SAID DIFFERENTLY: Ep. 14: You Don't Hate Slides. You Hate Bad Storytelling
It's a true challenge to convert your messaging guide and go-to-market story into a slide deck that converts sales conversations. It's the hot topic in this episode with GhostRanch Communications' founder Mikey Mioduski.
Turning a positioning narrative into a sales-friendly deck can feel like an impossible translation job—especially when the stakes are high and the “first call deck” has to work across different sellers, segments, and buyer conversations. In this episode recap of Said Differently, host Jennifer Sikora (founding advisor at Troupe) talks with Mikey Mioduski, founder of GhostRanch Communications and Story Camp, about how to build slide decks that actually hit the mark: clearer flow, fewer words, stronger talk tracks, and better adoption.
Building a Sales Deck Is a Storytelling Problem Before It’s a Design Problem
Jennifer opens with an all-too-common reaction: “For me, to have to turn our company's positioning narrative into a slide deck, I have a severe allergic reaction.” And she points to a specific pain: it’s often harder to make the story sales-friendly than it is to build a narrative for an investor pitch. That translation from an internal messaging doc to an externally-facing usable deck is where anxiety spikes.
Mikey’s answer starts with context. “It really depends, first of all on the kind of the sales motion and setup,” from scrappy teams selling one solution to multi-product, multi-industry complexity. What matters most is whether there’s “a repeatable, sticky way to guide someone through this that sellers of all different varieties… can learn and latch on to.” In other words: build a flow that works “from for the best seller down to like, maybe someone more green as well.”
The Delete Key, a Separate Send-Behind, and a Better Rhythm
Jennifer names a familiar trap: erring on the side of “putting too much content on the slide versus kind of keeping it slim and trim.” Mikey’s prescription is blunt: “The delete key, whenever possible,” and pushing detail either into a talk track or “a separate send-behind document.”
Then he reframes a big misconception: “We like to coach our clients out of thinking about slide count.” Even if some times want to be specific about a certain number of slides to use, Mikey argues the better target is rhythm: “it’s not about slides, but about a rhythm and a cadence, and, you know, a flow.” That’s how 30 slides could look like five or six slides.
He also emphasizes that most presentations try to say everything rather than one thing. He describes the decks that work as having “a through line, from beginning, middle to end.... [with] one core, central, big idea that is kind of hammered throughout.” And he sets the bar plainly: “If you can kind of control that one takeaway in the mind of the recipient, then you've probably done a better job than 99% of presentations out there.”
Make It Real Earlier: Storyboard First, Then Slides
Jennifer points out another failure mode: a deck can look great when you review it on your own, but “when you actually go to put it into practice, you start realizing certain things don't click right.”
Mikey traces part of the issue to staying in script form too long: “There's a tendency to want to nail the script in Google Docs… but staying there too long, can… slow down the production of the actual thing that you're going to present.”
His practical workaround: start thinking visually earlier with a split layout: “text on the left, like a slide or an image on the right” so teams can get a better idea of how it's fitting together, flowing, and where to naturally break up the slides.
Jennifer muses that this is basically storyboarding. Mikey agrees, and contrasts it with the common alternative: the “hodgepodge” approach of “smash all these slides together and then figure out a good flow.”
Adoption and Measurement: The Missing Feedback Loop
Jennifer shifts the conversation to outcomes: you can have “a really pretty great-looking deck and it doesn't convert.” So how do you know what’s working and what’s not?
Mikey explains why this is hard for agencies: “we've never been able to answer that point blank question from clients, like, how do you know it's going to work?” Traditionally, it’s mostly anecdotes or using antiquated data such as number of downloads. It's why he and his team at GhostRanch are looking forward to bringing in Troupe for clients that desire this kind of adoption and impact analysis.
For People Who Hate Slides: Make Them Conversational
Jennifer asks about the folks who’d rather talk than present.
For slide-minimal sellers, Mikey suggests anchoring on the types of slide visuals that invite dialogue, such as maturity matrixes or architectural slides.
Jennifer reiterates that presentations should be a dialogue, not “let me get you through these 18 slides, and then we'll talk.” Mikey agrees and advocates for interaction design inside the deck itself: “Section dividers that are maybe have, like, a question posed,” because slides “should facilitate back and forth.”
They wrap up the episode with a great speed-round of questions about Mikey's preferences when it comes to creating slides -- you'll have to listen to the full episode to hear his answers!