First_Call.md

Putting together that first deck is really hard. You've looked at countless TED talks and sales decks. You've modified your investor pitch deck. You're feeling pretty good.

You've got all the bases covered:

• The founder story
• The founding story
• Description of the problem (usually some change event macro-trend)
• Symptoms of the impact of the problem
• Your product overview
• Some more details on your product
• Maybe some more
• Demo

END

This is a great deck. By the end, your prospect should be in the position to say yes or no to continue to whatever Step 2 is.

Enter the problem

Neither a yes or a no teaches you anything.

And how do you improve and achieve some level of predictability without learning? I don't believe it's possible.

For primers on how I approach these early conversations, it may be worth checking out Knowledge and Process and Goal Number 1.

The presentation starts before the meeting. The invitation gives you a chance to include a proposed agenda. I always work asynch with my prospect in advance on the agenda. This gives you a chance to accomplish to critical tasks:

1. Align expectations
2. Establish credibility

Here are a few principles I work off of when preparing for a presentation:

1. Always have an agenda. People that value their time make decisions. Don't let them make the wrong decision because you don't value theirs.
2. There should be a takeaway from every slide I show. If I can't clearly articulate the value of the slide for the customer then it's gone.
3. I won't read off of slides because I don't want customers reading off of them when we're talking. If a customer wants a copy of the deck, then either add shareable slides after or speaker notes.
4. Time management is crucial. You are building momentum throughout the call. Don't waste it by potentially going over and having a key decision maker drop before next steps are committed.
5. More often than not, founders ask fewer questions than they should and don't learn anything from their prospect. The flip side is interrogating your prospect. I focus on a few opener questions for each section, allowing me to come back to important pieces of information with follow up questions throughout. This becomes a bit more art than science, but is necessary so that you don't bunch up all your questions, leaving them dissatisfied and you stressed that you won't finish the presentation.

Sections of the deck:

• Agenda: Ideally, this has already been agreed upon. What most founder agendas are missing IMO is the call-to-action, the "if this all goes well, here's the next step we take together". I want the customer to understand that:
  1. We need to make a decision at the end of the call
  2. There is a process that successful customers follow
• Intros: My only strong feeling is to manage the time on these. If you are a household brand or have some exceptional experience, share it. If not, limit time spent on you, since your deck and conversation will establish credibility. Just make sure that you do leave time (and perhaps direction) for your prospect to introduce themselves. Starting with name, responsibilities, and how this tech ties into their role may be a good start. Just be careful when you have large groups, as this process can quickly sway the value pendulum and annoy attendees.
• State of the World: 1 or 2 slides on what has changed. There should be portions that are familiar to the prospect, but then something that creates a reframe...like oh crap, I didn't think of it like that. You are giving words to thoughts and feelings they may have had, but hadn't expressed or thought through yet because they have day jobs. During the State of the World, engage with ideas like:
  1. What has your experience been like with this?
  2. How does this compare to what your team has faced?
  3. How has this impacted your team? (these get into the quantification questions)
• Unique value prop of your solution: Ideally contrasting to existing approaches
• High level technical differences: Be careful to not get sucked into the weeds here. Technologists tend to want to understand the tech, whether the questions have any relevance to their requirements or not. If you feel you're pulled down, ask about the importance of a specific question or topic area, or how they are doing that today. It will bring the converation back to business outcomes and internal processes that may disqualify the prospect.
• Demo: Allot the right amount of time here. You want max impact, while still leaving tricks in the bag. If you show them everything now, their curiousity will be quelled. Demo the product with a narrative. "I'm a X that has to do this job, I log into Y. The first things I care about are Z, which this product puts front and center, etc etc". Identify natural stopping points to ask how they may accomplish that task today, or how they may see their process changing if they had this.
• Validation slide: Here's the highlights. Restate painpoints shared (most likely to come out in intros or state of the world questions, if not identified prior to call). Ask: "On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being a perfect fit, how do you see our solution helping you to overcome X and achieve Y?" Dig into their response with a Why (or more). Once you have overcome objections or clear interest, move to next section.
• Definition of Typical Next Steps: Timelines, owners, value milestones
• Secure Meeting for Next Step: Include new stakeholders that weren't on the call. "Who else will be impacted by this technology or should we involve in the evaluations?"

This can be a bit daunting given how these engagements can stretch you in so many ways. Just focus on improving. Role play in advance. It will help, guaranteed. You're going to do great!