In this day and age, there are no shortage of Powerpoint presentations to explain who you are, what you do, and why the audience should care.  Beyond the societal implications of releasing so much graphical presentation power to the masses, most customer facing presentations lose there way somewhere between “About Us” and “Questions?”

I continue to sing the praises of Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany because it nails so much of the reality of building, launching, and selling pretty much any product.  He covers the customer “problem” presentation and suggests the following simple to say but a bit more complicated to create three column approach:

1. List of problems
2. Today’s solution
3. Your company’s solution

Pretty straightforward but gets at the essence of what you are trying to do.  Odds are if something is a big enough pain, something has already been purchased or is being done to alleviate that pain.  You need to understand this and be able to explain how your product or service addresses the pain and is better than the current approach.

Having now done a fair amount of board meetings as the executive in charge of the marketing and product management functions at a couple companies, I’ve settled into an approach that seems to work.

First and foremost, provide your operational update through the lens of the sales pipeline.  Ultimately, this is what the investors care most about.  Is there one?  Is it growing?  Do people care about what we are saying?  Do they want to buy it? Do they have a pain? Can we solve it?  Are we winning, losing, or not even in the game?

All of the other aspects of marketing should influence, align, or support this effort.  I spend most of my time covering not just how we generate leads/demand but what we are seeing in terms of conversion to sales pursuit and deal.  It is essential to have these details at the program level and makes it easier to cost justify the marketing dollars being spent.

On the product front, an 18 month product roadmap that is informed by and aligned with clear market needs and requirements is essential.  You won’t cover this every time but it is important to reinforce that development is being driven by the market and business strategy.

I prepare my obligatory slides but always spend extra time writing up a Board summary that I use for my talking points.  This helps sort my thoughts in advance and forces me to a “just the facts” report keeping with the “less is more” approach.  It also provides a nice way to document activities and progress over time.

I circulate my slides to sales and business development even before we gather as an executive team.  This ensures an integrated report where all the numbers, measures, and themes match.  I also distribute this report or highlights to my team afterwards so that they can see how our efforts are rolled up and reported.