Is part of your job creating and delivering presentations to an executive or executives regularly? This week’s post is about making excellent executive presentations.
Before we start, I want to make a clear distinction between actually presenting, meaning the delivery of the content – where you are more important than the content – and the content itself. The content is important, and more so, if it’s going to be shared beyond the people attending your presentation. The purpose of this post is to ensure that the material you prepare can be shared more broadly, and anyone that picks it up can understand what that document is all about.
And I am very excited to talk about this because this is one of those topics where I feel I have huge imposter syndrome. I think I have much room for improvement, and being able to share what I’ve learned so far is very exciting.
What’s essential when creating an excellent executive presentation?
The first thing that has to be very clear when making excellent executive presentations is “The Why.” Usually, executive presentations deliver a recommendation to an executive or executives to make a decision, therefore having clarity on the “why” is very important.
Just as important is to understand “Who” is the audience for this presentation? Are you presenting to the final decision maker? That could be a divisional leader, the owner of a P&L, or even the company’s CEO.
In any case, make the presentation a performance and make it memorable. But also be cognizant. It may be that whomever you’re presenting to has to share it with someone else later. Maybe with a superior, or if you are presenting to the company’s CEO, they may have to share this with the board or with investors. Be mindful not to make it a performance and memorable only for those attending. But also that the material is easily understood when it’s shared with someone else.
Five Recommendations to create excellent executive presentations
1) Focus on the “WHY”
Make sure your presentation focuses on the “Why.” In most cases, you’re delivering a recommendation so that the executive or executives can make a decision for the business. Ultimately, the way you win is if a decision is made, even if it’s declining your recommendation. This is why understanding the “Why” is critical.
2) The first 3-minutes are key
The first three minutes of your presentation are critical. I recently read a book called “The 3-minute Rule” by Brant Pinvidic. He’s a former TV executive, and he sold shows like “The Biggest Loser.” He mentions how in those first three minutes, the people that are listening to you will either agree to move forward or not with the conversation you’re having.
In a presentation, this happens on the first slide, usually referred to as the “Executive Summary.” Here, you summarize the key elements of the presentation on one page. That way, the executives reading it won’t have to read the whole deck to know what’s going on. In terms of formatting, knowing your audience and their preferences is critical. While some prefer the bullet-point format, this format can turn challenging to read. One of the key things that I’ve learned about making good executive presentations is to use tables as they make it much easier for the reader to follow the information. In the images below, you can see the difference.
Since most executive presentations will be about making a recommendation, ensure your executive summary clearly states the recommendation and the “So What” for the business -> why does it matter. Finally, your executive summary should be the last slide you create. I’ll show you how it writes itself.
3) Use sections and the slide sorter view
Use a couple of underutilized features in your presentation tool. If you’re using Keynote or PowerPoint, I want to show you a couple of features that will help you tremendously to tell your story.
- Creating sections
- Using the Slide Sorter View
When you outline your presentation (which you should always do), you get the different sections. When in PowerPoint, all you have to do is right-click one of the slides on the left panel (where you can see all the slides), and it’ll give you the option to add a section.
And once you add your different sections, it will look something like this.
Once you have your sections, you can use the slide sorter view.
In this view, you can see your story in an easy-to-follow manner. It allows you to play and move different content in different sections. The best feature of this view is that once you minimize all the slides and only leave the section titles, you’ll have your executive summary points.
4) Slide Action Titles
You might be asking, how do I fill out those sections? The key is on the slide titles. Slide titles are often overlooked, and they are super important. What good slide titles do, is allow each page to speak for itself. If you look at the big consultant firms like McKinsey, Bain, etc., they use “action titles.” Action titles tell the reader the “so what” of that slide.
Let me give you an example. Here’s a very common slide where you have a chart. As you can see, in one option, we leave the reader to figure out what it means and why it’s important. However, once you add an action title, you can drive the urgency, and in this case, demonstrate the potential opportunity that this company has by entering this new market.
5) Be concise
A few days ago, some really cool dude talked about getting better at video using this app called mmhmm. At 1:28 on that video, he mentions how TED talks are about 18 minutes because that’s how long we pay attention to a presenter in person. And how our attention span for a virtual presentation; it’s only around 10 minutes. We won’t have the attention of an executive for a long time. And that’s why those first three minutes, that executive summary has to be compelling. And why the totality of your content shouldn’t be more than 10 to 15 minutes max, which means you’ll have time for about four to eight slides.
Creating excellent executive presentations is a great way to enhance you communication skills
To create excellent executive presentations, it is essential to understand the “why” and understand the “who.” And then don’t forget these five key points that will help you create a more effective executive presentation:
As I mentioned initially, this is an area where I feel I have much room for improvement. So I would love to hear your feedback and your comments. Don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can get to me via email, via my Instagram, and on LinkedIn. And if you want to see more videos or posts, explore the blog section on this site. That’s where I keep all of them.
All the best,
Jorge