You need to give a bit more insight into the business element by clearly explaining your business model, the market, the facts and figures, the competitive landscape, and the go-to-market strategy. People often start off with the hero’s plan as the first act, which isn’t the best route to take. While you absolutely want to highlight that there’s a big market among other factors that show the viability of your product or solution early on, you don’t have to get so deep into it at the very beginning.

The Hero’s Plan: The Business

The best way to highlight the problem is with a story. “You can weave the storytelling into the storytelling framework. Talk about your origin story. Where did you come up with the idea? What was the pain you identified in your lives or in the life of someone that you cared about?  Think about how your journey began and your inspiration to start. You can then expand it from your micro to the macro by introducing the bigger problem supported by relevant numbers to drive the point home.

The Best Approach To Create A Pitch Deck: The Problem and the Genesis

One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is putting together disjointed pitch decks that are very heavy on numbers but don’t have a story element. Presentations have an overload of information with endless bullet points while still failing to highlight critical aspects such as the customer experience.Instead, go easy on the data. Don’t just add everything with the hope that something will stick. You should be giving a distilled, clear, concise view because you come across looking much smarter that way — and then let them ask you questions.

Too Much Information

This step details what the future looks like and the direction your business will take moving forward. “Where are you going? What’s your big vision? What will the company have shifted in the market when you are successful in three, five, or eight years from now?” Establish the different milestones that will get you to your destination, including the additional markets you’ll look to penetrate and everything you’ll need along the way to turn your vision into reality.

The Future: The Direction Of The Business

Ensure you can explain your product or solution simply in a solution statement. For example, “we do X for Y by Z.” It’s important that your solution statement is easy for anyone to understand. You can then show your audience a demo. Take them on the user journey and showcase your product through a user story because it’s a lot more impactful. “It could be a video. It could be screenshots. Use a real client if you can because it’s much more powerful.

Your Hero: The Product Or The Solution

When it comes to numbers, you want to include things like growth metrics, engagement, and revenue. Stay away from meaningless vanity metrics that add little to no value. Instead, go for the measurable statistics like monthly active users that’ll truly make an impact.

The Data In The Deck

If you’re not telling a compelling story, then you’re losing your audience before you’ve even started. Numbers and other data will make your audience believe but stories will make them engaged listeners.
There’s a big misnomer whereby people perceive storytelling as telling a little ice breaker or making some jokes. This isn’t the case. Storytelling actually dates back thousands of years in the form of artifacts and literature. It’s the way information was conveyed when language first originated in the cave days and that’s how our brains and communication developed.

The Importance Of Storytelling

If you’re not telling a compelling story, then you’re losing your audience before you’ve even started. Learn how to create the perfect sales pitch deck!