Are Bank Pitchbooks Too Boring ??? Would Trendy 'Start-Up' Style Decks Work In This Industry ?
As the title suggests, are bank books too boring ?
- 50 slides long
- Graphs underneath text inside graphs beside text
- 18 bullet points or 220 words in a single slide
- Tables with 20 columns and size 16 text
- Diagrams that mimic the Apollo 11 Landing Gear
Too boring ? Too Wordy ? Are these decks ever even read ?
If you google "best presentation designs", the overwhelming response suggests short, snappy and concise works best every time. It's hard to describe complex financial products in just a few sentences but perhaps the start-up tech company's have the right idea. Would short and concise work in this industry ? Particularly for initial, introductory pitch books ?
Here are some examples below; (I can't post links but you can figure it out)
medium(.com)/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0 yesware(.com)/blog/sales-presentation/ slideshare(.com)/redmorton/presentations
Keen to get the opinion of the folks on this forum, are bank decks too boring ? Has your shop tried exploring alternative versions, would you try it and if so, what has the response been like ?
Sadly, I think 50 slides is selling the pitchbooks of today a little bit short...
Not once in any pitch I ever sat in on did we cover more than 15-20 slides. They were 10-15 slides that we knew would be covered from the very start, + 5 or so wild cards. Didn't stop us from turning out books that were 50-75 pages.
One of our MDs even called it the "thud factor." He always asked for extra appendices to "thicken the book" so that it would hit the table with more force, one of those subliminal power things that communicates the time and effort we put into this extremely important pitch.
He was an idiot. The best pitches we ever had were explicitly tailored to what the prospective client was asking about, and very clearly weren't spit out of a slide farm. At least for us, clients responded to a highly personalized pitch that didn't include unnecessary garbage. "Thud factor" just made us like everyone else, walking through the same dumb pitch.
Also, pie charts are the fucking worst.