Building a better pitch deck that gets you hired with Tom Martin

Hey, everybody. Drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long, and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

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Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super glad you’re with us today, whenever that may be. If you’re listening to us real time or if you’re catching up throughout the summer or fall, glad to have you with us. Today’s topic, I think is a super important one. You know, there are so many aspects of biz dev to talk about. There’s everything from how do you position yourself, how do you attract right fit clients? All the work that Steven and I have done around selling with authority, selling from a position of thought leadership, attracting the right clients, the written documents that go into new business, everything from case studies and proposals and all of that.

But also one of the aspects is our presentation decks. And so that’s actually the topic we’re gonna talk about today. Before I tell you a little bit about our guest and we dive into that topic, I do wanna remind you, speaking of new business topics, the amazing Mercer Island Group. Folks are once again going to be with us for a workshop in October. So coming up this fall, October 14th and 15th. And it’s all about the written pieces of new business. So everything from proposals, whether it’s really formal like RFIs and RFPs, or just more casual like a client or a prospect, asks us for proposal, case studies, cover letters, bios, all of the different elements of the written part of the new new business process.

And for two days, they are gonna show us best practices. They’re gonna have us work with examples that are good, bad, and kind of ugly, and sort of talk out loud about how we would improve those together. Every, everything we do with Mercer Island Group gets rave reviews. But this workshop was off the charts in terms of how when we offered it last time, about 18 months ago, almost two years ago now, people were just off the charts excited about the content, saying it was one of the best workshops I’d ever attended. People were literally going back to their hotel room after the day one, changing a proposal and then bringing it back and sharing it with us day two and how different and dramatically better it was.

So again, if you’re interested in that aspect of new business and, and working with Mercer Island Group, join us in Denver, October 14th and 15th to find that workshop head over to Agency Management Institute’s website. And under how we help, there’s a tab that says workshops, and it’s called Getting It Right, written Proposals That Win Business. So check that out. Okay. Another aspect of biz dev that is super important is our actual presentation deck. How we appear in a presentation, whether it’s with an existing client or a prospect, how we communicate the ideas that we have, whether it’s an annual plan or it’s a new business pitch, and not just how we communicate it, but how we create a memory link.

How we create something that when the prospect or the client is considering what they heard that we’re anchoring, the things we want them to remember in the deck and in the presentation. And so I’ve invited Tom Martin to join us. Tom is a repeat guest. He owns a company called Com, converse Digital, and Tom has been an agency guy for many, many years. He still owns an agency today, but part of his time is spent working with agencies to help them with their new business efforts using the methodology that he has developed, which is very much in alignment with the sell with authority methodology around thought leadership and being helpful and really attracting that right fit prospect.

So Tom and I had an email exchange about presentation decks, and it was really a fascinating conversation about the science of the way our brain works and how it takes in visual information and information overload and all kinds of sort of scientific elements to a presentation deck that I thought was just fascinating. And so I asked him to come be on the show and share those insights with all of you. So without further ado, let’s welcome Tom to the show. Tom, welcome back to the podcast.

Well, it’s good to be invited back. Drew, good to see you. You’re looking well these days.

You as well. You’re wearing good behavior last time, so I thought we’ll have you back. So we’ll see. We’ll see if you can hold it for two in a row. It’s highly unlikely knowing you as I do so we’ll see. Right? It’s early in the morning, so maybe, maybe you’ll, maybe you’ll be good. Sure. So for the few folks who aren’t familiar with you, last time we were together on the show, we talked about your book and your methodology for new business. But give everybody sort of a lay of the land of your agency ownership and your background, and then we’ll jump into our topic for today.

Yeah. Well, I came up through the agency world. I was always an account guy, but halfway through my career, which has been about 30 years now, I suggested to the owner of the agency the way we did business development that maybe needed to change. He liked the ideas that started my pathway into Biz Dev and spent most of my career since then either doing biz dev for other agencies, always small to medium size, or owning my own agencies. And now I launched Converse Digital 14 years ago. We were primarily a social media agency, wrote a book, as you said, on social selling. And over the last four or five years, we’ve really pretty much moved the agency in that zone. And nowadays, I spend most of my days teaching other people how to do business development the way I do business development, whether they be agencies or designers or other people in the professional services world.

And really teach ’em how to become known for knowledge, how to use that knowledge to start conversations and how to convert those conversations into clients.

Beautiful. So one of the things that you and I were talking about offline a couple months ago, which sort of led led to this conversation today was, you know, for most agencies, sooner or later there is a presentation deck involved in the new business process. It might be an introduction to their agency, it might be a formal RFP pitch, it could be a proposal in a more informal setting. In today’s world, it could be delivered by Zoom. You know, fewer and fewer agencies are, are being invited unless they happen to live in the same geography as a client to actually do it in person. But I know a lot of agencies was just on the, on the phone yesterday with a coaching client and they have a, they have a $3 million opportunity and they had to sort of cajole the client into letting them get on a plane and come present to them in person.

So, you know, the world in terms of presentations has certainly changed, but the importance of how you show up in those presentations obviously is, is critical. So I know you have a lot of thoughts about, and expertise around the idea of how to show up, the way you wanna show up in terms of your deck and how you present. So I wanted you to come back on the show and, and focus kind of narrowly focus in on that topic rather than the big broad new business topic. So talk a little bit about sort of how you sort of in your head think about the deck.

The way I think about the deck is kind of twofold. One, the deck, a great deck should ultimately be invisible. You know, they, they really shouldn’t remember the deck. They should remember the presenter of the deck, right? ’cause that’s you, that’s the agency, right? The second part though is that the deck should be built in a way as to produce or enhance memorability, especially a new business pitch. Because you, let’s face it, the old adage is you always wanted to be first or last because they forget agencies two, three, and four. And the truth is, research shows that we pre, we forget 90% of what people present to us, regardless if your agency 1, 2, 3, 4, about doesn’t really matter. And so for me, the deck is all about, okay, how can I harness the science of information processing, information retention?

