Pitch perfect. Creating winning pitch decks that seal the deal

Here’s the pitch: A pitch deck helps potential clients and investors quickly understand who you are and what you’re capable of. Since you only get one shot at making a great first impression, your pitch deck must look professional, be on brand and effectively communicate your story. Fortunately, there’s an easy and cost-effective way to put your best pitch forward.

Whether running a business, launching a product or looking to increase sales, a pitch deck can help you communicate with prospective clients or investors so they understand what you can do for them and why you’re a worthwhile investment.

At just 10-15 slides, the key to a great pitch deck is telling your story in a concise yet compelling way that is relevant to your audience.

A pitch deck helps you achieve revenue goal and targets

A pitch deck clearly lays out what you’ll achieve and how you’ll do it, so you can confidently pitch your idea, product or business. It also uncovers any challenges so you can find ways around them to achieve your goals.

Pitch pro tip: Learn how sales teams use Canva⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

A pitch deck allows you to reach more people, faster

Information should be whittled down to what’s essential. This makes it easy to share either in person or online. By removing the need for long conversations or meetings, focus on building relationships with prospects to close more deals at speed.

Pitch pro tip: Turn your pitch deck into a pre-recorded pitch presentation⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to increase reach.

A pitch deck can visually set you apart

Having a strong brand identity gives people confidence in what you do. In addition, incorporating data visualization, such as infographics and graphs, is effective when seeking investors or securing sales. You don’t need to be a designer either – platforms like Canva allow you to choose a template and simply add the relevant information.

Pitch pro tip: Take a look at 20 pitch decks from successful companies around the world⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

In general, a pitch deck should cover the following 10 slides.

1. Introduction: who you are and what you do
2. Problem: what’s the issue you’re trying to solve
3. Solution: how you are going to solve the problem
4. Competitive analysis⁠(opens in a new tab or window): comparing similar products and why yours is different
5. Target audience: who is most likely to use your product
6. Marketing and sales strategy: how you’ll get your product to market
7. Goals: what you hope to achieve
8. Team: the people who will be working on the project
9. Financials: your current situation and future projections
10. Investment and funding: how much money you need to get it happening.
    

While it used to cost a small fortune to create professional-looking pitch decks, it’s easy to customize an existing pitch deck template⁠(opens in a new tab or window). Simply choose a template that’s right for you and add the information that’s right for your audience.

The goal of a sales pitch is to convince an audience that your business, product or platform is right for the job. You can do this by setting up the problem and showing how you can solve it for a specific audience and within budget.

Design tip: Go above and beyond with a customized sale deck for each client. It’s easy to do by creating saved templates that anyone in your organization can customize in seconds.

Suggested reading: How To Build The Perfect Sales Presentation⁠(opens in a new tab or window)

The Investor pitch deck is ideal for startups or anyone looking for venture capitalists or investors to fund a project or new product. While most investor pitches follow a similar structure, the template you choose should match the tone of the product or service. Fir example, if it’s a cutting edge product, the template should feel modern.

Design tip: Make your pitch deck slick by building a brand kit that brings together your brand fonts, logos, colors, icons, imagery and graphics. This instantly creates a cohesive look to make your product feel more established to increase investor confidence.

Suggested reading: How to design a pitch deck that will impress investors⁠(opens in a new tab or window)

When selling a product, brand or ideas, it’s all about capturing attention and standing out. Marketing decks should be visual with on-brand images and colors. Storytelling is key so be sure to include an exciting introduction to your product or service, business case studies, and a clear call to action. Don’t yet have the final product? Tap into AI to generate copy, designs, and images in a snap⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

Design tip: Access 100 million+ premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics with Canva. Simply pick your templates and add high-quality, professional photos, videos and graphics to make your presentation sing.

Suggested reading: How to build a digital marketing strategy from scratch⁠(opens in a new tab or window)

Finally, here are some top tips to help you pitch like a pro.

1. Choose a template that fits your pitch needs⁠(opens in a new tab or window), whether selling a product, a business or even an idea
2. Collaborate as a team to perfect your presentation with Canva for Enterprise⁠(opens in a new tab or window). Effortlessly work together on presentations, collaborate in real time, improve team communication, streamline workflows and approvals and even translate pitch decks into multiple languages.
3. Incorporate visual devices – everything from infographics to cutting-edge content and video – to sell products or secure funding.
4. Convert pitch decks to interactive presentations in minutes to increase your audience (and with it, sales). Plus you can present remotely using Canva Live or pre-record presentations ahead of time.
5. And last and definitely not not least, we highly recommend you read: Pitch perfect: 5 ways to wow your clients when you pitch⁠(opens in a new tab or window).
   

Now you’ve got everything you need to pull together a winning pitch deck, it’s time to start designing. If you want to learn more, Canva makes it easy for anyone on your team to create sales pitch decks, advertising and sales promotions, videos, and more. Take a look for yourself at canva.com/solutions/sales⁠(opens in a new tab or window).