Pitch Deck Series Part 4: Don’t Bury The Lead
In part 4 of this series, I want to address the title on each slide and how most decks I review get this wrong. If you are interested in reading the first three parts of this series, here are the links to my previous posts:
- Pitch Deck Series Part 1: Design your deck as a story, not a form that you fill out
- Pitch Deck Series Part 2: Don’t Waste Your Cover Slide
- Pitch Deck Series Part 3: Wait, What Do You Do?
Much like the cover page is so often a wasted opportunity, the same could be said for the title of each individual slide within the deck. Far too many decks use a label as the title. For example, the title of the first slide reads “Problem”, then the title of the next slide reads “Solution”, then the title of the next slide reads “Market Size”, and so on.
I believe the root of this problem goes back to the topic I covered in the first post in this series, the fact that most entrepreneurs have been told to follow a specific formula when creating a deck. They are told you must have a problem slide, a market slide, a team slide etc. Therefore, they default to using those labels as the title to each slide.
Let this be a PSA to all entrepreneurs, never use generic titles on any of your slides. Never.
It should be painstakingly obvious by the content on the page that this particular slide is explaining the problem or the market or the team. If you have to tell me this is the “Problem Slide” then you aren’t explaining the problem clearly.
A far better approach is for the title to be the single, most important takeaway the reader should get from that slide. It should be a powerful, memorable statement.
Why?
The title is often the biggest, boldest text. It’s also typically at the top of the slide. This means the reader’s eye will always naturally be drawn to the title first and therefore it’s the first thing the reader sees. As I explained in my last post, you want to give the reader the most important piece of info right away, so they don’t spend valuable time trying to decipher what you are trying to say. If they are trying to understand the slide, they aren’t listening to you. Even worse, if they are reviewing the deck on their own, they might interpret the slide incorrectly, or at least not how you intended them to interpret it.
Take a look at the two slides below. The only difference between the two is the title. Which one is more impactful?
Yet more often than not, I see the slide on the left in Pitch Decks. Don’t bury the lead!
The slide that succumbs to this problem most often is the obligatory Team Slide. Here is a tip. Instead of using “Team” as the title, lean into the strength of the team with something like “We have spent the last 8 years working together at the forefront of the robotics industry.”
As you are going through the story arc of your deck, take a moment and hone in on the core message you are trying to convey in each slide. Then, put that message at the top. Put it in big, bold letters. Make it concise but also make it obvious what the reader should take away from each slide. Subtlety is not your friend. Do this and your deck will drastically improve.
