Customer 101 Deck

This genre introduces Verdigris to a new prospect at the first substantive meeting (post-discovery, pre-contract). Audience is the prospect’s initial evaluator: a Director, Senior Manager, or VP whose job is to decide whether Verdigris is worth a deeper look.

The deck’s job is to make the wedge legible — what Verdigris does, what evidence supports it, what comes next — without overwhelming a first-meeting audience with operational detail. This is a customer-empathy-led deck; Seren’s diplomatic precision carries the framing slides, Mike’s field credibility carries the evidence slides, and Mark’s founder voice is reserved for the close.

This guide documents only the deltas against pilot-kickoff.md. Read that spec first.

What changes

Density: live-spoken by default

Customer 101 is a presenter-led first-meeting deck. The audience is meeting Verdigris for the first time and needs a presenter to anchor the wedge, the evidence, and the “why now” framing. Default density is live-spoken (~30 words/slide cap; hero visuals at 60%+ slide area; speaker notes required so the presenter has a script anchor).

If the prospect cancels and asks for a leave-behind to share with their team, override on the deck frontmatter to density: leave-behind. The same content survives both modes; what changes is words/slide cap, headline:body ratio, caption sentence-level expansion, and removal of speaker notes (the deck IS the talk in leave-behind mode). For most evaluators who prefer to read first and meet second, that’s the right move — but it’s an override, not the default.

See pilot-kickoff.md § Presentation density for the canonical density spec.

What changes structurally

The 18-slide pilot-kickoff structure does not apply. Customer 101 decks have a different canonical structure:

1. Title slide (required) — Verdigris + the prospect’s industry / use case in the eyebrow
2. The wedge (required) — one slide stating Verdigris’s specific value proposition for the prospect
3. The problem in their language (required) — the customer’s framing of the problem Verdigris solves
4. What we do (required) — Verdigris in 1-2 sentences; supported by 1 visual
5. How it works (required) — high level; signals + intelligence + outcomes
6. Evidence (required, 2-4 slides) — case study summaries, anchor metrics, named customers (where public)
7. Where we fit (required) — Verdigris’s position relative to BMS, EMS, IoT platforms
8. Why now (required) — the market/regulatory/AI-load shift that makes Verdigris timely
9. Pricing model (per engagement) — when the prospect asks; otherwise defer
10. Pilot model (per engagement) — when the prospect’s evaluation is moving toward a pilot
11. Team (required) — Mark + Thomas + 1-2 named technical leads with role labels
12. Close: next meeting + agenda (required) — explicit calendar invite, agenda for that meeting

Slides marked (required) appear in every customer 101 deck. Slides marked (per engagement) appear when the conversation has moved to those topics; they are skipped on first meetings where pricing/pilot mechanics are premature.

What stays the same

• 12-column grid; 1280×720 master; footer band 32pt
• Logomark position + size; full lockup variant (PUBLIC tier means external surface, full lockup signals brand confidence)
• Confidentiality marking (PUBLIC); tier color is --vd-muted (subtle)
• Role labels in templates (“Verdigris CEO” not “Mark Chung”; produced deck adds the name alongside)
• Table dims, figures, PDF-exportable

Decision framework: where to land in the bounds

If the meeting expects pricing detail or a pilot-scoping conversation, that is a signal the deck is no longer a customer 101 — escalate to a draft pilot kickoff or a pricing brief and re-pick the genre.

Diction adjustments specific to customer 101

The Z2O-1321 diction rule applies: avoid internal jargon. Customer 101 has additional adjustments because the audience is brand new:

• “Verdigris” — pronounce it on the title slide, audibly, the first time. Embarrassing if a prospect has been mispronouncing it for 20 minutes.
• “Signals” — capitalize as a proper noun when referring to the product (else it reads as a generic word).
• “EVD atom / canonical claim” — never use; substitute “evidence” or the underlying number with a citation.
• “Pilot” — fine to use; this audience expects this word from a B2B technical product.
• “Customer” — first-person inclusive (“we’d want to validate X with you”); never third-person (“customers see Y”).

Template vs. produced

Customer 101 decks are heavier on prospect-facing framing and lighter on calendar-anchored details, so the placeholders cluster around the prospect’s name, segment, and the next-meeting CTA.