How can I use that science to build a more memorable deck? You know, when those clients go back and, and they do, they have their little post agency review meetings meeting where they all talk about the different presentations and the different agencies, you know, how can I make sure that during that meeting they remember the elevator speech, if you will, of my presentation, right? The key points that I think are gonna get me hired or get my agency hired. Because that I, I don’t know if you’ve, I’m sure you probably have as well, I’ve, I’ve had the chance to sit in those meetings with clients and it’s the most eye-opening experience to be on the other side of that curtain. Right? Right. And, and realize they don’t remember what we tell ’em. They think we all sound the same.

And, and, and to see how just being a little bit more memorable helps the agency win more often. You know, and not just through like showy fanatics, but like, just, gosh, I’ve seen agencies win that just say like one really brilliant thing. Right? But they’re the only ones that said something brilliant and that’s what they remember. So that’s who gets hired, you know? Yeah. And so I’ve, I’ve really spent the last four or five years trying to figure out the science and apply the science to designing better pitch decks, you know, four pitches, but also just for everyday presentation needs. Absolutely. Nowadays you present, you know, you present your annual campaign to your client. I dunno about you, when I first got in the business, we’d make a presentation to clients and, and you usually get an answer in the meeting.

Right now you get, okay, we’re gonna talk about it and get back to you. Right? And then they go talk about it. And so even there, yeah, I think it’s imperative. You gotta really make the key points memorable so that you don’t wind up in a, in a, Hey, let’s do a follow up presentation.

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about the science. Give us an understanding of the sort of cornerstone elements of the science that sort of build the foundation of your argument.

Well, I mean, it’s, it all really goes down to the cognitive, the, the idea of cognitive load. So to, to simplify it, the human brain, if you think about the human brain as a pie chart, you know, a hundred percent available power when you’re presenting information to a person, that power is split between two brain activities. I’m either processing and trying to understand and make sense of what you’re telling me, or I’ve already process that information and now I’m gonna, I’m gonna push that information back into long-term memory. You get a hundred percent to play with. So if you’re presenting a deck that’s built in a way that makes it hard for me to understand where you’re going, it’s hard for me to connect the dots. It’s hard for me to follow your train of thought or whatever.

Or if the deck’s competing with you as the presenter, then I’m having to use say, 75% of my brain just to figure out what you’re telling me. Yeah. That doesn’t leave a lot of brainpower to push it back in a long-term memory. Conversely, if I build a deck and I use this science to say, I’m gonna, I’m doing this in a way that’s gonna make this stack super easy for you to process, well now you’re lowering that cognitive load. And so I’ve got more brain power left and that improves my ability to, to send that information into long-term memory, which is where you want it, especially if you’re agency two, three, or four. Right? And so it really comes down, you know, to that and it comes down to using just, you know, it’s really interesting ’cause some of it, you look at it and you go, well, yeah, that makes perfect sense, but yet we don’t do it right.

You know? So, and then sometimes it’s as, as little as just strategic repetition. It can come down to, with just how you build your slides in terms of how many bullet points are on a slide, how you bring those bullet points up, how you’re, you know, how you handle using what’s on the slide versus what you’re gonna talk about and, and how you block and tackle that one so that you’re really making it super easy on your audience to connect the dots the way you want them connected to form an idea and a memory that you, that you believe is important for you to win.

So is is the part of the brain that is processing the information, is there also risk, if you’re talking about something that is, I feel my brain feels is either irrelevant or I’ve already heard it 12 times, or it’s all about you and I really wanna talk about me. Are there other elements of how we lose that part of the brain in the presentation?

Oh, absolutely. The, you know, when I’m working with the client, one of the first things that, that we go through is, you know, if I’m about to give a presentation, any presentation, and, and I know that at the end of this presentation, I need you the audience, I need your brain to be here. Right? I need it to be at position BI first have to know where your brain is today. Yeah. What’s your position a look like? So I can figure out that gap. So now I know my knowledge gap and I gotta close that knowledge gap, but I need to do it in a way that I understand, you know, why are you going to care about the points that I’m sharing with you? It’s the old with ’em what’s in it for me. Right? Right. And if you don’t under, you know, I, I tell a story. We, I, I sat in, in a, in a pitch and a client was hiring an influencer agency and they were, you know, part of the pitch is they were to, to suggest an initial round of potential influencers that they would recommend.

And they were going on and on and on about how many followers everybody had, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this, and they’re so well known and all this stuff, but the client’s goal, so they were pitching it almost like a CPM ad campaign, right? You’re interest, it’s much, it’s so much less expensive than traditional advertising. And then they put on the, oh, and influencers are more widely listened to, but what this client cared about wasn’t, you know, Hey, I’m not, yes, I want eyeballs, but I’m not doing this to maximize eyeballs. I’m doing this to maximize effective eyeball. What they really wanted to hear was, yeah, they got a million followers, but how many of those million trusts them to recommend this brand and we’ll go buy my brand because of this. Right.

Or, you know, what historically in their body of work shows or proves that they can influence their audience on this type of brand. Right. None of that was in the pitch. Hmm. And so the client just started and, and once that, once the client could see like, Hey, they’re not really talking about what I care about. They just tuned out the rest of the pitch. They couldn’t even have told you that. They couldn’t even have told you with any detail what the rest of the pitch was about. So I think that’s the biggest thing we as agencies have gotta understand, yes, it’s about us, but it’s not really about us. It’s about how we can help you uniquely help you in a way that nobody else you’re talking to can help you. That’s the basis.

And then from there, build a deck using science to help make sure that all of my key points are highly memorable. So that When, you get back in that pitch discussion room, you remember, these guys got me, and by the way, here are the three or four reasons that I think they’re the best agency we should select. Right. If you can get to that, I think you, I think you win way more than you lose.

