Show that there will be winners and losers

Many people suffer from what economists call “loss aversion,” which means they seek to avoid potential losses by sticking to the status quo and not take risks for potential gains.

To overcome loss aversion, you must demonstrate how the changes you discussed above will create big winners and big losers. In other words, you must show both of the following:

– That adapting to the changes you mentioned will likely lead to a very positive future for the potential client.

– And that failure to do so will result in an unacceptably negative future for the client.

Zuora does this neatly by documenting a “mass extinction” among Fortune 500 companies…

…and then shows how the “winners” have moved from owning products to subscription services. These include new companies…

And also existing large companies that have undergone major changes:

To further drive this point home, Zuora asks the following question:

Of course, by this point the general idea has already become firmly ingrained in the minds of potential clients: Winners adopt subscription service models supported by Zuora.

3. Tease the Promised Land

At this point, it's tempting to jump into a detailed description of your product or service. It's not too early, so take your time.

If you present product/service details too early, prospects won't have enough context to understand why those details are important and they'll bounce.

Instead, first provide a “teaser” of the happy future that your product/service will help your prospect achieve – what I call the “promised land.”

Your “promised land” must be both desirable (obviously) and difficult for a potential client to reach without outside help. Otherwise, why does your company exist?

After demonstrating that the subscription economy will create winners and losers, Zuora presents a “Promised Land” slide that offers specific criteria for what it means to win in the subscription economy:

Please note that the promised land is a new future state, not your product or service.

(Over lunch, I asked my friend Tim to define his “Promised Land,” and he said, “You will have the most innovative platform for ____.” No: the promised land is not having your technology, but what life is like because of having your technology.)

Your “promised land” is also important for helping prospects pitch your solution to their peers after the sales meeting ends.

In your absence, your colleagues will ask them, “What are they doing?” Armed with a compelling “promised land,” the people who were with you in the negotiations are more likely to give their colleagues an answer that will force them to make a decision.

4. Present product features as “magic gifts” to overcome obstacles on the way to the Promised Land

If you haven't figured it out yet, successful sales presentations have the same narrative structure as movies and fairy tales. Your prospect is Luke, and you are Obi Wan, giving him a lightsaber to help him defeat the Empire.

Your client is Frodo, and you are Gandalf, the wise wizard who helps destroy the ring.

Your potential client is Cinderella, and you are the fairy godmother casting spells to get her to the ball.

When pitching your product or service, position its capabilities like lightsabers, sorcery, and spells – as “magic gifts” that will help your protagonist (potential customer) reach the desired Promised Land.

For example, above is a slide where Zuora talks about what data is collected about a user in the “old” and “new world.” Without context, this detail would likely bore even the most technical person.

However, in the context of the transition from the “old world” to the “new world”, it provides the basis for an interesting conversation with potential clients – both technical and otherwise – about why it is so difficult to reach the Promised Land with traditional (current) solutions.

5. Provide evidence that you can bring this story to life.

By telling your sales story this way, you make a commitment to your customers: If they come with you, you will lead them to the Promised Land.

But the road to the promised land is, by definition, littered with obstacles, so customers are rightly skeptical about your ability to deliver on your promise. So the last part of the pitch is the best proof that you can deliver on the story you’re telling.

The most effective proof is a success story about how you've already helped someone else (similar to your prospect) reach the Promised Land.

Zuora has a list of customer success stories that salespeople use, and while they're more detailed in the actual presentation, this still gets the point across:

I also like this quote from an executive at NCR (a Zuora customer) that speaks more clearly to Zuora's stated “promised land”:

“Zuora does a great job of enforcing recurring payments and managing the overall subscription, which is always difficult, as we all know, with ERP systems.” – Bill Plummer, former head of business activation.

What if you don't have a lot of successful customers yet? The next most effective proof is product demos, but again, the features should always be presented in the context of how they help potential customers reach the Promised Land.

A selling story works best when everyone tells it.

Of course, successful sales rarely happen just because of a great presentation. For salespeople to be successful, the entire organization must unite around a narrative of change, a promised land, and magical gifts.

There’s no better example than Zuora. If you ever watch a Zuora executive speak, including CEO Tien Tsuo, you’ll almost certainly hear about the subscription economy and the winners and losers it creates. In fact, it’s the theme of nearly all of the company’s marketing communications and campaigns, as well as its public vision statement:

According to a former Zuora salesperson, rallying the entire company around this story was a huge success for him:

“Zuora's marketers were running campaigns and building branding around this shift to a subscription economy, and CEO Tien Tsuo was constantly talking about it. All of this was like air cover for my ground attack. By the time I got to customers, they were already convinced they needed to take action.”

The biggest deal in history

Just three weeks after our lunch, Tim called to say he was seeing a big change in the way his big clients were responding to his new pitch deck, which we had put together based on the Zuora template. Specifically, they were much quicker to talk about the problems they were facing.

And a week later, Tim sent an email with even better news: he had just signed the biggest deal in his company's history.