Creating a Presentation Deck? Follow These 4 Steps to Success

If you’ve ever created a presentation deck, chances are you started by pulling together existing slides and content from various presentations that you or your colleagues have completed in the past. 

Sure, you might have saved time by doing this, but did your presentation feel like a cohesive, persuasive story — or was it more like a Franken-deck with disparate design styles and author viewpoints, repetitive and extraneous information, and no clear strategy behind it? The result with this type of deck, especially when translated into a live presentation, is likely to be audience confusion, disengagement, and a lack of adoption. 

To help save you from this common deck disaster, I recommend you run through the following process after you’ve created your Franken-deck. These are the exact same steps I take with my clients every time we begin a project together. I find that these four steps help focus the overall message, strengthen the strategy, and create a cohesive story — increasing the odds of achieving the desired outcome.

What is Presentation Deck Design?

4 Steps for Presentation Deck Design

1. Determine the Goal of Your Presentation
2. Decide What Information Supports Your Goal
3. Delete Everything Else
4. Include a Call to Action

Step 1: Determine the Goal of Your Presentation.

This may sound like an obvious first step, but it’s often overlooked. If you first determine what it is you want your audience to know, think, or do after reviewing your presentation, you’ll be able to review all of the information you’ve gathered and weigh the importance of the content on each slide against your strategic objectives. In this way, that Franken-deck isn’t entirely useless; actually, it’s a great starting point for determining which details are the most important to convey in your presentation.

Step 2: Decide What Information Supports Your Goal

By running through all of your slides one by one, you’ll be able to determine what information to keep and which details are repetitive or unnecessary by weighing it against your established goal. If your audience doesn’t need to see it, or you can talk about it, it probably doesn’t need to be on the slide. For example, the “keep-worthy” details might include a simple description of your product or service, the key problem it solves and how it solves it, and the features and benefits of your offering. 

You also might have certain visuals and statistics that support your overall messaging. Decide which ones are the keepers and likely to align with your goal, and which ones are distracting, cumbersome, or repetitive. Ultimately, you want to tell a compelling, attention-grabbing story that demonstrates your passion and knowledge of the subject matter.

Anything that falls outside of this framework, or that duplicates the same information using different words, will take you to the next question below.

Step 3: Delete Everything Else

Now that you know which details need to stay in your presentation, you can take out your red pen and start deleting anything that doesn’t support your overall goal. 

It might feel difficult deciding what to delete, and that’s understandable. In your mind, everything is important about the topic you’re presenting. 

Your audience will view things differently, however. Remember, you’re working toward a defined goal, not attempting to tell your audience every possible fact about the subject matter. The goal is to inspire action, not to lose your audience’s attention. 

Exclude insider or industry jargon, acronyms that aren’t readily understood by your target audience, overly detailed charts and graphs, and poor-quality visuals. You can also leave out wordy slides that attempt to cover everything you want to convey; your in-person presentation will give you a chance to explain your slides in greater detail. 

Plus, too many words can get distracting, and people will end up reading your slides instead of paying attention to your live presentation. In other words, think of your presentation more as a movie trailer than a feature-length film. 

Don’t be too timid in deleting your content. When it comes to in-person presentations, the general rule of thumb is that less is more. As the speaker, your voice-over should be the audience’s focus; your slides are merely there to support your main points, click-by-click. 

Step 4: Include a Call to Action

By the time you reach the end of your presentation deck, it should be clear what action you want your audience to take and why. Whether you want them to invest in your concept, learn more, book a call, give you an A grade, or make a donation to a charitable cause, each slide should naturally lead up to the call to action at the end of your presentation.

Also known as the “ask,” the call to action supports the overall end goal of your presentation deck that you defined in question #1. In a funding pitch, for example, the ask might include the amount of funding you’re seeking, how you plan to use the money, and the goals you’ll be able to achieve with this funding. In a presentation explaining a marketing campaign, the ask could be for C-suite executives to give you the green light on your concept.

The ask should come as no surprise to your audience if you’ve effectively addressed question #1 and question #2 above. If it feels like the ask is coming out of left field, then it’s likely you’re either missing information, or you have extraneous or repetitive information that’s distracting from your intended message.

Give Your Presentation Deck the Time It Deserves

Now that your content has been edited and refined, from here you can further polish your deck by working with a presentation designer to create a consistent look or theme across the entirety of your presentation. 

The end result should be laser-focused messaging and an artfully crafted visual story that resonates with your audience. Rather than presenting a mishmosh of ideas from multiple authors, duplicate content, and extraneous information, you’ll have a clear message that motivates your audience to respond to your call to action.

Need some extra help walking through these questions for a presentation deck? Check out our services, or contact me so we can discuss your project in detail.