On the death of the deck.
Why we stopped sending pitch decks, and what we send instead.
For a year and a half, we sent pitch decks. PDFs. 22 to 38 slides. Cover, agenda, "About us", case studies with carefully cropped screenshots, a process diagram, a pricing slide, a "what's next" slide.
Then we stopped.
The deck was doing two things, and one of them was lying. It was helping us look professional in the inbox. It was also pretending we knew the answer before we'd actually had a conversation.
What we send now
A two-paragraph email. The first paragraph reflects back what we heard from the brief. The second paragraph is one or two specific questions we have about the problem before we'd be willing to estimate.
If the project is bigger, we'll send a one-page document — written, not designed — laying out what we'd want to learn in a discovery phase, what it would cost to find out, and what we'd be able to commit to after that.
What we lost
Some prospects ghost us. They wanted a deck. They wanted to forward it to their boss. They wanted slides they could put their company logo on for an internal pitch.
That's a real cost, and we accept it. The clients who reply to a two-paragraph email tend to be the clients we want to work with — the ones who'd rather have a real conversation than collect a folder of PDFs.