Business presentations: the ultimate guide to creating modular and effective slides

Can you send me your business presentation?

How many times have you been asked this question? Business presentation has become an indispensable business card.

It is often called “Corporate Profile”, and it contains the necessary information to present your company.

It is an initial presentation document that often follows preliminary meetings, meetings with banks, sales opportunities and much more.

Why is the business presentation so important?

For one simple reason.

This presentation is what your counterpart will use to decide whether they want to deal with you or not.

Everything else is secondary.

Also, when you’re asked to deliver a business presentation, timing is key – you can’t let days go by before you share it, otherwise it will look like your company isn’t ready to do business.

A business presentation, moreover, can serve many purposes and must speak to different audiences.

It’s almost like a Swiss Army knife of presentations!

How can such a multifaceted presentation exist?

Simple, it doesn’t!

Are you making fun of me, Maurizio?

Not at all:

So how can you do it?

The key word is modularity.

An effective business presentation must necessarily be structured in modules in order to offer maximum flexibility.

By breaking it down into modules, you’ll find that there are some parts that you will need to adapt to the audience and context, while others are fairly static.

On the MLC Presentation Design Consulting presentation, I worked with the PowerPoint sections that go perfectly with structuring a business presentation.

Where do we start?

First, we need to figure out which sections we want to include in your business presentation and in what order to present them.

Lean Presentation Design teaches us that a persuasive presentation has a recurring structure, which can be traced in what is called the Lean Presentation Strategy Canvas.

A winning business presentation structure

Thinking lean about your presentation means having the ability to strategically plan its structure before you go wild on PowerPoint.

I’m a huge PowerPoint user, and I firmly believe it’s the perfect presentation tool, but approaching it too early in the presentation creation process risks diverting your attention from what really matters in the first place: the storyline.

Set aside alignments, choice of fonts, colors, and follow me carefully.

The Lean Presentation Strategy Canvas is a cornerstone of Lean Presentation Design® and can guide you in the creation of truly impactful presentations.

So, let it take the lead and prioritize the communication strategy over the practical implementation of the presentation.

Let’s apply the Canvas together.

Ready?

Go!

Understand your audience first

Every presentation must begin with a careful understanding of the audience.

Even a corporate profile business presentation?

Absolutely!

Unless you want to create yet another boring presentation that will go unnoticed.

You must ask yourself what your goal is.

Mind you, I’m not asking what your business purpose is, such as: “sell more, increase conversions, etc.”

The goal to put in the Lean Presentation Strategy Canvas box is one of communicating and changing your audience.

It’s not hard, I’ll explain.

Creating an effective business presentation is like planting a small seed in the minds of your audience.

Maybe it will take some time, but sooner or later, if you’ve been successful, the seed will sprout, and people will do something they wouldn’t have done if they hadn’t come into contact with your presentation.

Think about the situation where you want to get in touch with a new client, for example.

Before the presentation they might not know you, or even be aware of their problem, but after reading your presentation they might be ready to get in touch with you to consider buying your product or service.

What is your persuasion goal, what kind of awareness do you want to develop in your audience?

I use this nice diagram to get the point across and clear my head right away.

To complete this, you need to have minimal knowledge of your audience. If you don’t have that then it’s time to do some research or ask the right people a few questions.

What information should I be looking for?

As you can see, it is not about finding out the life story of every person in your audience, it’s about knowing the factual information that allows you to chart a path to change and be their guide.

Why might they not want to adopt the change you’re proposing, what knowledge or ideas do you need to eradicate in order to instill this new awareness?

The Lean Presentation Strategy Canvas calls these “resistances”.

Resistances in Lean Presentation Design are all the reasons why people shouldn’t accept your idea, and they have strategic relevance in the implementation of your business presentation.

Can you already guess what they will be used for?

Resistances are the starting point of a communication reverse engineering process.

You think it’s difficult? Not at all, follow me.

Being aware of resistances allows you to identify what information should not be missing from your presentation.

You want to acquire a new client, but you’re afraid they’re not aware of all your industry expertise, so you need to showcase testimonials or reviews.

Perhaps you are creating a presentation that aims to share your company’s focus on sustainability with consumers because you know that this trend is a competitive differentiator.

Here you will find yourself describing the results of all the initiatives your organization has undertaken in this regard.

Are you clear on the dynamics of interaction between Objective / Audience / Resistance?

