Here are the top 10 tips for creating an effective PowerPoint report that will impress your clients.
- Just tell your customers what they need to hear. The most important thing to keep in mind when building a PowerPoint presentation is that you only need to tell your clients what they need to know, not everything you learned from completing the report. Customers are busy and stressed like everyone else, and they just want to hear the key messages that address the solution.
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Clear structure. Each PowerPoint should contain the following slides:
- The cover
- The disclaimer page
- The content page and section dividers
- An executive summary
- Content slides
- Clear headlines for each slide. The title should form a link between the message on the previous slide and the message on the next page. Headlines must add value and answer a customer’s “so what” question. Your title should also make sense and should help make the page independent. In other words, if someone finds just that slide, it should make sense to him or her without seeing any of the other slides. The title should only have one sentence.
- One message per page. All slides must have a page number, except for the content page and section separators. Each slide should communicate only one message. Use bullets to communicate quotes or facts. You can use an appendix to get more detailed information that you want to share with your customer.
- Kickers. You may want to add something to your slide called a “kicker.” Kickers are added to a PowerPoint presentation to add clarifications, summaries, or implications of any information that has been presented.
- Clear language. When creating effective PowerPoint, you will use bullets and sub-bullets, not complete sentences. Sequential text must contain parallel text, and its style must include active voice instead of passive voice, that is, the noun and the verb must come at the beginning of the sentence. Be sure to be specific, use only the words that should be used, and refer to the company as “it”, not “they.” Don’t use contractions.
- Large print. Your font should never be less than 10 points when building a PowerPoint for a presentation.
- Clear data originWhen using notes or fonts, you should refer to lettered notes and fonts should be identified by numbers. The list of notes and sources will come below the data. Whenever there are two data sets on a page, put all sources and notes at the bottom of the page.
- Evidence-based opinions. If opinions are included in the presentation, they should be closely linked to the evidence supporting the statement. There is no room in your presentation for bold assumptions or guesses.
- Blank space. Finally, be sure to leave blank spaces in your presentation. If you don’t have blanks, you’ve put too much into your presentation. If this is the case for you, delete the information until you have only the components necessary to communicate the main ideas to your client. You can put the rest in the appendix of the document.