The 31 moves
A move is a unit of persuasion with a job and a lineage. The seven spines are orderings of these moves. Template galleries organize slides by how they look; this library organizes them by what they do to the room, with sources.
Warmer
Opens the room on the buyer's world, not the vendor's agenda. Earns the next ten slides.
Customer as Hero
Casts the buyer as the protagonist and the vendor as support. Kills the brag-deck opening.
Name the Big Shift
Opens on a change in the world that is true whether or not the vendor exists. Puts rep and buyer on the same side of the table.
Winners & Losers
Shows who is already winning and losing because of the shift. Loss aversion does the motivational work.
Reframe — Held Belief
States, fairly, the belief the buyer already holds. You can't overturn what you haven't named.
Reframe — Counter-Insight
The teaching moment: a defensible, surprising finding that breaks the held belief.
Problem — Operational
Maps the problem in the buyer's day-to-day operational language, precisely enough to be recognized.
Problem — Industry-Framed
Frames the problem at industry scale with cited third-party evidence, so it reads as the market's diagnosis rather than the vendor's.
Root Cause
Digs beneath the first-stated symptom to the cause underneath. The number that survives scrutiny lives here.
Agitation / Implication
Extends the problem into its consequences through implication, the way SPIN's implication questions do — pressure built by inference, not assertion.
Rational Drowning
The data flood that makes the current path untenable on the numbers alone.
Emotional Impact
Converts the rational case into a felt one — the moment the room stops nodding politely and starts caring.
The Gap, Quantified
Puts a number on the distance between current state and desired state, in the buyer's own units.
Promised Land
Paints the desired future state — outcome-shaped, not product-shaped. The destination that makes the journey worth pricing.
Obstacles
Honestly names what stands between here and the promised land. Credibility through admitted difficulty.
You as Guide
Positions the vendor as the guide with a map, never the hero of the story.
Magic Gifts / Capabilities
Presents capabilities as gifts for the buyer's journey — each one tied to a named obstacle.
A New Way
The turn: a categorically different approach, stated plainly before the product is named.
The Plan
A plan simple enough that saying yes feels safe — three steps, not thirty.
Bridge
Connects a before state to an after state and names the mechanism that produced the change.
Need-Payoff
Lets the buyer state the value themselves — the self-persuasion beat SPIN's research measured.
Proof / Evidence
The receipts: cited, checkable evidence for the claims already made. In DeckShift output this slide carries confidence badges.
Stakes — Success vs. Failure
Sets the cost of inaction against the payoff of action. Reference-point framing straight from Prospect Theory.
Call to Action
One ask, unmistakable, sized to the meeting. Never three asks wearing one slide.
Recommendation
Takes a stance: this path, for these reasons. Advisors recommend; menus stall.
Limit the Options
Narrows the field to two or three viable paths. Choice overload is a deal-killer, and this move is the antidote.
Guarantee
Takes the risk of choosing wrong off the table — pilots, opt-outs, and safety nets, stated as commitments.
Proof of Safety
Evidence that people like the buyer made this choice and are fine. The chasm-crossing beat for pragmatists.
Discussion
A deliberate open floor — a structured pause that surfaces the objection you'd rather meet in the room than after it.
Solution Reveal
The offer, finally named — after the problem has earned it. Placement is the persuasion.
Solution — Why Us
Differentiation with evidence: why this vendor, argued in claims that survive a fact-check.
A spine is an ordering of moves
Each of the seven house spines is a 3-to-5-slot ordering of these moves, chosen for a specific buyer situation. The full essays, with complete citations, live on the spine pages.