If you have any doubts ask in the comments, I’ll be happy to share a clarification.

Well then, let’s move on.

Now that you’re clear on audience, objective, and resistance, it’s time to set up the storyline.

What is a storyline?

It’s nothing more than the order in which your content is presented.

Why?

Simply because the order in which you present the information makes all the difference in the world. You can get one effective storyline and another boring one.

It’s all about putting the information presented in the right order.

An effective business presentation is about people

We are the leading company in the industry, we have years of experience and countless satisfied customers.

This is how a typical business presentation begins.

If yours has this structure too, then sit back and follow me closely – we have work to do.

Have you ever felt like you were in the spotlight during a presentation?

If so, don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there.  

Be careful though, feeling like the center of attention can be misleading and make you feel like the star of the moment.  

Nothing could be further from the truth!  

A good presenter has the ability to always put the audience in the spotlight.  

Rotate the spotlight and point it at the people who have come to listen to you, because this is the only way you will really succeed in triggering a change in them.  

Every good presentation has a clear objective from the beginning, such as convincing a prospect to accept a call for more information, persuading an investor to finance your startup, convincing your superiors to take one business decision over another, etc.  

Who is it that should come out transformed at the end of the presentation?  

Is it you?  

Not at all!  

It’s your audience, you’re there for them.  

At this point, a question may arise – “if my audience is the star of the presentation, what role do I represent?”  

You are the guide.  

In Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds argues that as a presenter you play the role that Master Yoda plays with Luke Skywalker – a wise guide who will change him forever. 

If you were creating a business presentation in the style of a corporate profile of your company, you should ask yourself how your products or services could be helpful to the people to whom you send your slides.  

Open your presentation from the Context and provide information that expands your audience’s vision. Give them insight, or simply a different point of view than what they are used to.  

Let them discover something about their world that they are not aware of – and illustrate how this is important to them. 

The connection between your world and theirs is usually made through the description of the problem. 

This is clearly not your problem, but a problem that is relevant to your audience, to the point that they would be willing to do something they would not have done to solve it.  

See how you are getting closer to your persuasion goal?  

Good, good.  

The solution is the section where you can introduce your products and services.  

Be careful, though.  

It’s not a detailed ramble of all your offerings!  

The solution represents a precise closing of the circle in relation to the problem.  

Remember: there is no solution without a problem.  

The problem plays a key role in the storyline because it creates tension, which creates interest and curiosity about the solution.  

The rule is simple.  

Never introduce solutions that do not address problems you have already introduced.  

The problem/solution interaction dynamic is the foundation of any effective storytelling.  

I know, I used a term that is now misused by everyone.  

Let me clarify one thing though:  

Didn’t see that coming?  

That’s exactly what it is!  

The magic of stories is not in telling one, but in using the typical narrative structure of a story to recreate the attraction dynamic that stories have always had on us human beings.  

You know when you’re glued to a TV series for hours and you can’t pull yourself away?  

That’s what I’m talking about. 

Whenever the main character gets into trouble, we’re glued to the screen, anxiously waiting for the situation to improve and everything to go well.  

Sometimes, we would rather have a sad ending than be left hanging.  

These ups and downs between problem and solution create interest and, when used correctly, are the right way to leverage storytelling in your storylines.  

The Evidence part is for building credibility and finally talking about your company. Here you can go wild – go ahead and include all the important information that characterizes your company and strengthens its brand.  

You can use testimonials, past projects, customer interviews, concrete results, etc.  

Evidence: Use case studies to reinforce your credibility

Case studies are a powerful tool for showcasing your company’s experience. In fact, case studies simultaneously showcase your client’s reference, which was satisfied with the work done.  

In addition, case studies allow the potential prospect to compare your past experiences with the project they need. 

As you go through the client’s mind, you can read, “If you’ve done it right for someone else, you’ll be able to do it right for me.” 

How do you present a case study? 

Personally, I think it’s not enough to tell what you’ve done. I think you need to show the concrete results that your approach brought in the context of a particular project.  

So, if you were to set up a case study slide, follow this outline:  

In the diagram I have highlighted the Need / Intervention / Results triptych that concretely summarizes the experience of a project.  

On the right I have shown thumbnails of slides of the project but, in your case, they could also be images of the product.  

Visualizing it allows you to bring the idea to life and make it even more concrete.  

