Presentation training · for pitches, boards and buyers

The deck is fine.
The room never came with you.

Slides got made. Slides got read aloud. Decisions got deferred. A presentation isn't a document with a listener; it's a proposal with a pulse. That gap is trainable in days.

Book the 20-minute call Read the stories ↓

The offer, so you don't have to scroll: structure, delivery and the ask, trained on your real presentation.

£1.5m
largest single deal at BT
biggest in the division's history
20+
years in the field
before the flipchart
1 in 3
close ratio held for a full year
at 100% of target
100
owners closed into $10k coaching,
then trained to sell themselves
Every number on this page is verifiable. My sales managers at BT and Croner will take your call.
You already know this story

Thursday, 2pm. The boardroom slot.

Slide 4 is where they check their phones. Slide 23 is where the decision-maker asks the question the deck was going to answer on slide 40. You answer it early, out of order, and the room relaxes. That moment is the presentation.

Afterwards the feedback is kind: “really thorough.” Nobody decides anything. The follow-up email chain will now run for three weeks doing what the room could have done in an hour.

You realise, watching the recording, that you spent 38 minutes informing and zero minutes asking. Nobody was ever told what you wanted from them. It was never on a slide.

The quiet math of a deferred decision
A pitch that informs but doesn't ask doesn't just cost the hour; it costs the three weeks of follow-up and the momentum you had when the room was warm. Presentations don't fail on polish. They fail on the missing ask.
Presentation training
Thirty-eight minutes of informing, zero minutes of asking. · brand scene

I pitched for twenty years at enterprise scale, and the £1.5m deal (the division's largest) wasn't won by the best deck. It was won by a structure: their numbers said back, the problem named in their words, the ask made in the room.

A presentation is a decision meeting in disguise. Train it like one.

The turn

Presentations don't fail on slides. They fail on structure, delivery and the missing ask.

The first ninety seconds that earn the next thirty. The pause that lets a number land. The ask, out loud, with a date attached. Nobody ever taught your team that presentations are sales. I'll teach it in a week.

Stories from the room

Three scenes you'll recognise.

Twenty years in the field, told honestly. The Receipt stories are mine and verifiable. The Pattern stories are composites: details changed, lessons intact.

The Receipt

The room where £1.5m was won

The biggest deal of my career came down to one room. We opened with their numbers, not our logo. Named the problem in words their ops director had used in the discovery. Asked for the signature date in the room. The deck was eleven slides. Nobody remembers the slides.

Ask in the room, or chase it for weeks.
The Pattern

Slide 47

The pattern: the 47-slide deck built “because the buyer is technical.” The buyer reads three slides and forms the opinion in ninety seconds; the other 44 are for the presenter's nerves. The fix is never more slides. It's a braver first one.

Slide one should earn slide two, not summarise it.
The Receipt

Trained by the buyer

Holding the £2m budget meant sitting through hundreds of pitches as the decider. You learn what a room does with a confident pause, a number said slowly, an ask made without apology. Everything in my presentation training came from that chair.

The buyer's chair is the best training ground there is.
Who's training your team

Jamie Sonnex, on a first-name basis with every seat at this table.

i.

The practitioner

Twenty years selling before teaching: £1.5m at BT, a 1-in-3 close ratio held for a full year at 100% of target. I only teach the moves I've run myself, at scale, on real money.

ii.

The trainer

At Think Tank I closed 100 owners into $10k-a-year coaching programmes, then trained the owners myself in prospecting, pricing and closing. The ones who drilled it beat the ones who "just had the gift." Every time.

iii.

The buyer

I've held the £2m programme budget and sat through hundreds of pitches and demos as the decider. I know what a room does next, because I was the room.

iv.

The operator

Training that doesn't survive contact with the day job is theatre. I ran programmes at BT scale, so everything I teach ships with the operational kit that keeps it alive after I've gone.

"I only teach what I've done for money. That's not a slogan; it's a syllabus."

The standard

How I train: the whole method in four lines.

Before

Your deals, not case studies

Training built from your pipeline, your recordings, your objections. Nobody practises on someone else's business, because nobody sells in someone else's business.

During

Drill, don't lecture

Nobody learns to close from a slide. Rounds of filmed practice, feedback the same hour, everyone rotates until the move is theirs. Uncomfortable for ten minutes, then unbeatable.

The week after

The manager's kit

One-page scorecards, a 1:1 script and a coaching rhythm, so the training compounds after I've left. Training that needs the trainer forever isn't training.

The result

One team, one playbook

Shared discovery, shared objection handling, a close that's allowed to feel like a conclusion. New starters onboard to a system in weeks, not folklore in months.

The receipts

Anyone can claim. This brand exists to prove.

The numbers above, the deals behind them, and a public ledger of the whole journey: applications, rejections, results, lessons. The highlight reel is boring; the work is the evidence.

The Training Room: proof in public
The offer

The same offer I make on every call.

✓ What the 20 minutes is

You bring the presentation: the real one, the one that matters. I'll rebuild it with you into a decision machine, and coach the delivery until the room comes with you. If the deck isn't the problem, I'll say so.

✗ What it isn't

A pitch. There's nothing to buy on the call except a decision, and you'll know inside ten minutes whether I'm the person to train your team.

The Training Deal
Bring me the team. I'll bring the drill.
  • Built on your real deals, objections and prices, not generic roleplay
  • Practice-first: filmed rounds, same-hour feedback, nobody hides at the back
  • Every person leaves with the same one-page playbook
  • Manager's kit included, so it survives the week after I leave
Book the 20-minute call
From the engagements The options went to the C-level. Priced, comparable. They picked one.
Enterprise IT · EE/BT · the full story on the hub
Last line

Inform less.
Decide more.

Structure, delivery and the ask, trained on your real presentation. Your next boardroom slot ends with a decision, not a follow-up chain.

Book the 20-minute call

You'll know inside ten minutes. · Every number on this page is verifiable.