No doubt. And I, and I think it’s, it’s fascinating to me. We as agency people understand and know that it’s all about them. We have to sort of identify that we, that we understand what their challenges are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And yet deck after deck after deck, it’s all about us. It’s slide after slide of what we’ve done and who we’ve done it for and all of that. And sometimes it’s relevant and sometimes it’s not. But you know, when half the deck or the front half of the deck even worse, is all about you. To your point, you know, once you’ve lost them, it’s really hard to reel them back in.

Yeah. It’s, you know, I was working with an agency up in New York and they were, they were kicking off a new IR product, if you will, a way to do IR marketing. And they showed me their deck and it was your, it was your traditional agency deck. You know, here’s who we are, we have all these awards, here’s our offices, here’s a case study. Yeah. You know, here’s some stuff about you. Here’s the problem we solve. And that was it. There was in no, there was no real clear order. There was no real, like, here are the three reasons. And so it was interesting as we started to work through it, you and you started talking to them, they ha they understood what made their product different Yeah. From the competition.

But I think it’s like, you know, it’s hard to write your own bio Yeah. ’cause you’re too close to the product. Right. Whereas as our friend, as our mutual friend Steve Woodruff says, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar. Yeah. And I think, you know, and so as we sat and worked through the workshop, it was amazing. Like, once they understood the science and the process, they ended up writing a lot of the stuff that ultimately found its way into the deck. I was just coaching them along for the most part. But like, you look at the, the finish deck and you look at where it started and, and it’s just the finish deck. Even if they’re not talking, even if you’re just flipping through it, you get it. Yeah. Like, you don’t need anybody to really fully explain it to you. Which, you know, frees them up in the moment in the pitch to be able to freelance a little bit, really dial into what, you know, they hear and notice a client’s body language and lean into that.

And I think that’s the thing is, is as agencies we’re really, really good at helping our clients communicate their unique benefits. But when it comes to ourselves, maybe it’s ’cause it’s just hard. You can’t see the label when you’re in the jar. Or maybe it’s just we have an inferiority complex and we just feel the need to prove ourselves first and foremost. But we just, we, we don’t really spend our time, I don’t think we go into a pitch assuming we have the right to be there, and that the client believes we have a right to be there. And so we’re just gonna tell you how we’re gonna fix things. We go in thinking we have to justify our existence. Oh. And then we’ll tell you how we’re gonna fix things and how that’s gonna be better than the other guys or the gals you’re talking to.

But I think if, you know, you can get away from that and say, okay, look, this is it. And understand that if you just have a better solution, that the, we have a right to be here. It takes care of itself.

That’s right. Well, and odds are, if you’re giving the presentation, that box has already been checked. I mean, if, if they’re willing to actually give you an hour or 45 minutes on a Zoom or in a conference room, they’ve already done their due diligence. I mean, the stat is what 75, 80% of the buying decision is done before you even know they’re out there. So they’ve already qualified you, especially in a formal presentation where you’ve actually turned in an RFI or a written RFP, you’re down to the final three to five. So they’ve already decided, whether you think you do or not, they’ve already decided that you have a right to be in the room. And so to your point now, it’s about, now this is about how we would work together to solve your problems.

And, you know, it is, do you, do you say something compelling and do you say it in a way that makes me like you and wanna work with you?

Yeah. And, and can I make, make it easy to remember? I know the biggest thing with Stage York, the biggest thing we worked on, they, they, we broke it down into like three, I mean, there were like three key points. There were just really three key. If I only had five minutes, you know, if the CEO of the company comes in and goes, Hey, we just had a major problem, I’d be on a plane in 10 minutes. Go.

Right.

What are the three like, and you get one slide, what’s on the one slide, three or four points, that’s all you get time for. And once we got down to those, and we treated those as information containers, almost like parables. How do we phrase this in a way where we’re gonna say three words, but it’s gonna carry so much more message than just the three words. Right? Yeah. And you know, one of, because it was ir, this was one of theirs was stock marketing, all caps in marketing. And the idea being that they were part of their, their approach was to brand your ticker just like you brand your logo. Right. So stock marketing.

Right. And I was like, dude, perfect. That’s awesome. That’s, so you say those five words, you just communicated six of your slides. And the six slides are more the, like how we do stock marketing, or let me really explain that in more detail. But the idea that we’re gonna take, this is all about hiring us to do stock marketing. I was like, that’s it, that’s all the CEO needs. Right. He’s got it. You know, after that, if he wants more detail, he can flip back in the, in the thing on the airplane. But it’s like little things like that, if you can start to build those little mnemonic memory devices and things of this nature, all of a sudden you take something that’s kind of a complex, oh wait, how do we put this all together? How do we present it? What goes first?

What goes second? And you put it in this nice, concise, easy to memorize, easy to remember, easy to res, resuscitate. Resuscitate. That’s terrible. Recite later.

Well you do need to bring it back to life as well. For sure. Yeah. Recite and resuscitate

My, yeah. Yeah. I hope my pitch never has to be resuscitated. That’s bad. But I think that’s a lot. You know, it’s a lot of, you know, we don’t, you know, like I, I think the, the, we were talking back and forth on email, you, you did a, an interview with a gentleman talking about the same topic and you know, he told the story about how, you know, the agency president was changing the slide deck order in the car ride over to the pitch. And I was cringing. Right. I was like, dude, no, that’s, you’re not taking this seriously enough that,

And nor nor did you rehearse very much if you’re changing it in the, on the ride to the pitch. Right.

Yeah. Nor do you truly believe in what you were doing. Yeah. Like you don’t even believe enough in your own deck that you’re changing it at the 11th hour. Yeah. You’re not giving that tool enough respect.

Yeah.

And you’re not really giving the pitch enough respect, frankly. But, you know, that cringe and it was like, oof. I may or may not have lived that moment before. But yeah, I think a lot of it is just, you know, we as agencies, we don’t, you know, I think we sometimes we see the deck as a necessary evil and or we treat it like it’s an art design product project. And we get our designers in there, we make it super cool and super visual, and we think that’s gonna help win the pitch. And we forget that it’s really a support device designed to, you know, help us communicate a message in a way that’s gonna be retained and, and, and, and persuasive.