With the central band I have highlighted the customer’s photo and his words to enhance the social proof effect.  

If you’re curious about how to use the psychological principles of persuasion to make your presentations irresistible, check out my book Lean Presentation Design – how to create an effective presentation in the blink of an eye. 

Finally, I’ve placed your logo and the client’s logo to reinforce branding and collaboration.  

Ready-to-use templates for your Business Presentation in MLC PowerPoint Add-in 

While creating Business Presentations, we all have been to the point, when we needed a Template for a graphic, timeline, agenda, etc.  

Could we create it ourselves?  

Absolutely yes, but: How much time would it take you and would it appear as good as if you used a premade template? 

Okay, you hesitated… 

So, you go and browse the templates, trying to find what looks good and suits well for your corporate style: has similar colors, fonts, approach. 

But you will unlikely find something similar, yet good.  

If you are the user of MLC PowerPoint Add-in, you know that we provide Templates for 2 important cases: Timelines and Agendas.  

Let me show you how to find them and use them easily. 

MLC PowerPoint Add-in: Timelines. 

Click on Graphic Assets in MLC Add-in ribbon.  

In the window at the right side choose Timelines.  

Browse and select the Template you like the most. Click on it and it will appear in a new slide. 

Our templates are made the way that absolutely everything could be modified: 

We provide you alignments, size of the text, good composition. But then it’s up to you to choose the colors, the information and the font. To create the best timeline experience, check How to create a Timeline in PowerPoint, where I explain everything step by step. 

 MLC PowerPoint Add-in: Agenda. 

Templates for Agenda work same way: click on Graphic Assets in MLC Add-in ribbon and find Agenda in the window at the right side. 

Choose the one that suits your needs, click on it and it is ready to be used! 

Keep in mind that every detail could be easily modified. You just might need to ungroup the elements for a more convenient usage. 

To ungroup manually: select the template, click on the right button of the mouse, select Ungroup. 

To do it faster with a shortcut: ctrl + A (to select everything on the slide), ctrl + shift + G (to ungroup). 

To use Agenda at it best, I’m inviting you to have a look at another article I wrote earlier this year: How to create Table of Contents in PowerPoint.  

Call to Action: closing a professional and concrete business presentation 

Your business presentation, like all presentations, should have a clear and distinct objective from the start.  

Remember when we first set the action you wanted your audience to perform after your presentation?  

That’s it, I’m talking about that!  

If you want people to do something they wouldn’t have done, and therefore you want to influence their behavior, you’re going to have to push them to do it.  

No one will act unless you explicitly ask them to.  

Maurizio, you mean during the presentation?  

Exactly!  

A business presentation is a path of persuasion that leads your interlocutor to take an action.  

For example, they may want to contact you to explain a project they want to get you involved on, as is often the case with first contact business presentations.  

In this case, the best way to close a business presentation would be to directly invite people to contact you with a contact slide that says, “let’s talk about it”, or “let’s explore it together.”  

In our business presentation, I’ve invited the reader to contact us to share their idea.  

Remember, no one will do anything unless driven to do it. So, if you want to spark change in your audience, it’s up to you to take action first. 

Modularity – a key word in any effective and efficient business presentation 

Some sections of the presentation will change, while others will be more or less the same. 

Let’s be clear.  

The initial storytelling is the part that speaks directly to people, and it should be built around your specific audience.  

In this way, you have the possibility to change one section and keep the others, creating different declinations of your business presentation depending on what your audience is interested in.   

Open your business presentation by immediately creating interest in people and giving them at least one good reason to look at your slides.  

This section is very variable, and it changes depending on the context and the target audience.  

Let’s structure the sections together directly in PowerPoint.  

To create a new section, right-click between two slides and choose Add Section.  

In the popup window, just enter the name of the first section and you’re done.  

Come on, let’s do this together.  

The sections we need to create are:  

• Context 
• Problem 
• Solution 
• Evidence
• Call to Action 

Once you have created the section, you can hide the slides contained in it with a simple click on the arrow of the section.  

This way, you will have a clear view of all the sections in your presentation. 

Let’s create the context section.  

Let’s create the other sections.  

Now all you have to do is click on each section of your business presentation and insert the relevant slides.  

In an effective business presentation, each section has its own style 

Each slide plays the critical role of leading the reader to the next one.  

The first part of the presentation must generate interest and immerse people within your content flow.  

