Chapter 11 Tools of the Trade The Sales-Enablement Tools All Startups Need The Creative Communications Guide This should be a short document, ideally less than three pages that are shared somewhere like Chatter, where all employees have easy access. It should include your company’s official font, hex values for official colors, writing style, voice and tone guidelines, and finally, a boilerplate paragraph that describes the organization. One simple, easy-to-find resource for any employee to access. If it’s long or difficult to use, people simply won’t refer to it. First-Call Deck One common mistake that startups make is to assume that their pitch deck can be repurposed as a first-call deck for sales. Now, if it already has a great- looking template, that part can be recycled, but the content isn’t as transferrable. There’s a science to first-call decks and one of the keys is to keep them short. The instinct for most people is to create something that is 20–30 slides long and spend the first five slides talking about how great you are. The truth is that you might only have a 20-minute window of attention (regardless of how long the meeting or call is booked for), so you need to cover your most critical items in that period. Create something that is 8–12 slides long, with your font size at 30-point or more, and focus on using imagery rather than many lines of copy. What to include: • Cover • Agenda • Where we are today • The problem • How we solve the problem • What makes us different • Final slide with contact information The key is to focus on explaining why the customer might be feeling pain, even if they aren’t aware of it. Remember, when you sell, you will most likely have to sell the potential customer that the pain point is actually there, and that they need to find a solution. Only then can you sell the solution you have to solve their pain. If people aren’t aware they have a headache, they won’t buy painkillers.