You know, it, it, it kind of has a weird dual function like that. And, and if we treat it that way, I think we build better decks. We win more pitches. Yeah.

One of the things that I talk to agencies about all the time is that they have to understand that what happens after they leave is the group of people who sat through the presentation gather to discuss the three to five presentations. And they go, well, agency, blah, blah, blah. And somebody goes, who, which one is that again? And they go, oh, they’re the ones that said, you know, stock marketing. Oh yeah, that’s who, it’s either that or they’re the ones with the British guy. Right? I mean, it’s either something distinct about one of the presenters. So perhaps part of your presentation should be one of you have to affect an accent that people are gonna think is cool. But if you can’t, I would say you smarter butt if you, if you can’t pull that off it. So it is to your point, sort of thinking about what are those information containers and how do you label them in a way that if they only remember the two or three containers and the label that differentiates you from everybody else.

Yeah. It’s really, I, you know, I, it’s, it’s, you know, to use an information container, it’s think give it like the elevator speech, right. What’s your pitch deck? Elevator speech. Right. Write that first, then fill it out. You know that that’s your outline for your deck right there. Yeah. And then go deeper. And then if you, if you feel like you’re really, you know, there’s, there is some really interesting research around, you know, we tend to try to make things super short and super light and not overly detailed. And there’s actually an interesting body of research. I wrote about it on the blog a few months ago, and I can send it to you. We can connect it in the show notes. Yep. That’d be great. And it, they call it the telling detail version of, of writing a deck and how When you use telling detail on your deck, When, you really get super precise and really, really clear.

It, it makes your information more credible. It makes you more credible and it’s way more persuasive. Yeah. Because when people see this sort of generic vague wording, they associate that with your full Bs. Right. You’re putting the shine on me, you don’t really know what you’re doing. Right. You’re using generalities. ’cause if you really knew what you were doing, you would give me very concrete examples. Very specific words. And so, you know, I think we, but we all hear the attention span goldfish story and we freak out and we try to put five words on a, on, you know, on a slide.

Yeah. And that or one image. Right. Image. Oh, lovely image. Just an image much. Right? Yeah. So

Don’t need words.

We wanna talk little bit, little bit more. That’s right. That’s fine. Ideas, who needs ideas. I wanna talk more about sort of the process that you think about to build out a deck. But first, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back. And so we’ll, we’ll walk through the 1, 2, 3 of all right. First you identify the elevator speech and then we’ll go from there. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll be right back. Hey everybody, just wanna remind you before we get back to the show, that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AAMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com/groups/ba a podcast.

So again, facebook.com/groups/baab podcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader. And we will let you write in and you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are gonna be of value to you. So come join us. Alright. We are back with Tom Martin and we are talking about building an effective persuasive presentation deck. And so right before the break, Tom started to tee up for us sort of the process, the mental process you could consider going through to build a deck like that.

So start with the idea of if the CEO walks in and goes, sorry, I know we’ve had an hour, but I gotta get on a plane in 10 minutes. You have one slide go. What’s, what is that one slide? What is the one thing you want them to walk away with? The elevator pitch, whatever that, how, whatever you use to think about that. Like what’s the one thing I want them to remember about us? And then Tom, where do you go from there to build out that outline, which then leads to building out the deck?

Well, from there it’s, I I, I assume they’ve already done the first thing, which is understanding why these people are gonna be interested in the message and what’s what, what need we’re fulfilling. So then it’s, okay, elevator speech. Now let’s break these three or four maximum key points of differentiation or support and let’s figure out what’s the, the logical way to work through them so that once building off the next is building off. ’cause you know, you, you want it to feel like you’ve reached out and taken your client by the hand and you’re just sort of walking them down the yellow brick road. Right? And, and unfortunately that’s not what most people do. They just, you know, show up and throw up and they, you know, it’s just, it’s like, you know, pathway of perplexity instead of the yellow brick road.

So we sit down and figure all that, figure out what our order’s gonna be, and then it’s, okay, now how do we, how do we bring these three or four key points to life in a way that is easy to understand, memorable? And at that point it really becomes a pruning. There’s usually a lot more about each thing that we can say, but we don’t need to. It really is an exercise done in conjunction with the client to say, okay, here’s all the things we could say. At what point can we stop talking? Like, at what point did we, pretty much, most people are gonna go, yeah, I agree. Gotcha. Understand that, that’s persuasive. Stop talking at that point. Let’s, so let’s, let’s take, ’cause we always wanna say we’re always, you know, nobody’s ever seen an ugly baby when it’s theirs, right?

And so, but at some point you need can stop talking about the baby. Really build those three things out for each of the, you know, each of the sub components. And then it’s time to start looking at, then we turn that into a wire frame, build out the wire frame, figure out how the information’s gonna build on slides. Do I need three slides to tell this story? Do I can do it in one? Does this need to have a graph or a chart? How, how is this gonna work? And then the last is to then skin it visually because we wanna, you know, one of the things we talk about is, you know, how pretty do you make the slide, right? You don’t want the imagery to be competing with the information. What, what, what format are we gonna use in terms of where is text gonna show up?

I was working with an agency that had this slide and it was, it was designed to be, it was three paragraphs with a headline and it was designed to be headline paragraph 1, 2, 3. Like, you’d read a book, two column book only. The paragraph on the right was in a big red box bad design because the human eye drawn to color where it’s drawn to what is different on something. So the human eye, if you had to put ’em in an eye tracking study, I have no, I have no reason to believe this wouldn’t be true. You would see all the eyes go right to the, to the third paragraph instead of the first. So we, we gotta get rid of that, right? Yeah. And we probably need to not have three paragraphs on the slide, but so we’ll start to work through all those kind of design issues. And then at that point you’re, you’re pretty much ready to hand it to your designers, let them skin it, and then come back and then walk through it.

