how to give a strategy presentation

The 10-Step Guide for a Successful Strategy Presentation

Discover essential steps and best practices in 'How to Write a Strategy Presentation.' Elevate your approach and effectively communicate your strategic vision with our comprehensive guide.

StrategyPunk

Introduction

Have you ever been trapped in the quicksand of a never-ending strategy presentation?

We've all been there, nodding off while someone drones on.

Now, picture this: a room hanging onto your every word, eyes lit with interest.

Impossible?

Think again. Plunge into our fresh guide, and you'll transform from a presenter to a storyteller.

It’s time for your audience to listen and be utterly captivated.

How to Write a Strategy Presentation: 10 Steps

1. set the stage right.

You wouldn’t host a grand ball without knowing who’s attending, right?

In the same way, before you even think of diving into your content, please know your audience.

Are they tech wizards or old-school board members? Millennials or Baby Boomers?

Customize your talk to resonate with them. Understand their needs, their pain points, and their aspirations.

Connect on a personal level, and half your battle is already won. 🎯

2. Define Your Mission

Imagine embarking on a road trip without a map.

A strategy presentation without a clear mission is almost the same – directionless and meandering.

So, ask yourself: Why are you here? What's the core message?

Once you have that clarity, your path becomes straightforward. Trust me, your audience will thank you for it.

3. Craft an Unforgettable Opening

First impressions?

They’re everything. You have 60 seconds to grab your audience's attention, so make those seconds count.

A quirky quote, a compelling statistic, or even a personal anecdote – choose a relevant and riveting opener. It’s the appetizer to your main course.

Make sure it's tantalizing!

4. Break Down the Core

a. Highlight the Issue:

Every story needs a conflict.

In your strategy presentation, this is the issue or challenge at hand.

Paint a vivid picture. Make them see what’s going awry.

But remember, no doom and gloom—just honest, relatable content.

b. Showcase Your Solution:

Now, for the hero of our story – your solution. Get straight to the point.

How will your idea transform the current scenario?

Make your key the shining beacon. Sell not just the picture but the dream.

c. Unveil the Game Plan:

So, you’ve hooked them with the problem and dazzled them with your solution.

The roadmap: Walk them through the how. Detail the journey, step by step, action by action. Make it tangible. Make it achievable.

5. Elevate with Design

Yes, content is king. But design?

It’s the crown. Incorporate visuals that speak. Charts, infographics, images – let them do the heavy lifting. Remember, a picture's worth a thousand words, but a relevant picture?

That’s gold. And hey, always lean into simplicity. Less is more, especially on slides. 🖼️

6. Weave in Stories

Facts need to be remembered. Stories? They stick.

Weave in anecdotes that resonate. Personal tales, success stories, or even fictional scenarios – a narrative touch can bring your presentation alive. Make it relatable.

Could you make it memorable? After all, who doesn't love a good story?

7. Get Them Talking

No one enjoys a monologue. You can turn your presentation into a dialogue.

Ask questions. Seek opinions. Maybe even throw in a mini poll or quiz. Engage them.

The more involved they are, the more invested they become. It's the difference between passive listeners and active participants.

8. Wrap it Up with Pizzazz

You're nearing the end. This is where you cement all you've shared.

Highlight the key points and end with a zinger. It could be a call to action, a memorable quote, or a challenge.

Leave them thinking, reflecting, and wanting more.

9. Rehearse to Perfection

You've crafted this masterpiece. Now, could you give it the respect it deserves?

Know each slide, each transition, and each pause. Familiarize yourself with the flow. The more comfortable you are with the material, the more confidently you'll deliver.

And nothing, absolutely nothing, captivates an audience more than genuine confidence.

10. After the Applause: Your Next Moves

The applause fades—the room empties.

But your job? It still needs to be done. Show gratitude. A simple thank you can work wonders. Would you be willing to share your presentation or additional resources?

And always, always be open to feedback. It’s the breakfast of champions, after all.

Crafting a killer strategy presentation isn’t about big words or fancy jargon. It’s about connection, clarity, and confidence. You’ve got the palette, brush, and canvas.

Now, could you paint your masterpiece? 🎨

Remember, strategy presentations are not just about informing. It’s about transforming.

So, go ahead and inspire change—illuminate minds. And make a lasting impact.🚀

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Bonus: Your Strategy Presentation Success Checklist

Please ensure that your strategy presentation is top-notch with our concise Success Checklist.

This list will guide you through each crucial step for impactful delivery, from understanding your audience to gathering feedback post-presentation.

Your trusty companion for every presentation!

• Audience insights in place.
• Is the Mission crystal clear? ✔️
• Powerful start rehearsed.
• Core content organized.
• Engaging visuals ready.
• Personal story integrated.
• Interactive segment prepped.
• Strong conclusion framed.
• Feedback channels open.

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Home Blog Business Guide to Crafting an Effective Strategy Presentation

Guide to Crafting an Effective Strategy Presentation

Presenting and communicating your strategies to align a team’s effort remains one of management’s priority tasks. Regardless of the company’s scale, strategic presentations help convey complex strategic plans into clear and actionable tasks to follow in accordance with the business goals.

