Why Are Sales Decks Bland, Boring, and Lacking Storytelling?

A sales deck is the ultimate weapon of business pitching. While there are plenty of pitching options like cold emails, elevator pitches, social media pitches, etc., sales decks still remain the preferred form across industries. 

The concise yet comprehensive nature of the sales deck allows prospects to make circumspect decisions. And provides a birds-eye view of the company’s vision, goals, and capabilities. 

Yet Sales decks suffer the same fate as most corporate writings. They are boring, bland, and lack storytelling. 

Most corporate writings are full of jargon and made with a cookie-cutter approach. It talks about its products, services, features, and benefits but little about what it means to the client or prospect. 

Ace copywriter Jean Tang equates business writing to a date with someone who talks about themselves all evening. It’s impersonal and scarcely achieves the goal. 

In fifteen to twenty slides, sales decks tell a company’s journey and brand’s story. But the sales deck’s core objective is to display the organization’s two distinct capabilities. 

1. What the company has achieved in the past- It needs to establish its credibility using performance data and statistics. 
2. What the company offers to the prospect- display an acute understanding of the client’s problem and build confidence that it can solve it in the best way possible. 

When a sales team works on a deck, they gather enormous data on the company’s performance. Use statistical tools to display them, but this alone won’t achieve the purpose as every competitor is doing the same thing. 

What most sales decks lack is a persuading story, a story that the client wants to hear. A story that shows you understand the client’s problem and have ideas that could work wonders for them. 

Copywriting is more than writing the clear and concise text for advertising purposes. It’s about providing a narrative that can rouse the interest of your prospects, and here’s how copywriting strengthens the sales deck. 

Copywriting speaks to humans: 

Most sales decks follow the same corporate tone typical of business writing. With copywriting, you can adjust the tone of the sales deck depending on the audience. While simple writing always works best, omitting jargon completely might have adverse effects. Jargons are there for a reason. Hence its use should be appropriate. 

Copywriting can provide variations to the tone of your sales deck to suit the client’s sophistication and technical background. 

Articulating the customer’s problem statement:

Highlighting your customer’s pain points is a great way to grab their attention. The problem statement shouldn’t give a negative feeling to the customers but rather an understanding of the challenge. By describing the client’s challenge, they will feel heard, and the narrative will shift from your company’s story to the client’s. 

Copywriting can represent the problem statement in a way the client will connect with. 

Framing a solution:

The problem you mentioned above should directly lead to a solution. The idea for the solution should be feasible and translate into a tangible outcome. You can even provide solutions to the problems the customer is unaware of, which always happens in the software industry. Give them a picture of how your product or service will make their work faster, easier, and more effective. 

Solutions are mostly ideas, and copywriting can bring them alive in the client’s imagination. 

Using case studies:

Refer to case studies where you have implemented similar solutions with your previous customers. If the solution is unique, you can use case studies to display your expertise in the proposed technicality. In either case, use data to back up your claims. The data must be clear and outcome-oriented to communicate your ability clearly. 

Writing compelling CTAs:

Sales decks significantly undervalue CTAs, and some even completely omit them, afraid of repetition or stating the obvious. But CTAs give the final nudge or push to clients to take action and consider your value proposition. This reminder forces the client to acknowledge the available concrete solution and persuades them to commit. 

Including copywriters in the sales deck preparation will enhance the selling capability of the decks, and it is proven to increase conversion. When Dropbox employed copywriters to refine their sales decks, their engagement rate jumped from 17% to 65%, directly influencing sales conversion. They believed that the improvement is attributed to the strong narrative that responded to the prospects.