The last thing we’ll do is walk through ’cause a lot and, and, and I make the clients walk through it out loud Oh. With me on a zoom. Right? So, and it’s funny, they’ll be walking through it and before I can even say something, they’ll stop and go, wait, hold on, we need to reorder this, or let’s move this. Or let’s not even, let’s kill that slide completely. That’s just getting in the way and they start pruning it themselves and it’s like, yeah, that’s what I would’ve said. You know, because they, ’cause you hear somebody, I dunno about you, but I, I gotta hear it out loud. Sure. And that, that’s where when I hear it out loud, that’s when I start to understand like, that’s just not flowing very well. Right. Or let’s move this around,

Or I need a transition here. Or I, or I’ve been talking too much about facts, I need a story or whatever it is, right?

Yep. Yep. Or hey, this has been all text, maybe now I need a pretty picture. Right? Right. Or maybe now I should do a, a story and then, you know, they’ll plant their tangents and then, and then the last thing we’ll do is, we’ll, you know, we will look for, okay, is there any place where we might need more telling details? Is there any place where we might need a lot more like heavy duty where they might go, Hey, hold on a minute, let’s, let’s push a little tar on that, that particular point. I don’t know if I’m ready to believe that. Or they might ask a question That’s a very data based answer. We’ll put all that in appendix skin, all that, make sure we have it so that, you know, if during a pitch somebody says, yeah, hold on, let’s go deeper into that sales data you’re talking about in that case study.

Oh sure. What’s your question? Well, you know, was that percentage increase? You know, what was the base versus the new, you know, are you torturing the data kind of thing? Oh, hold on, I got that on slide 52. Let me just jump to that real quick and we’ll put that so that, ’cause to me, a client asks one or two of those kind of questions and each time you go, oh yeah, lemme go to slide 50, lemme go to slide 70. That’s, they stop asking those kind of questions. Right? Because they’re like, okay, these, these guys have certainly, they got the goods or they’ve thought through it and it, and it actually gives you a lot more credibility Yeah. Than, oh well we can get that to you. We’ll send you a, we’ll send you something when we get back to the office kind of thing.

Yeah. So that’s an interesting idea. The idea of building an appendix into your deck. So after your thank you slide or you know, we want your business slide actually having more slides that they may never see until you give them the file or you give them the printout or however you do that, but that you have it sort of in your back pocket. So talk a little bit more about building that out because I think that, I think a lot of agencies don’t do that.

Yeah, I think it’s great in that I like it because I mean, I think you believe the same as I do and I know Jody Sutter and I talk about this all the time of, of, you know, people, people think in terms of stories, they remember stories and case studies, especially when agencies start going through case studies, they tend to get kind of boring pretty fast. ’cause they’re all more or less formatted the same. So what I think is really good is, is instead of presenting a case study, present a case story, just tell a story. All of your data, everything, your charts, your graphs in the appendix. And what’s nice about that is I think that When, you do it that way. It gives you permission to just tell a story and keep a nice flow. Right? If the client ha and you can tell ’em, say, look, you know, I’m, lemme tell you how this works. If you want the data, we have it all in the back.

I can bring it up now, you can look at it after the fact, but just lemme tell you the story of what we did for Brand X and just tell a story.

Yeah.

You know, it gives you a lot more freedom. It makes it a lot more fun. It it’s a lot. It’s different and, but it also, I think it’s telling as an agency, because if that client says, yeah, show me the data now I don’t wanna wait. You know, you know, some of that’s, that’s a tell. They may not fully trust you yet. Right. You know, maybe you haven’t really established the credibility you think you have, but it also may just tell you the kind of client you’re about to win is a trust and verify client. Like, hey, we’re always gonna have to have the data for these guys. So you’re kind of helping yourself set up the beginning of the relationship and understanding it. But I think that it’s like, you know, the worst thing you can do is if somebody is a very action oriented thinker, they’re not really in certain, certain e ego and archetypes are very, you know, I don’t want all the detail.

If I want it, I’ll ask you for it. Just get to the point kind of people, the worst thing you can do is walk them through like a seven slide case study full of charts and graphs that you could have summed up in 30 seconds.

Yeah.

Right. And so I think it gives you the ability to, I think that’s the kind of person I’m pitching to, but if not, I’m covered. Yeah, I got it back here. I’m not saying I’ll get that to you next, you know, tomorrow when I get back to the agency, I’ll send you a PDF, which can make you look like you’re trying to hide something. It’s just, I think it gives, it makes you look buttoned up lots of really good things, far better things than if you, you know, don’t have it all.

Well, and it’s also a buying signal, right. I’m not gonna ask a question about something I have no interest in. I want you to move on if it’s irrelevant to me. But if it’s relevant and I want more, you wanna be able to serve it up right when they’re hungry for it.

Absolutely. You know? Yeah. And yeah, and, and I think it’s, yeah, it’s, to me it’s just, it’s, it’s kind of the best of both worlds. Yeah. It saves you from possibly taking people through stuff they don’t care about and, and, and risking that mental checkout. And like you, to your point, as you were starting this off, so much of this nowadays is virtual. Yeah. And so you’re competing with that second screen that you know, is sitting next to the computer. There’s a phone, an iPad, a second screen, literally. Oh yeah. And you start checking out, I mean, man, they’re over here and they’re looking at you, but they’re looking at the email, they’re seeing, you know, slack channels going off and that’s it, man. Once you, especially virtually, I think once you start to lose people

Yeah.

It, it’s gone. You’re, you’re just done.

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about building the actual slides. You right before the break we were sort of talking about sort of this idea of being a minimalist and you know, like just having an a seashell image or a something and then talking about that for, you know, five minutes. Talk a little bit about how you view slide design from the science of memorability and sort of information flow.

