Notes for owners · Sales management
How to build one sales presentation for a buying committee of three
One deck can answer the owner, the finance head and the person who will use your product, if each gets a named section and the order respects who decides what.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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You have built a good deck. Then your contact says, "Three of us will see it." A committee of three will not read it alike: the owner, a finance head and the person who will use what you sell each look for something different. The owner wants to know whether you are a safe choice. The finance head wants the cost over time and the payment terms. The user wants to know if it will make their day harder. One deck can serve all three if it has a section for each, in an order that leaves no reader waiting for their answer.
Who is in the room, and what is each person afraid of?
Start by naming the fear, not the title. A purchase fails inside a committee when one person's worry goes unanswered and they vote no quietly.
| Reader | What they decide | Their usual fear | The slide that answers it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner or director | Whether to proceed | Choosing a supplier who disappoints in front of customers | Who you have served, what you will do, what happens if it goes wrong |
| Finance head or accounts | Whether the money is justified and when it leaves | A cost that grows after the order; terms they cannot defend | A full cost table with every assumption, and the payment schedule |
| User (plant head, clinic manager, store lead) | Whether it fits daily work | Extra work, retraining, a tool that breaks | A plain walk-through of week one, and who they call |
Ask your contact which of the three has the loudest voice. In a family-run firm the person who handles accounts may be a relative whose weight is greater than the title suggests.
What order should the slides follow?
Put the summary first, for everyone, and then sections in the order that matches their influence on the day. A workable running order:
- One-page summary. The problem as the buyer described it, what you propose, the price range and the date you need a decision. Every reader gets what they need from this page alone.
- The user section, two or three slides. What changes on a normal day, who sets it up, what the first month looks like from their desk.
- The finance section, two slides. Total cost, what is and is not included, payment terms, and the price of the extras they will ask about.
- The owner section, two or three slides. Who else has bought this, what you commit to in writing and what you do not, and the people who will do the work.
- Decision slide. The two or three options, your recommendation, and the dated next step.
Why users first? They can sink the project later by not using it, and they tend to relax when they see their own problem described. Finance second, so the numbers are on the table before the owner decides.
How do you stop the meeting from going to one person?
Committees often drift to whoever speaks first. You can steer without being rude. At the start say: "I have set the deck in three parts, one for how it works day to day, one for the cost, and one for the commitments. Please stop me anywhere." That lets each person see their section coming, and they stop interrupting to ask where the cost is.
When one reader dominates, turn to the quiet one with a specific question: "You will be the one running this on the shop floor. What worries you about the first week?" Write the answer on the slide in front of everyone. A concern that has been written down is much harder to leave out of the decision.
For example: an effluent-plant supplier in Anand
Take an invented small firm in Anand that supplies treatment plants to dairies and food units. It faces a dairy cooperative's committee of the chair, the accounts officer and the plant superintendent. At the first meeting it opened with a long technical section, which the superintendent loved. The accounts officer asked about running cost in the last minute. No slide existed for it. The room went cold, and the decision slid to the next board meeting.
The rebuilt deck opened with a one-page summary, gave the superintendent a section on operating routine, and gave the accounts officer a table of electricity, chemicals and labour with the assumptions beside each figure. The supplier marked clearly which costs were estimates of its own and which came from the cooperative's own meter readings, and it asked the accounts officer to correct anything wrong. The corrections became the next conversation. The quotation still needed a second board meeting, but the questions at it were about the figures and not about whether the supplier could be trusted.
What belongs in the appendix?
Everything a single reader might want but the whole room does not: drawings, specifications, certificates, a longer client list, the full terms. Number the pages and say aloud that they exist. The appendix is also where you put the fine print that answers a reader's worry without taking five minutes of the meeting.
When is one deck the wrong tool?
If the committee is large, with more than five people, or the readers disagree openly, one deck will not settle it. Meet the finance head separately with the cost table, and the user separately with a demonstration. And when a single owner decides everything, as in many small firms, the committee structure is a distraction; use the shorter format in our post on a sales presentation that wins customer meetings.
Questions to settle before you open the slides
Send your contact four short questions the day before, and say why you are asking:
- Who will be in the room, and who signs the payment?
- Which of them has seen a quotation from us or from anyone else?
- What does the user worry about most in the first month?
- Is there a date on which the money must be approved?
Then write the three fears on a sheet and the slide that answers each. A fear with no slide is the gap in your deck. A contact who will not answer the four questions is also telling you something: ask again after the meeting, once you know who spoke.
The sales process hub shows where the presentation sits. If you want a deck built for your own buyers, see pitch deck development or tell us what you need.
