Well organized vendors assemble a set of collateral to use to promote their products. Exactly what it includes depends a good deal upon the product but, in general, it usually includes a PowerPoint presentation or a set of such presentations.

Why might there be more than one presentation?

It’s obvious really. Just listing the possibilities tells you why:

1. For technology analysts
2. For financial analysts
3. For journalists
4. For potential customers
5. For actual customers
6. For the channel (partners and agents)
7. For investors
8. For your sales force
9. For all your staff that need or want to know. (I advise you not to ignore this group. They get asked informally about the company and its products.)

I’ve put the technology analysts first because they should probably come first. Breifing them is likely to help in briefing the other groups mentioned. Different audiences require slightly different messages. So the intelligent approach is to start with a what-all-of-them-need-to-know slide pack and add or change slides for specific audiences. The analyst deck should have the following parts:

1. Company History: The who-what-when-where-how-and-why of the company. This is only required for relatively young or relatively unknown companies. It should be pitched as demonstrating credibility.
2. Team: Answer the question “Why should I believe that you can build a successful company” with reference to the executive team’s CVs. e.g. “our CEO made his first fortune with a database tuning product that he eventually sold to Platinum Software. He’s a serial entrepreneur. etc. etc.”
3. Stability: Answer the challenge “Prove to me that you won’t go broke before your product gains traction”. This is usually a slide about VC backers or other financial backers. The second most impressive thing to say is “technically we could be cash positive if we wanted, but we’re taking extra investment in order to speed our growth”. The most impressive thing to say is “our growth is now self-funding”.
4. Technical Team: Answer the question “Why should I believe you have the technical skills to create a compelling product?” with reference to the technical team and the evolution of the product. e.g. “Browsers-R-Us was formed by a breakaway group of Netscape developers who realized that Marc Andreessen was crazy to attack Microsoft head-on.”
5. Elevator Pitch: One slide with several sentences. If you don’t have an elevator pitch then you’ll never make a single sale in an elevator. This is the answer to the question “why?” and you do need an answer.
6. Market Opportunity: Answer the question “Why does the world need another mousetrap?” with reference to the product. e.g. “This is the only mousetrap that has been normalized to fifth normal form and has a latency lower than 10 milliseconds from the moment the mouse touches the virtual cheese.” Also you need to say something like “IDC estimates that the market for virtual mousetraps will grow to $3 billion by 2012, in parallel with the market for virtual mouse-mats.” (if you can). Of course, no-one will believe the projections, but it does no harm.
7. New Category: This is a special case in respect of market opportunity. It only applies if your product forms a new category. You have to answer the question “You need to establish a whole new market with this product. How are you going to do that?” This is a truly tough question to answer. Saying something like “Well Steve Jobs did with the iPhone” will strain credibility. The only real answer is through a very sober and compelling analysis of pricing, business benefits and ability to execute.
8. Solution Description: I hate the word “solution”, but I have to use it here. (It’s my what-word-to-use-to-describe-the-overall-context-of-a-product’s-usage solution). You need to explain the context of the product’s usage. “What does it do for whom and how?” You explain “how” in business terms before explaining “how” in technology terms.
9. Product Architecture: Answer the question “how do you do what you do?” preferably with a diagram or two. Do not be too simplistic. If you are, someone will notice.
10. Go To Market Strategy: Answer the question of “how are you going to make an impact given the nature of the market ?” This is about the ability to execute. Everyone knows that once you have momentum you’ll be successful, so the question is “how will you get momentum?” For completely new product categories the question transforms into the cliché “How are you going to cross the chasm?”
11. Pricing: “How much does it cost?” Everybody knows that the list price is not the real price and most of us know that the product cost is not the only cost, and may not be the largest cost. So this bit is about pricing strategy and how it will promote early adoption. Getting the pricing right can be hard and analysts will make judgments (which could be entirely wrong) on whether you’ve pitched the price correctly.
    
12. Case Studies: Answer the question “it sounds feasible, but does it really work?” with reference to an example where it really does work. These have to be referenceable customers. “Bear Stearns saved a fortune with our product before it lost a bigger fortune in the subprime market” wont do.
13. Customers: Demonstrate that your customer base is an awful lot bigger than it actually is.
14. Wrap Up: Tell ‘em what you told ‘em in 5 bullet points or less.

And while you’re making this presentation have an AR person taking notes, specifically writing down all:

• data points the analyst introduces
• points of disagreement
• objections
• strong agreement
• follow-up actions

Note: This posting is one in a series of postings that deals with the topic of dealing with analysts. Click here for links to other postings in the series.