Well, so I, I look at it like, you know, the slide is there to be a support tool to help build an imprint memory. So When, you just show a picture of a seashell. I you’re putting a lot of work on two people. Yeah. Putting a lot of work on your audience because okay, show me a sheet, a seashell and now this person’s talking and I have to connect the seashell to what they’re saying. I gotta figure out that. And I, and I gotta process all this information just auditory. I gotta listen to you and, and process it. So that’s a lot of work on me. But the scarier part for me about that is you’re putting a lot of work on that presenter.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, there are like you and I have probably, I mean you’ve probably stood on thousands of stages in your career in conference rooms and so forth. As have I, could you and I pull off that slide? Yeah. Probably, you know, all of modesty aside, we could probably both pull that off and do it in a way that is compelling and that people wanna listen to what we’re saying. You have a lot of practice, right? But you put a four, five year account supervisor up in front of a pitch and they’re nervous. Maybe it’s their first or second pitch and a seashell comes up and now they’ve gotta take all, they’ve gotta hold that attention. They’ve gotta not, they’ve gotta know their spiel inside and out. They have to present it so it doesn’t sound like it’s memorized.

’cause then their credibility suffers. That is an enormous amount of pressure. And, and I think you’re just setting your people up to fail. Yeah. So I think from just a delivery standpoint, that’s scary. But from the science standpoint, you know, you hear people talk about it all the time. Just put like one word on the slide or maybe like one point and you know, for keynotes where you’re doing like the nine ways to be a better presenter and the nine ways are nine different ideas that works because each point’s its own thought. But if you look at the most pitch decks, there’s gonna be a title, which is gonna be thematically what that slide’s about. And there’s gonna be a couple of support points.

If you deconstruct that slide into four slots, you’re actually making it harder on the audience cognitively, because I have to When you, you know, you give me your first, you know, big idea and then you say, okay, your first bullet point comes up on the next slide. I mentally have to remember the big idea and then I have to connect what you’re doing back then you get to the second bullet point, which builds off the first bullet point, which ties back to the theme by the time you hit the fourth slide. Right. I’m having to do a whole lot of mental gymnastics versus just build the slide. You know, put your idea up there in the title and don’t have it be like a, a tab in a notebook. Like put a freaking idea up there, make a statement and then here’s a bullet point that supports that.

And then, you know, gray, that first bullet point out when the second one comes up. And I can see mentally, ’cause the human brain can process about 400 words a minute. You and I speak at about a hundred, maybe a buck 50 if you’re from New York. So my brain can process so much faster than you can ever hope to speak. And you know, I can, I can quickly read. So now I can say, okay, I see how those two bullet points link to that. Now I can go back and listen to you talk ’cause you’re gonna help bring it to life. And now it’s just super easy. Yeah. So if you build that thing correctly and then you, and you have your presentation style so that you take a pause and let the person read the bullet point. Don’t ever talk when someone’s reading because your brain can’t process both inputs at the same time.

They, you can’t be speaking while I’m reading. It’s why, you know, if your wife ever talks to you while you’re reading an email on your phone and then you look up and go, huh? And she gets mad at you like, oh, you’re not listening to me. It’s actually not your fault. It’s biology. Your brain literally can’t process what she’s saying and what you’re reading simultaneously. ’cause there’s one little spot

In your brain. I’m, I’m totally, I’m totally playing that sentence. I’m like putting that on my phone. I’ll

Send you the

Side. Thank you. Thank you. I’ll, I’ll

Say you, it’s called the Wornick. It’s, I’ll tell you, it’s, you can look this up. It’s called the Wornick area of your brain. My my Fault. It processes visual and auditory speech. It’s, it’s where the words make sense in our brain and it can’t process auditory and, and textual at the same time. So it bounces back and forth as best it can. So it’s not your fault, it’s science, biology. You can’t help it. Love

That. Love

That. And you’re welcome. Thank you. You’re welcome. My, my wife almost believes it after all this time. So good luck to you.

So, so that’s an interesting idea though because I think you’re right. I think one of the thing, and this gets back to our why you have to practice, right? Because if you have not practiced, especially as a team, you’re presentation and as the slide is transitioning, what I’m hearing you say is when there’s new information on the slide, give it a beat or two, let them absorb it visually and then start talking about it. Which is a, which is a very nuanced element of the presentation that I think a lot of people don’t think about. I think there’s, so we only have 60 minutes, we gotta get through, you know, 300 slides because of course we always build too many in the deck, blah, blah blah. And so they’re kind of, if if anything we get told that we’re rushing through as opposed to it being more audience-centric and understanding how their brain is processing that information

Or Yeah. Or we’re just being lazy. We’re using the slide as a script, right? ’cause we don’t want to take the time to practice it and really know our slide deck. And that’s even worse because God forbid you’re reading the words as I’m reading them and you’re not using exactly like, you’re not reading it word for word. Well now you’ve created even more cognitive load because my brain’s hearing words, but I’m reading different words and they’re kind of similar, but they’re not the same. And now your brain’s fighting to try to figure out which is the authentic truth, right? Am I, is that the word I’m supposed to be remembering or what I’m hearing? And you’re just, man, if you could, the, the, the continent of load structure goes up so heavy you’re guaranteeing that I’m neither gonna remember what you wrote on the slide nor what you said.

And, and you know, that’s just a waste. You just blew 30 seconds to a minute of your pitch time. Yeah. I think it’s, you know, at the end of the day, you know, the, at the end of the day, it comes down to designing the slides to be easy to consume, which is also designing the presentation, the entire flow. What are the dots that need to be fed? How do I connect those dots so that it makes sense? It’s super easy. It kind of builds, like at the end of the presentation, if they’re not already at the place of I need to hire these guys, or this agency’s definitely one of my top. So like, if they haven’t come to that conclusion before you even say it, yeah, your deck hasn’t been built correctly.