In this guide, we will show you how to effectively create a strategic presentation, the elements it should list, and some recommendations for PowerPoint templates to speed up this process.

Table of Contents

• What is a Strategy Presentation?

Types of Strategy Presentations

• How to Structure a Strategy Presentation

Do and Don’ts of Strategy Presentations

Recommended powerpoint templates for strategy presentations, key takeaways, what is a strategy presentation.

A strategy presentation is a communication tool designed to communicate goals, strategic plans or pre-formulated strategies, and initiatives to stakeholders. The strategy presentation slide deck aims to outline the company’s vision, strategic goals, and the specific actions needed to achieve them. To accomplish that, strategy presentation slides typically introduce a mixture of visual aids with relevant data to maximize the retention rate across the audience.

We can define the following categories for strategy presentations.

Strategic Plan Presentations

Strategic plan presentations are intended to communicate the organization’s long-term goals and the strategies to achieve them to stakeholders. This kind of presentation may cover topics such as market analysis, strategic objectives, and detailed action plans. 

The primary purpose is to align the team and stakeholders around a shared vision and ensure everyone understands the steps necessary to drive the organization toward its strategic goals.

Sales Strategy Presentations

Sales strategy presentations are targeted toward increasing the sales revenue inside an organization within a specific time frame. These presentations detail the tactics, target markets, and objectives involved in boosting sales performance. They typically include an analysis of market trends, competitive positioning, and specific sales goals – elements we can find in a sales plan presentation . 

The core objective in sales strategy presentations is for team members to understand their role in executing the sales strategy and how to measure the impact of their actions.

Marketing Strategy Presentations

Marketing strategy presentations are instances in which the marketing plan presentation is communicated to the team and stakeholders. These presentations outline the methods and channels the company will use to reach its target audience and achieve marketing objectives. We can find details on market research, customer segmentation, positioning strategies, and planned marketing campaigns.

Think of a marketing strategy presentation as a roadmap for how marketing efforts can contribute to the overall business goals. It ensures clarity on task execution, expected outcomes, and resource allocation.

Business Model Strategy Presentations

Business model strategy presentations outline the fundamental structures and mechanisms through which a company creates, delivers and captures value. These presentations explain the business model components, such as revenue streams, cost structures, customer segments, value propositions, and key partnerships. 

The objective is to articulate how the company operates within its market and competitive environment, detailing strategies for sustainability and growth.

Product Development Strategy Presentations

Product development strategy presentations focus on the stages and processes required to design, create, and launch a new product. These presentations typically cover the product concept, design iterations, market research, target customer analysis, production processes, and marketing strategies. They aim to align cross-functional teams—such as R&D, marketing, and production—on the product’s vision, features, and roadmap.

IT Strategy Presentations

IT strategy presentations communicate an organization’s technology-related plans and objectives. They outline how IT resources, infrastructure, and initiatives align with the broader business strategy to enhance operational efficiency, support growth, and mitigate risks. Key topics typically include adopting new technologies, cybersecurity measures, data management strategies, and IT governance.

Change Management Strategy Presentations

Change management strategy presentations are typically used in organization restructuring scenarios – after mergers, acquisitions, or significant internal restructuring – outlining the approach and plans for managing organizational changes. Change Management Strategy presentations detail the reasons for change, the specific changes to be implemented, the strategies for managing the transition, and the impact on stakeholders. Key elements often include stakeholder analysis, communication plans , training programs , and mechanisms for feedback. 

The primary goal of Change Management Strategy slide decks is to facilitate a smooth transition by preparing the organization and its members for change, minimizing resistance, and ensuring that changes are effectively integrated into the organization to achieve desired outcomes and improve overall performance.

How to Structure an Effective Strategy Presentation

In our experience, here’s a suggested presentation structure format for a strategic presentation.

The Introduction

Begin your presentation with a relevant hook for the topic you are approaching (see our guide on How to Start a Presentation for tips). Use an agenda slide to introduce the key themes and strategic objectives to discuss. Additionally, consider incorporating an executive summary to provide a concise overview of the strategy, highlighting key decisions and expected outcomes.

Body of the Presentation

Depending on the kind of strategic presentation you deliver and the tools and slides required to design it. As a general guide, consider this approach per category:

• Strategic Plan Presentations: Strategic planning requires vision and mission statements, strategic goals , market analysis, SWOT analysis , action plans, and a timeline for accomplishing them.
• Sales Strategy Presentations: We need to showcase sales objectives, target market analysis, sales methods and tactics, performance metrics, and sales forecasts.
• Marketing Strategy Presentations: For this category, consider listing the marketing goals, customer segmentation, value proposition, marketing channels, budget, and timeline.
• Business Model Strategy Presentations: This can be done as part of a business plan presentation . Include the business model canvas, revenue streams, value propositions, key partnerships, and customer relationships.
• Product Development Strategy Presentations: Since we’re considering an entire product development plan, be sure to list the product concept, design and development process, market research, product roadmap, and the Go-to-market strategy .
• IT Strategy Presentations: This selection is mainly intended for organizations looking to renew their IT strategy. List the IT objectives, technology roadmap, infrastructure needs, cybersecurity strategy, IT budget, and resource allocation.
• Change Management Strategy Presentations : In this case, be clear about the core reason behind the change management. Include the change management plan, stakeholder analysis, communication strategy, training, and support plans.

