FrankenPrez is Killing your Message
It—s Aliiiiiiiive!!!!!!! Well, barely. It—s your sales deck, and let—s be honest, she ain—t what she used to be. Pitch after pitch, week after week, your deck has become a non-cohesive collection of crappy one-off slides, each adorned with an after-thought vanilla stock image or off-brand piece of generic clip art.
But hey, what—s a sales pro supposed to do? Marketing—s design queue is backed up for weeks, and you need two new slides for a 2:00pm call. Plus, you—re using the template that marketing gave you anyway, so what—s the harm?
Well, that —template— you speak of is a bastardized, battered-up version of a once pristine PowerPoint that marketing designed about four years ago. This —template— you now have in your possession contains about 10 different fonts, every color in the rainbow, and more Google images than Google images. It—s the kind of stuff that would keep design directors and brand managers up at night—if only they had time to check it out.
It reminds me of the game of telephone that we used to play as kids. In case you don—t remember playing the game of telephone, allow Jimmy Kimmel and the Avengers to refresh your memory:
Ultimately, each new slide that is hurriedly created by hurried sales folk can morph your deck into a monster. It doesn—t happen overnight, but if your sales group moves quickly—and I can assume you do, then it's easy to lose track of a "master" deck.
Let—s say Tina creates a last-minute slide to illustrate a new product feature. The rest of the team really likes it, and they ask Tina to share the deck. Now, everyone else in sales adapts Tina—s original slide to meet the needs of their prospect—s industry, and the prospect—s industry after that, and so on, and so on, and so on.
And that is just one slide.
Now, imagine what happens when a giant sales team pitching hundreds of products with thousands of features to multiple industries starts getting clever with these last-minute slides and adaptations. It's not hard to imagine, because it happens every single day. If nobody is keeping an eye on this process, things can get weird in a hurry. Pretty soon, instead of hearing and seeing your core message of —We sell the best email marketing software in the world,— your prospect is hearing and seeing something more along the lines of —The diaphragm jelly is in my glovebox?—
This can change, and that is our "why."
A slideshow can be one of the greatest storytelling formats there is. With each new slide, you have the power to surprise, delight, engage, educate, entertain and persuade. We want you to fall in love with this storytelling medium again. We want each slide to be given the TLC it deserves, so that your decks—s overall message is polished, cohesive and actionable.
GhostRanch Communications is a dedicated presentation design resource. We work directly with sales professionals to create beautiful custom slides, even in a pinch. But not before we've worked with your marketing department to fully understand your organization's design and brand guidelines, to ensure that everything we produce is on-brand.
Say no to Franken-Prez. Say yes to a dedicated slide designer from GhostRanch Communications, they'll help free your time so that you can focus on what you're truly good at: closing business.
About The Author
Michael "Mikey" Mioduski founded GhostRanch Communications in 2015 after falling in love with the medium of presentation design. He holds an MFA in Advertising Design from SCAD, a BA in History from DePauw University, and currently lives with his family in Zionsville, Indiana.
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