There are iii core principles that will aid you dramatically improve your PowerPoint presentations. Everyone has sat through a presentation when they thought to themselves "is there anything worse than this?"

#1 Vertical Flow

When you first start at McKinsey, ane of the first things you are taught is that a slides title shouldalways exist the takeaway of the slide. Other firms are more flexible with this rule and might put takeaways in other places of the slide, just every bit a expert rule of thumb put the primary message of the slide as a title.

Don't label a slide "Overview: Diabetes." Give them a piece of information like "Diabetes is the fastest growing affliction in Western nations."

And then prove it in the content of the slide.

Often people make a mistake here by non thinking most the audition. You accept likely done a lot of research and are more interested in showing how much inquiry yous've done and data you constitute.Avoid this trend.

Instead, you want to aid prove or back up the title of the slide. You want to proceed it equally well-baked equally possible without extra information and proving your betoken definitively. Here is an example I like to use to show this:

In this case, the title is clear and the content of the slide only serves to testify and reinforce the indicate.

You may non always start with the title and so fill in the information. Frequently it is more of an iterative process where you are making sense of information and experimenting with different titles to synthesize the information y'all offered. In a real consulting squad, you may go back and along countless time fine-tuning the messaging.

#ii Horizontal Period

The second function of this is ensuring that the titles really fit together and tell a cohesive story.

PowerPoint titles in order tell a story

A good trick I still use to this mean solar day is when yous have a completed PowerPoint presentation, go to the outline view and just read the titles.

PowerPoint outline view enables you to see all the titles of the presentation

Y'all can also copy and paste all of the titles of a slide into a Word document or google doc and read the titles as you would a piece of writing.

The goal is not to exist Dickens, simply to make sure that there is some level of logic to the overall catamenia of the presentation.

If it doesn't brand any sense as you read from slide to slide, y'all may want to revisit the overall logic.

#3 Overall Menses + Structure

Turn data into a story

It does not matter how much information y'all take. Unless your audience spent as much time as you lot analyzing the information, they will be overwhelmed with mounds of data, tables and analytics.

To persuade, yous demand to tell a story. This means simplifying and structuring your information downwards to the most important points so making certain that the private elements fit together using the pyramid principle and other tips for persuasive presentations.

Beautiful slides without a story will exist a painful experience for your audience but a powerful story without great slides is nonetheless an amazing story.

Think about it. If Richard Branson presented a size iv font PowerPoint slide, you would even so desire to mind because his story would be compelling.

I promise you aim to create compelling slides, merely if y'all're nonetheless getting started, nail the story.

I advise an undergraduate consulting group on the consulting principles taught at strategy consulting firms. The students are usually most eager to learn how to brand a professional looking slide. These students are pretty sharp, then it typically just takes them a few weeks before they tin craft a slide that looks  like to ane from a consulting business firm.

Don't mistake templates and formatting for deeper agreement.

After nearly 2–3 semester-long projects, information technology starts to click for the students and they internalize the deeper principles of storytelling, persuasion, and structured ideas.

Anders Ericsson has helped popularized the term "deliberate practice" which he used to show that the departure between experts and novices in almost domains is not innate abilities, but often the outcome of deliberate effort paired with feedback.

In strategy firms, yous go almost constant feedback on your slides, story and construction. This is imperative if you want to get better.

The best way to get started is to find a friend to practise these skills with. Or even better, notice someone with experience at a strategy firm and ask them if they volition give yous feedback on your slides.

To make certain your presentation is ready, make certain you nail the nuts first, using MECE and the Pyramid Principle.

Do y'all have a toolkit for business trouble solving? I created Think Similar a Strategy Consultant equally an online form to make the tools of strategy consultants accessible to driven professionals, executives, and consultants. This class teaches you how to synthesize information into compelling insights, structure your information in ways that help y'all solve problems, and develop presentations that resonate at the C-Level. Click here to larn more or if you are interested in getting started now, enroll in the self-paced version ($497) or hands-on coaching version ($997). Both versions include lifetime access and all future updates.