Sales Deck 2.0: Shorten your B2B sale cycle by months

Evolve from selling your team to selling your product

I worked with and have been a part of many start-ups, and have seen many sales decks used for B2B sales, particularly in a healthcare setting.

Version 1.0 of the sales deck typically looks pretty much like an investor deck, it talks about your team, has logos of where they went to school and worked, it talks about your technology, but more about why / how it’s proprietary rather than the results to date.

It may have some market size information or a general statement of the problem and solutions, such as better patient experience or more efficient operations. It may do an analysis of the total cost to the system — such as re-admissions, or errors in analysis, in large numbers published by articles (e.g. x% readmissions rate or y million people suffer from mental illness costing the system $Z).

Some products may be more revolutionary — such as a new way to collaborate or visualize, utilization new technologies such as AR / VR to re-imagine what’s possible, a new way to do primary care, a better health insurance, etc. and appeals to the user experience rather than a hard revenue lift or cost savings.

This 1.0 deck is needed, because your early adopters are going to be people who believe in your vision, see the same problem that you see, and are invested in your team. In some ways, they are more like your investors than they are your customers. The early adopters may or may not give you any revenue, but they help you gather data, publications, clinical evidence, testimonials, and experience operationalizing whatever it is that you are selling. Of course the goal is to be able to quantify your value to them at the end of a pilot or trial, so that you can use that case study, publication, etc. to 1. get them to renew and adopt more widely within the organization and 2. publish those results to others.

However, after your first 3–5 deals, or perhaps more if your deals are very varied, when you’ve identified your key customer personas, sales process, hear the same set of questions being asked, your sales deck needs a 2.0 revision.

Here’s what should change

• Your credibility should come from your customers, and no longer your team (reserve the former for your investor deck, show where you’re published and deployed at instead)

• It’s time to SHOW instead of TELL. Show how exactly your product works in as much detail as possible, paint a picture of a typical patient, clinician, or other end user. Instead of talking about how you reduce variability in outcomes, SHOW the dashboard, scan image, workflow, notification, and actions taken for Jane Doe, 73 year old patient with heart failure. What popped up for the nurse, the surgeon, and anyone else that touches the patient?
• Detailed results from one specific site will be more credible than industry wide savings or changes (show reductions in re-admission at the site you worked with, rather than industry wide ones, share testimonials from your clinical champions and other users — patients, nurses, technologists?)
• Reflect on the top 3 questions asked by your customers and create slides specifically addressing those (for example, is it about use cases? how you compare with competitors, or what the IT process looks like to set-up? Pre-empting their questions will help you not only prove your credibility, but also shorten the sale.)

• Have specific next steps in templates — send IT set-up information, gather information such as the number of MRI scanners they have, (ideally some pre-filled from the call you just had), put forward a quote, etc. You direct the next steps conversation, don’t leave it open to “we’ll talk about it.”

If done effectively, your sales deck 2.0 should shorten your sell cycle by answering questions that are typically asked in the next step, and the follow-up materials should automate the process (give them the information they need to create a business case, help them convince another stakeholder — such as IT to OK the deal, allow them to share information with them team effectively).

Do you have any experiences of how these steps helped your move or shorten a deal? I would love to hear from you.