The 4 Matrices of Sales Material and Pitches

Back in fall of 2023 I wrote a piece on storytelling in sales. The idea was, and is, that sales is decidedly an art and not a science. We are connecting to people, and having human interactions, so the way we go about our jobs cannot be mechanical and by rote. We have to be creative. That said, we have to do our job over and over again, and even the most creative people in the world need systems and processes to support their creativity. I walked through a 4-step process for building stories and thinking about how to use them in client interactions.

I mention that article because it is a good reference point and goes well with this post, and two of them combined are designed to help think through how to decide what materials need to be created, when those materials should be used, and then how to create them.

Here is a link to the article for reference: Article

There are four matrixes of creating external facing material:

1. Early stage vs. late stage: Is the material geared towards clients who know your business and solutions well, or towards those who don't?

   
   

2. Client vs. investor: Is the material geared towards buyers or investors?

   
   

3. Short vs. long: Is the material going to be used for short pitches and conversations, or for long presentations and meetings?

   
   

4. Presentable vs. sendable: Is the material going to be used during interactions, or will it be sent to prospects or potential investors?

The four step process that I reference above can be used for the creation of all of this type of material, and in fact, should specifically be used to create one foundational story that can be developed into each version of the material that you need to create.

The four steps of your story are:

a. Intro and hook: In this part of the story you earn your right to be part of the conversation by way of introduction, and you gain commitment from the buyer to be engaged.

b. Problem: In this part of the story you triangulate and establish agreement with the client on their problem, and its effect on their business.

c. Solution: In this part of the story you triangulate and establish agreement with the client on their desired outcome, the type of solution that would bring that outcome about, and the value to their business.

d. How to: In this part of the story you build a plan with the client for how to move to the next steps of the interactions and agree on an understanding of what the goal of that next step should be.

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Matching up different sets of material and types of pitches is extremely important to your sales process because it pays heed to the fact that you cannot close complex or relationship based deal in a single interaction. There are different stages, different people, and different goals that need to be addressed. Being aware of what version of your story, and what type of material will be most appropriate for different scenarios will help you be more effective, and more efficient with your own time.

There are a number of ways to think about different types of material. For example, Daniel Pink, author, speaker, and sales influencer, who I have referenced before in my writings has his version. His version looks like this; The One Word Pitch, The Question Pitch, The Rhyming Pitch, The Email Subject Line Pitch, The Tweet Pitch, and The Pixar Pitch. He is, of course, thinking about the early part of the funnel and how to attract, and secure conversations, but the point is the same. There are different needs for different scenarios, and thinking about those needs ahead of time so that you can apply your core, and fundamental messaging to different versions of content is very important.

As Pink explains it, “The purpose of a pitch is not necessarily to move the catcher, it is to provide something so compelling that the catcher becomes a collaborator, and wants to help shape the pitch”. What this means is that you are not trying to sell when you talk to the “catcher”, you are trying to persuade them to work with you. And what that means in regard to the matter at hand is that there will be more interactions and fundamentally different types of interactions and we need to be prepared for them.

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So let’s discuss that foundation in a bit more detail. If every interaction is an opportunity to tell a story, it is a good idea to have basic stories built out that suit all the various most likely situations that you will find yourself in. There are essentially 4 ways to think about the different situations you can find yourself in, and these are them:

1. Early stage vs. late stage — Early in a sales cycle your interactions will focus on discovery, and industry insights, while later in the cycle, your interactions will focus more on solution capabilities, deal terms, and negotiations.

   
   

2. Investor vs. Client OR Partner vs. Client — Depending on the stage and size of your company, a presenter may be requested to present to investors and to clients, but more often, revenue teams will have crossover responsibilities that include partner management. Partner presentations focus on the business needs of the partner and often deal with synergies and business systems, while client presentations are more focused on problems and outcomes.

   
   

3. Short vs. Long — The short vs. long matrix is as simple as it sounds. You should be prepared for everything from an elevator pitch to a 2 hour multi stakeholder formal presentation. Often, sellers, and marketing teams get caught up in the idea of having a standard template deck, but this often means that it gets used for various length meetings and that can lead to bad presentations if it is not manipulated correctly.

   
   

4. Presentable vs. Sendable — Presentable decks can leverage graphics, and videos, and can generally be longer, but should have very few words per slide, sometimes none. On the other hand, sendable presentations should be very short (either a one sheet, or a 3–6 slide deck), they should have more words per slide to explain what is going on and they should not include dynamic graphics or videos.

   
   

The trick is to remember that the presentation is not the slides. The story that you tell is the presentation, and the slides are just one iteration in aiding that presentation. You should be able to do your entire slide based presentation without a single slide. Further, you should be able to tell your story in 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 2 hours. Once you know how that story is told in all of those time frames, then it is time to create presentation aids like slides, videos, props, and handouts that make the story come to life.

What we are trying to avoid here is the classic template deck where sellers frantically pull slides from a prior presentation or a template into a presentation and then mix and match them to fit the current situation. The problem with this method is that it starts from the slides and then fits the story to those slides. This could work from time to time with a good storyteller at the helm, but to get it right consistently we need the story to lead and the slides to come second.

A 15 minute version of the story may not include information about certain insights and research that would add to much time to the presentation, but it may include a singular slide that walks the clients through all of the problems that the status quo causes for other clients and helps the seller launch into a quick version of discovery that will give them enough information to proceed. However, if the template deck includes a number of slides on the problem, and in order to run discovery the seller decides to use them all, they may not have enough time to work through the rest of the story. Similarly, longer presentations should involve more detailed product and feature descriptions, but short, and earlier stage presentations will likely involve a single and simple high level overview to replace all of that detail.

The idea is to look at the four matrices and select the 6–10 scenarios that you will find yourself in the most often and create the story versions for those situations. Don’t forget, this includes things like sendable takeaways, and insight based one sheets. Email and call follow up are types of interactions, and should be thought about as versions of your story as well. Once you have written those stories, it is time to create some materials to match them, and to make your presentations come alive.

It is not that having a template or repository deck is, in and of itself, a bad thing. In fact, once you have done this you should create a template so that each time you find yourself preparing for a new type of interaction it is easier to creates a new story and compliment it with materials, but the caution here is to make sure to write the story, whether it is as simple as a paragraph for an elevator pitch, or a line for a one-sentence takeaway, or as complicated as an interactive, dynamic experience for the client. First write the stories, then fit the materials to those stories.

Your Story Drives Your Presentation