Three weeks ago, the CMO of a San Francisco startup backed by A-list investors emailed me about her new sales deck.

“It lacks oomph,” she said. “The information is there. The slides look great. But we’re not telling a compelling story. Can you help?”

One of my favorite things is helping leadership teams craft a better strategic story— for fundraising, sales, recruiting, whatever. I was busy with other projects and couldn’t start immediately, so I sent a link to the man on the CMO’s team who built the deck — a guy named Zack.

Five days later, the CMO texted me:

“Andy, what did you send Zack? Because his deck got a lot better. Kind of like night and day.”

What I Sent Zack

What I sent Zack was a link to Elon Musk’s presentation for the Tesla Powerwall (the full video is at the bottom of this post). I also included a version of the points I’ll share below.

Musk’s delivery isn’t stellar. He’s self-conscious and fidgety. But at the end, his audience cheers. For a battery.

That’s because Musk does five things right that you should emulate in every pitch you ever make to anybody. And you should do them in this order:

#1: Name the enemy