What is a Deck, Sales Deck or Sales Pitch Deck?

Question

Sales in B2B marketing like to use the word "deck", "sales pitch", "sales deck", or even "sales pitch deck". They seldom use the word "slide" or "presentation" to say the presentation.

But, what is "deck", "sales Deck" or "sales pitch deck"? Since, they are almost the visual presentation, what are the differences amoung "deck" and "pitch", or "deck" and "slide"?

According to the dictionary, "deck" is the deck of a ship. Why people use the word deck to replace "slide" ? So interesting....

I've tried to google and also wiki, but find no clear information about the question. So, come to here and hope to find answers.

Answer 1

A "deck" as it pertains to your examples refers to a set of slides, or more specifically, a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation. Presentations from other similar software could also be a deck, but PowerPoint is the most popular.

I think it stems from the pre-computer days when presentations were on cards of some sort. Imagine an easel with a stack of poster sized cards, removing one to show the next. I'm not sure of this being the source, but it makes sense that if a deck (of cards) came first, followed by projected slides, and finally by computer displayed slides and animations, then the original word "deck" is still used.

A sales pitch is a presentation with the intent of selling something. That is, the pitch is the act of presenting, while the sales deck or the sales pitch deck is the set of slides used during that presentation.

Answer 2

"Deck" refers to a "deck of cards". I assume that each page or slide of the presentation is being treated as analogous to a card in a deck of cards. The metaphor implies that the cards can be sorted, and/or some cards can be left out of the pitch.

In the late 1980s (before HTML was invented, and thus before the Internet became the World Wide Web), Apple had a hypertext product that used "decks" of "hypercards". Each "hypercard" was analogous to a webpage, and each "deck" was analogous to a website (but was not necessarily available to more than one computer).