Only after creating a good level of interest people will be interested in exploring the details of the final part of the business presentation on their own.  

That is why the initial part must have a smooth and immersive style.  

To handle the introduction, the context, and the problem until the solution, I use a style very close to that of social media carousels.  

What are carousels, Maurizio?  

Check out our Instagram profile – MLC Presentation Design – where I post one every week.

Each carousel is like a small presentation made up of slides that runs in sequence, so that one pulls on the other.  

They are phenomenal communication tools for the social world, where people’s attention level is extremely low and unsteady. Therefore, they are tools that must be truly immersive.  

Are you following me?  

Well, let’s go ahead.  

Basically, you create a script, that is the message you want to convey through the presentation, and then you distribute the various concepts through multiple slides so that to read the next concept or the continuation of the sentence, the reader must necessarily go to the next slide.  

Check out the beginning of our business presentation:

See how one slide leads to another?  

This is just an excerpt from MLC Presentation Design Consulting‘s business presentation, if you want to see the whole thing you can download it for free here. 

Although I like to maintain this immersive style through the entire presentation, after the section where I introduce the solution (our services), you’ll see that a few slightly fuller and more detailed slides start to appear.  

These are slides that add information by enriching the presentation, but at the same time, they do branding as well.  

This is why they are used in the Evidence section.  

Why this change of style within the same presentation?  

Simple!  

Follow me, I’ll explain.  

I told you earlier that the style varies depending on the interest.  

In fact, in the first part you have to engage the reader by capturing his attention, while in the second part you have to exploit the interest generated to answer detailed questions that he will be asking about you and your company.  

Creating a professional business presentation means balancing the content by alternating different styles according to your audience’s need for information.  

What weight should be given to the different sections of the business presentation?  

In this article, we’ve discussed several times how important it is to decline the content of your presentation according to your specific audience.  

How can you do it concretely?  

You need to understand the level of awareness of your audience, in order to create the best presentation of your company.  

Your audience might be more or less aware of your existence and what you’re offering. If we want to be precise, there are circumstances when they might not even be aware that they have a problem.  

Here’s where your business presentation takes the form of a true educational document.  

Let’s leverage Schwartz’s value scale, which explains how each piece of content should serve to push the reader to the next awareness level. 

Unaware 

The potential customer is not aware that they have a problem, and therefore they do not need anything 

Pain Aware 

The potential customer is suffering a problem and is not aware of the solutions 

Solution Aware 

The potential customer has a well-identified problem and is aware of potential solutions 

Product Aware 

The potential customer is aware of your offer, but has not yet made the final choice  

Most Aware 

The potential customer knows your company, your offer and trusts you 

When producing a modular business presentation, you’ll want to start at the lowest level of awareness and develop content that covers the entire Schwarz scale.  

Then, we’ll take advantage of the modularity of your business presentation to hide or modify certain sections according to your specific needs.  

For example, in the online version of MLC Presentation Design Consulting‘s business presentation, I left the full version because anyone can download it from the website and I’m not able to predict what kind of audience would benefit from it. 

Fit the Business Presentation to the Context  

Clients often ask me if a business presentation can contain more information than another presentation simply because you can’t give up on including every concept possible.  

If you don’t give up, it will be your audience’s brain that will give up the excess information.  

So, yes, you can put in as much content as you want, but there’s no guarantee that everything you put in the presentation will actually be enjoyed or understood by your audience.  

So, what density of content is right to use on your slides?  

It depends on the viewing experience you want for your audience.  

I recommend that you always focus on the experience rather than the futile embellishment of the slides, which is often an end in itself.  

If you haven’t already, take a look at how I design the visual experience on my slides: Create effective PowerPoint presentations with Neuro presentation design. 

Back to us.  

Are you with me?  

Well, let’s get on with it. 

In general, it is said that there are presentations meant to be read and presentations meant to be heard, in support of a speaker.

We will call self-standing presentations those that do not need a speaker to convey the message and are therefore independent.  

Instead, we will call not-self-standing those imagined to support a speaker.  

How are they different?  

A presentation made to be enjoyed independently by the reader will need a more articulated content structure than one that slides on the screen while you speak.  

This already leads me to tell you that a presentation can hardly perform both these tasks.  

Usually, when I create a business presentation for a client, I propose a full version (self-standing) and a version that we call slim (not-self-standing) to be extracted from the first one. 