You, you miss something, you, you, your argument fell down someplace you didn’t serve it correctly. And again, if you, if you can do it in a way like little soundbites, that makes it more memorable so that when they get back in that room and, and they can say, oh well that was the agency that said X, Y, ZI mean, you and I both know if you can get X, Y, z, you’re, you’re, you’re okay now you’re one of the two agencies that gonna, they might hire, right? Because everybody else gets dropped out in the first pass sort of thing.

Well I was gonna say, and that’s the goal, right? That they get in the room and the first thing they say is, who can we eliminate? That’s the first thing they say is like, how do we get down to two? And so your job is, it’s like survivor, right? You gotta survive to get to the final two. One of the things that you said early on that I wanted to circle back to, to get more detail was the idea of the science of repetition. So talk a little bit about how do you think about what to repeat and how and where and when to repeat it in the deck.

Well the where and when I can, you know, can vary. But when I’m building a, a, a pitch deck with a client, if, if, if, if you could ever open it up and see it in that like slide sorter view, you would see the key slide, the one that’s carrying the, the, the elevator speech. You’ll see that that slide appears about 30% of all the slides. So if there’s

The exact same slide,

There’s 30, yeah. Exact same slide, maybe a slightly different build structure on it, maybe a slightly different scripting so that it’s not just literally copy paste. But you would see that slide repeated about 30% of the time. Because the research shows that if you’ll do that, you have a higher, you actually can maybe get them to remember more than 10%. But if they only are gonna remember 10%, chances are that’s the 10%. And that’s, that’s your goal. I mean, I, if i I the, the 90% number, maybe it’s biological limitation, maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy due to bad design. I tend to be of the latter camp. But you’re never gonna get ’em to remember a hundred percent. Right? Well if you get ’em to remember 50%, you’d be like a presentation in God.

So if I can only get you to remember so much, I wanna strategically repeat the key messages over and over and over again so that that’s hopefully what you remember. I don’t, I want to what’s called a precision memory, not a random memory. And I think most agency presentations end up relying on random memory. Yeah. Just hope they remember the right thing. I’m gonna try to structure this thing so that you remember the key thing. I mean it may not work, you know, somebody may have a British accent and that’s what they remember, right? But at least this way I’m strategically repeating these key thematics in a way that’s structured in a way that’s designed to help you memorize them, but also to see how they connect to one another and how they form that like, core structure of my key compell point of how I’m different as an agency or how my solution is different than everyone else you’re talking to or how it’s better.

And, and if I can, like you said, if, if you can do that, I mean, I don’t know about you. My goal was always in a pitch. I want to, you know, I wanna make this a 50 50 bet. Right? You know, I don’t care how many agencies are in it, I wanna make this a 50 50. It’s me. Anybody else? Yeah, everybody else is all the same. They’re all vanilla. I’m, you know, I’m good chocolate over here. Like come get me. And to me this is a compelling way to be able to do that in a, in a pitch environment where you’re not in the room when the decision’s made your deck might be, but more importantly the memory of your deck is, and the memory of your deck is probably what’s gonna drive how that, how that conversation ends.

How important do you think it is, how critical is the opening in the close versus the guts of the deck? Like what, what in your opinion is the right last five minutes of the presentation?

Well, my last five minutes is the elevator pitch as is the first five minutes. You know, I, I think it’s that repetition. I am a big, big fan though of some sort of compelling opening. If no, if nothing else, just to just get their attention, wake them up, get them into, hey, especially if you’re not first or last in the pitch sequence. I mean, personalities always like to be first in the pitch sequence. ’cause you set the bar, you know, again, if you set the bar high, you know, every every other agency is now being judged against you. Right. And if you’re a last kind of the same thing, if you can be super memorable, everybody always wanted to be last. ’cause you’re the last, you know, you’re more likely to be remembered. Me always like to be first. If you’re not, you’re in the middle.

So I think the opening the close can be important. But again, if you’re, if you’re coming at this from a a, a strategic repetition standpoint, it really becomes less about the opening and close. Right. And it’s more about how many times can I remind you what is important about what I just told you? And so that takes that opening and close down in importance. And it’s, it’s more about, hey, let’s, let’s say it five or six times throughout the pitch instead of really hammered it at the beginning, right at the end. Mostly inches on. But you most, I find they only really sum it up at the end, right. You know? That’s right. They try for the big opening, something really creative and at the end there’s one slide, here’s why you should hire us.

Yeah. Right.

I mean, you’ve said it one time. I mean, and you wonder why people forget and it may or may not be all that differentiated, depending,

Well, I think a lot of times it’s, we’re super grateful to be here, glad to be here, blah, blah, blah. And then they go right into, here’s what we know about you, like here, or here’s, here are the facts. And I get that we have to establish, look, we understand your problem, we understand you, but that a number one, everybody starts that way. And B, you haven’t really told me what you’re gonna tell me. And you know, I mean, I don’t know about you, but in speech 1 0 1, whenever I took that, you know, it was, you know, first tell me what you’re gonna tell me and then tell me, and then tell me what you told me. So to your point, it’s start with the elevator speech, then explain the elevator speech. Remind me of the elevator speech, and then sum it up with the elevator speech.

Yeah. It’s, it’s literally, it’s that old cliche, but the problem is we see that cliche as a formation of an entire presentation.

Yeah.

Tell me what you’re gonna tell me, the presentation you’re telling me, and then tell me what you told me is the last slide. Big opening, big close, everything in the middle. I think the mistake we’ve all been making all these years, based on what I’ve been researching over the last half a decade, is no, that was absolutely great. We were taught correctly. We just weren’t taught, oh, by the way, you gotta tell me what you’re gonna tell me. Tell me, tell me what you told me, then remind me what you’re gonna tell me. Tell me about the next thing you know, like, repeat that process. Right. And by the end, you know, I can hopefully remember what you told me in, in a way that’s hopefully compelling and hopefully makes sense. And hopefully makes me think like, wow, that’s really smart.

