“Cured me!” I commented to my colleague, after a visit to a prospect.
He had wondered why I didn’t do a corporate overview presentation and why I didn’t at least show a “logo slide.” I told him the following true story…
Some years ago, I was leading the sales team for a Silicon Valley startup.
At that time, we had an extensive corporate overview deck that described our technology, our founders, our mission, our investors, our product history, our corporate milestones, and our slide of customer logos. We were very proud of what we had accomplished so far!
Our standard practice was to begin prospect meetings with this presentation to establish our credentials and set the stage for our product pitches.
It was a very typical sales approach for the time; we hadn’t yet learned how unnecessary and how damaging this practice could be!
The scene opens in a well-appointed conference room with a half dozen prospect players around an executive table. It was our first visit to this large firm on the U.S. East Coast and I began with our corporate overview, as usual.
When our logo slide appeared, I noticed one prospect player sitting at the front of the table lean over and whisper a few words to his colleague in the next seat. As he spoke, he pointed to the slide and shook his head negatively.
Intrigued and a bit concerned I said, “I noticed you reacting to the slide – are you willing to share what you said?”
He responded, “Certainly. See those guys [the logo] at the bottom-left corner of your slide? We think they’re idiots and we’d never purchase anything that they would!”
Ouch. Cured me!
Moral: Just because you are proud of your logo slide doesn’t mean that it resonates positively with your prospect. Even if you think you’ve selected logos that align with this prospect’s market, vertical, size and other factors, there’s no guarantee that it will connect as you desire!
If you enjoyed this story, you’ll find 34 more in Suspending Disbelief here!
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