Is that all?  

That’s just the tip of the iceberg!  

I actually wish you’d be a little more flexible than that, and you’d bring home the importance of designing the user experience for your audience.  

In fact, in the real world, there can be a lot of circumstances in between.

Imagine that you send your business presentation to a potential new client who has just finished a meeting.  

In the cab, on the way back to his office, he receives the email and opens it from his smartphone, giving a quick glance at the presentation directly from his device.  

Then, once in the office, passing by the coffee machine, he shares it with a colleague showing him the most interesting slides directly on his smartphone. 

The colleague is impressed by a slide and asks to send him a screenshot on WhatsApp.  

I’ll stop right here. 

I’d say it’s enough to understand how your business presentation can follow very different paths from the simple “can be read” or “can be heard”.  

Do you understand the importance of understanding context, now?  

This is the reason why I strongly recommend that you design by imagining the usage scenarios of your presentation.  

So how should you behave in a scenario like the one illustrated?  

Earlier, I told you about creating a presentation in carousel style.  

Social media are optimized for mobile, so they can teach us how to capture attention in extreme situations like the scenario just illustrated.  

That’s why my business presentation uses this technique, especially in the opening phase. 

Scrolling from one slide to another will come naturally.  

In this case, we are talking about mobile first presentations, in other words, already conceived for use on a smartphone. 

Also interesting is the case of virtual presentations, which are becoming increasingly popular.  

There are many considerations to be made in this case but, above all, I think we should consider the fact that a user can easily lose pieces of the presentation due to connection problems.  

In that case, well-crafted slides that contain visual content to let them know where you are and what key message you’re sharing can help you keep everyone on track and avoid constant interruptions.  

You could, for example, learn how to use a PowerPoint agenda slide with a full navigation system.  

See how many examples we could give?  

I’ve listed just a few of the scenarios that come to mind, but feel free to share in the comments other possible scenarios that have occurred to you so that we can make this guide richer and more complete by including your contribution.     

Business Presentation PPT vs Business Presentation PDF 

A PowerPoint business presentation is certainly the starting point for a collaborative creation process.  

Thanks to the Office 365 PowerPoint suite, you can work with your colleagues in real time on the same file, both from the desktop app and the browser.  

What I find particularly useful, though, is the comments feature.  

Use the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + M to activate the comment, tag the relevant person using the “@” and write.  

The person you tagged will receive an email notification so they can be made aware that you need their response.  

This type of interaction significantly promotes team collaboration, especially remotely.  

So, creating a PowerPoint business presentation is certainly the first step. Thanks to PowerPoint, anyone can work on it without necessarily being an expert in other software that are far more complex and absolutely oversized for this task.  

Be careful though, don’t even think of sending the PowerPoint to a client!  

The PowerPoint business presentation is an editable document, not easy to read.  

I know the editable part, but why isn’t it easy to read, Maurizio?  

Simple!  

In general, a PDF business presentation opens much faster and weighs much less, which makes it easier to use and share.  

There is another important point.  

Think about the previous paragraph, where we analyzed how the reference context can affect the creation of the type of presentation.  

There are contexts, such as on mobile, in which a PDF business presentation is certainly better performing.  

Why?  

Try opening a PDF and a PowerPoint from your smartphone, and then tell me which one is more immediate and usable.  

So, for the creation process work with a PowerPoint business presentation, but for sending and sharing it use a PDF business presentation.    

Conclusions 

Your business presentation is your organization’s first calling card. Whether your audience will want to deal with you or not will depend on it.  

An effective business presentation starts by generating interest, talking to people, and is never self-referential.  

You can use the Lean Presentation Strategy Canvas to structure the storyline of your business presentation.  

I won’t go into more detail in this article, so if you’re interested in really knowing how to use it for your presentations, I refer you to the official book – Lean Presentation Design – how to create the perfect presentation in the blink of an eye. 

Alternatively, you can follow my Lean Presentation Strategy & Storytelling online course.  

Finally, it is a presentation that frequently changes in its various forms for different audiences with different levels of awareness and different contexts of fruition.  

For this reason, we work with modular presentations taking advantage of PowerPoint sections, and we always send a PDF document that is easier to use.  

Would you like to share with me and my team your business presentation and know how to improve it? Contact us, and we’ll be happy to share our thoughts.  

Some illustrations were taken from Freepik and modified by MLC Design Team.