I used to love those old Fighting Fantasy adventure books where you had to make decisions as you read and then turn to the specific page to see the outcome. “Do you stab the troll in the dungeon (turn to page 34) or slowly lower your sword and run away screaming (turn to page 101, you wimp)”. Remember those? No, well then you’re clearly too young. Sod you.

Anyway, here’s an exercise that reminded me of such youthful japes, and you can do it super-quick to work out if you’ve got the right creds for the cold channel.

Firstly, how many slides are in your ‘New Biz’ creds deck? More than 15? Ok – you’ve already lost. Go back, make that into no more than 10 pages and then come back to me. I’ll wait.

Ok – so let’s start over. Do you have any slides that just introduce the page after it? You do? Well, remove that (to be honest, if you’re sending creds to someone who needs a slide saying “CASE STUDIES ARRIVING” one page before the case studies arrive, they probably won’t make it to the end of the day without hurting themselves let alone hiring a new agency).

Next: do you have one page with a big list of all the incredible things you do? You do? Great. Do you also have one page that lists all the people you’ve done them for? You do? Well… why not – and bear with me here – make them into ONE PAGE called “What we do, and who we’ve done it for”! Now they know that you’re very capable folks AND can see other people have trusted you (and came out the other end alive). Oh, and you’ve reduced your creds by another page. Huzzah!

With cold channel creds it’s ALL about getting to the point - and making the process a painless experience for the victim. If in eight pages I get to see what you do, who you’ve done it for, and then case studies (no intro page required!) showing commercial results and some smashing-looking work… congratulations - that’s one less dragon in the world.