I remember the advice I got when I joined a leading Big-4 Consulting firm:

“Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; then tell ’em; then tell ’em what you told ’em “

So, what exactly goes in an Executive presentation?

Presentations, also known as decks or slides generally consolidate all the details of a project into a simple, actionable high-level summary for executive consumption. This is of tremendous help to executives who are hard-pressed for time, to understand the key takeaway for any situation.

Presentations are typically used:

  1. at the beginning of a consulting project to lay out the approach and get consensus from upper-level management (5–6 slides)
  2. in the middle of the engagement to discuss the detailed findings typically with the mid-level management (usually 30+ slides along with appendices)
  3. towards the end of the project to summarize the key findings or action items and define a roadmap for execution (usually 10–15 slides that give a 30,000 foot overview of the project)

The main concept that top Consulting firms focus on is “Storyboarding”.

When I joined a top Consulting firm as a Consultant, I would hear everyone talk about "Storyboard this" and "Storyboard that" but I had NO CLUE what they were talking about! So here's my simple definition:

Storyboarding is presenting your ideas in a format that has a logical flow to it. Research shows that people are more open to, and more likely to remember the same fact if presented as a story.

The presentation should tell the story behind why the team started this project to where we are now, what are the key findings, and what are the next actionable steps.

The best practice I learned through my Consulting career was - telling them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them and then tell them what you told them. Sounds like a tongue twister but it works beautifully because people have a short attention span, especially in the age of technology today, and it really helps to keep your audience on track vs. looking for an answer till the last slide.

Using this rule of thumb, a killer presentation should have the following basic structure:

  1. Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; à
    Executive Summary
  2. then tell ’em; à
    Body of the deck
  3. then tell ’em what you told ’em à
    Key Takeaways
    Next Steps / Action Items
Now let’s see what goes into each of the 3 components:

Executive Summary:

An executive summary can be one or two slides long. Basically, it explains to an executive what the intention of the presentation is and what the key findings are.

It summarizes the entire research and analysis or approach in a page or two and that is exactly what senior client executives need - the gist of what you’re trying to accomplish through the project.

Headers & Tagline:

This refers to the headings on each slide and the first line that gives an overview of the slide. These are the building blocks of your story.

Ideally, just reading through these headings and taglines should give the reader a good overall understanding of your research findings and recommendations.

Kicker:

If the real estate (free space) on a slide allows, then you can put in a text box with a border at the bottom of every slide. This is used to summarize the crux of the slide in eight words or less.

Kickers are also very useful for an executive to leaf through a presentation and note the key message on every slide to understand the overall strategy.

Visuals:

Executives are much more likely to notice your visuals versus the numbers. These can be charts, diagrams, tables, chevrons, icons, roadmaps etc.

Keep in mind that the graphic needs to correspond to the data you’re trying to present and there should be a key takeaway - popularly known as a “so what”- on every page of your executive presentation.

Never lose the message and make it all about the visual .

Summary/Key takeaways:

The objective of a summary section is to recap the key findings of your analysis as well as provide the ‘SO What’ of the overall presentation and overall project.

This section lists out the key findings of your research or analysis. High-level observations should be listed out here in a simple slide with not more than 5 to 6 bullets.

Next steps:

This section lists out the action items required to achieve the proposed strategy. This could be the next set of meetings, analysis required for the next stage, workshops, approvals for taking things forward etc.

Hope this helps you get started! What other questions do you have on presentations/storyboarding? Write in the comments below or email me at punya@byondgood.com

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Punya is a former management consultant with 15 years of experience at 2 Big4 firms, serving top Fortune500 clients. She has lived and worked in 6 countries and changed 3 careers working across several industries. Punya is passionate about coaching new and aspiring Consultants to succeed in Management Consulting.