The template stage is what an agent generates from the spec; the produced stage is what a human (or evidence-grounded agent) fills in. Never ship the produced stage without source evidence for every filled placeholder — the prospect industry is from the discovery notes; the next-meeting date is from the calendar invite already sent.

Voice recipe

The customer_101_deck recipe in voice/recipes.yaml sets:

• Seren (primary) — people intelligence, diplomatic precision, operator empathy (voice/team/seren-coskun.yaml). The first-meeting audience needs to feel HEARD before they’re pitched at. Seren’s voice (“from my perspective”, “I will just quietly leave this here”) frames Verdigris as a careful collaborator rather than a vendor closing on a stranger.
• Mike (supporting) — field credibility on the evidence slides (voice/team/mike-mahedy.yaml). Operator-recognizable specifics — OCP-conference observations, real installation patterns, physical equipment reality — earn credibility that founder voice alone cannot.
• Mark (accent only) — founder voice on the close slide and the “why now” / mission-gravity framing (voice/team/mark-chung.yaml). Reserved for the moments where founder authority is decisive; not the dominant register because story-led at 50% overpowers a first-meeting audience that is skeptical and busy.

A customer 101 deck that reads as 100% engineering-detail loses first-meeting audiences. A deck that reads as 100% founder-narrative loses technical evaluators and can feel like a pitch dressed as humility. The Seren-primary / Mike-supporting / Mark-accent mix splits the difference and lands the deck as “we hear you, we have done this work, here’s why now.”

This recipe was revised after adversarial review (2026-05-02) — the initial recipe had Mark primary at 50%, which over-indexed on founder voice for an audience whose primary need was to feel understood. See LEARNINGS.md “Voice recipes need profile YAMLs as evidence.”

Voice at a glance

A producer reading this cell should be able to answer “what voice mix am I writing in?” without leaving the page. Pulled directly from the customer_101_deck recipe and the linked profile YAMLs.

Seren — primary (Profile: voice/team/seren-coskun.yaml). Diplomatic precision and people intelligence. Seren names what is positive before what is missing, frames opinions as perspectives rather than verdicts, and offers help in the same breath as feedback. A first-meeting prospect needs to feel HEARD before they are pitched at, which is exactly the register Seren writes in.

“From my perspective”

Carries: title slide framing, problem-in-their-language, what we do, where we fit, team — about 45% of the deck. Body register throughout.

Mike — supporting (Profile: voice/team/mike-mahedy.yaml). Field credibility on the evidence slides. Mike’s industry-insider voice supplies the operator-recognizable specifics — OCP-conference observations, real installation patterns, manufacturing economics — that earn credibility a founder voice alone cannot.

“I was at [conference] and they presented…”

Carries: the 2-4 evidence slides, how-it-works specifics — about 25% of the deck.

Mark — accent (Profile: voice/team/mark-chung.yaml). Founder voice on the close slide and the “why now” framing. Mark’s strategic_narrative (9) and mission_gravity (9) are decisive on the moments that need founder weight; bounded to specific slides because story-led at 50% overpowers a skeptical first-meeting audience.

“There’s a real question inside it”

Carries: close slide, why-now slide. Stays out of body slides.

Why this genre exists

The same pilot kickoff review surfaced that the pilot-kickoff template was being used inappropriately for first meetings, where it landed as “they’re assuming we’ve signed.” The customer 101 genre exists so the first meeting gets a deck calibrated to its purpose — not a recycled pilot kickoff with the customer name swapped.

What this cell does NOT cover

• Pilot-scoping decks. When the prospect has signed a pilot agreement and you’re scoping the engagement, use pilot-kickoff.md.
• Partner channels. When the audience is a channel partner’s account executive (not the end customer), use partner-enablement.md.
• Internal team coordination. When the audience is Verdigris-only, use internal-team.md.
• One-pager leave-behinds. When the artifact will be scanned cold without a presenter, use categories/one-pagers/guide.md.

See also

• workflows/sales-collateral — production guide spanning all collateral types (decision tree, naming, distribution)
• Pilot kickoff (primary spec)
• Slides index
• voice/recipes.yaml — customer_101_deck recipe
• voice/team/seren-coskun.yaml, mike-mahedy.yaml, mark-chung.yaml — voice profile sources