Yeah. And let’s face it, if that’s what you’re trying to do, you’re just the smartest, the smartest agency in the team, in the, in the, in the pitch wins. I think, you know, I think hope so. Right? Maybe it was creative. Yeah. I think back in the day, maybe we, you know, it used to be more creative driven. I think nowadays things to become, especially with data, right? Things that become so calculated, so analytical, I, I think clients are trying to find the smartest people they can find. And they assume that your creative product, if that’s even part of the pitch is, is up to snuff. ’cause they’ve seen it so that you, they’ve already qualified you in that they’re just right. You know, are you smarter than the people that are gonna come 90 minutes after you?

Well, and the reality is, I think what they’re asking themselves is, is this person gonna help me not only keep my job, but get a raised bonus or promotion? I mean, that’s really, I mean, at, at the end of the day, yes, they care about the brand success, but what they really care about is their own personal alignment with the agency. They pick. And is this gonna make me look smart, or is this gonna make me look like I made a mistake?

Well, yeah, maybe think about it. You know, we sell a, we don’t sell a product or service, we’re technically hired to do products and services, but we’re really selling, and I’ve heard you say this before as well, is you’re selling the promise of a future outcome, right? So at the end of the day, their decisions all based on, I just talked to five agencies, which one? And they all told me they’re gonna gimme the same outcome. Which one do I really trust? Right? Most li which ones seem most credible? Who do I think is most likely to actually pull that off,

Right?

That’s who gets hired, you know? Yep. Barring some insider BS or, you know, whatever. If it’s a straight up pitch, the person who they leave the room going, that that’s the company that I believe is most likely to deliver that outcome, that’s, that’s who gets hired. You know? Yeah. And I think that can come down to your pitch, the quality of your presentation team. I mean, like, we could go on for hours. I mean, it comes down to like the way you use wording on a slide, When, you talk about research can make you more or less credible. And, and it’s simple terms of phrases that when I teach this stuff in workshops, people are like, nah, come on man. Really? And it’s like, no, here’s the research look. Like if you change this word to this word, you go from being, maybe you kind of know what you’re talking about to, oh no, you definitely know what you’re talking about.

Oh, you just change a word, right? And if you add the British accent, double

Down, you got it. You got it.

You know, that’s why all the good account planners were from Britain back in the nineties, right?

That is exactly right. It wasn’t their smarts at all. It was this stupid accent. Yeah. Hell yes. Yeah. They’re all British.

All of ’em.

Yep. This has been fascinating. I, I want you to kinda wrap this up with, if somebody remembers the one thing. So I’m, I’m now putting you to your own test. What, what is your elevator speech for this conversation? What’s the slide you would repeat 30 times for this last hour?

The slide I would repeat would be, don’t just show up and throw up. Understand the journey You need to take your client through your prospective client through, guide them through that journey as you take them through your deck and make your key points strategically repeatable and phrase them in a easy to understand, memorable way.

Beautiful.

You do that, I think you win way more pitches than you lose.

Yeah. Yep. Agreed. This has been fascinating. Thanks Tom, for coming back and being with us again and sharing your wisdom. I appreciate it very much. It’s good. Always good to have you on the show, so thank you. If folks wanna learn more, you welcome more folks, wanna learn more about you, about the work you do wanna connect with you to get more of this information. What’s the best way for them to do that?

Well, they could drop by converse digitals, converse digital.com, the, the company website. Or if they really specifically want to dial into this, they can go to perfect pitch workshops.com. There’s a landing page that’s got a lot of the science on it, opportunity to learn more, go deeper if they have questions. There’s a way to get ahold of me there and I’m always happy to chat with people about it and, you know, explain it and take it through it a little bit more.

Awesome. This has been great. Thank you my friend. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Alright guys, again, as you know, I like episodes that give you a lot to think about, and more importantly, a lot to do differently. And so Tom has served that up in spades today. So all of you make presentations all the time, whether they are informal, whether they’re to current clients, whether they’re, whether they’re to prospects, whether it’s a formal RFP process or you’re sitting in a Panera with a laptop open, or you’re doing it on Zoom, or you’re doing it in person. But every day we make presentations and every day we have an opportunity to win more business by presenting well, and I think Tom gave you a formula, a recipe of how to do that.

That if you go back and look at some of your old decks, you’re gonna go, oh, missed it. Oh, could’ve added it there. So I want you to walk back through this deck. If you are, if we were walking the dog while we were doing this, or you’re on a subway or somewhere else, go to the show notes. Read the show notes, listen to the episode one more time, and take some notes. And then practice. This is not a skill, Tom’s right, this, you know, presentation skills come with repetition. They come with more time on stage in air quotes. So figure out how to practice this so that you’re good at it by the time the next big opportunity shows up so that you can weave in all of the science that Tom talked about today into your next big opportunity.

So you’re ready to go and you’re ready to win. So that’s your homework from this for this episode. As always, you know, I want to send out a shout out and thanks to our friends at White Label IQ, they are the presenting sponsor. So at, as I have told you before, White Label IQ was born out of an agency who was trying to solve a problem, which was, we need more support on dev design and PPC. They found a small company to help them do that. They ended up buying that company and building it out that I think they’re probably five times as big as they were when they started with the whole concept of these are skill sets that agencies need to kind of scale up and scale down depending on the demand.

And so if you’re looking for a white label partner for design Dev or PPC and a partner who understands agency pricing, understands how to work with agencies to make sure that this work is profitable for the agency and fruitful for the client. White, Label, IQ are your fr your friends and your folks. So head over to White Label IQ dot com slash AAMI to learn more about them and how they work with many, many agencies just like you. So check that out. And of course, you know what? This is fun. I’m coming back. I hope you will too. So I’ll be back next week with another guest like Tom, who’s gonna get you thinking differently about how you run your business, and in the meantime, you know how to reach me. So I will see you next week, and I am grateful that you keep coming back.

So if you keep coming back, I will too. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.