The Conclusion

Concluding a strategy presentation effectively is crucial for reinforcing the key messages and ensuring that the audience leaves with a clear understanding of the strategic objectives and their role in achieving them. To achieve this, consider the following steps:

• Summarize Key Points: Summarize the business presentation , briefly recap the main strategic goals and necessary actions, reinforcing the session’s core messages.
• Closing Statement: End with a compelling statement or call to action that encapsulates the presentation’s vision, motivating your audience.
• Multimedia Element: Optionally, use a short impactful video or visual to vividly summarize the strategy, enhancing retention.
• Q&A Session: Allocate 3-5 minutes for questions to clarify uncertainties and engage the audience further.
• Follow-Up Details: Provide information on how attendees can access more resources or ask additional questions.
• Express Gratitude: Conclude by thanking your audience for their participation, emphasizing their importance to the strategy’s success.

Aside from these tips, we can also follow the recommendations from our article explaining how to end a presentation , which also recommends using a media presentation asset, like videos, although it’s advisable to leave 3-5 minutes for a question and answer session.

Follow these insights to improve the quality and impact of your strategy presentations.

Do(s) of Strategy Presentations

• Use visual aids to summarize concepts. 
• Prepare handouts so the audience can further reference the information you deliver.
• Tailor your presentation to include interactive presentation instances, as they can help to engage the audience in the importance of their role.
• Consider a follow-up after a week. This can be in email format, with a poll, or a brief meeting in which you can evacuate doubts.

Don’t(s) of Strategy Presentations

• Respect your audience’s time, and don’t go overboard, especially if this involves sacrificing the Q&A session.
• Don’t use outdated data. Ensure all your statistics and references are current and relevant.
• Avoid using industry-specific terms without explaining them, unless you are sure that your audience will understand.

To speed up your strategy presentation design process, here’s a list of recommended PowerPoint templates and Google Slides templates by SlideModel.

1. Brand Strategy PowerPoint Template

This brand strategy template for presentations includes striking visuals and cohesive color scheme. Whether you’re presenting a brand strategy presentation to stakeholders or team members, this brand strategy PPT template empowers you to convey the essence of your brand strategy with clarity and impact. Use the brand strategy PowerPoint template to guide your audience through your brand’s journey and strategic milestones.

Use This Template

2. Goals Based Strategic Planning PowerPoint Templates

With a goal-oriented approach, the goal-based strategic planning PPT template emphasizes setting measurable objectives to transform visions into actionable results. This strategy presentation template provides a forward-looking framework, where goals are established from a future vantage point and brought to life through detailed KPIs, such as revenue targets and profit margins.

The Goal-based strategic planning template contains 15 customizable slides, including GAP analyses, problem statements, and strategic action plans, complete with a 30-60-90 day timeline.

3. Sustainability Strategy PowerPoint Template

4. Communication Strategy PowerPoint Template

5. Go-To-Market PowerPoint Template

Frequently Asked Questions

To make a strategy presentation more engaging, use interactive elements like polls or Q&A sessions, incorporate storytelling to contextualize data, and use visual aids and animations to highlight key points.

The ideal length of a strategy presentation varies based on content and audience, but generally, it should not exceed 30 minutes. This duration helps maintain audience attention while leaving time for discussions and Q&A session .

Strategy presentations should be updated regularly, at least annually or as major changes occur within the organization or industry. Regular updates ensure that the content remains relevant and reflects current goals and strategies.

To engage senior executives, focus on summarizing strategic impacts, ROI, and alignment with overarching business goals . Keep the presentation concise, data-driven, and directly related to decision-making and organizational growth.

Providing handouts can be very beneficial, especially for complex presentations. Handouts allow attendees to revisit the content at their own pace, which can aid in better understanding and retention.

• Clarify Goals and Objectives: Strategy presentations are essential for communicating clear, actionable goals and strategic plans to stakeholders.
• Incorporate Visuals Aids: Incorporating visual slides with charts, graphs, and infographics can greatly enhance understanding and retention of complex information.
• Adapt Presentation to Audience: Tailoring the presentation to the audience’s knowledge level and interest ensures greater engagement and comprehension.
• Use of Templates: Employing professional strategy PowerPoint or Google Slides templates can streamline the creation process and ensure a consistent, professional appearance.
• Engagement and Interaction: Incorporating interactive elements and engaging visuals helps maintain audience interest and facilitates better understanding of their roles in strategy implementation.
• Continuous Update and Feedback: Regular updates and follow-ups help keep the strategy aligned with organizational goals and stakeholder expectations.

Final Words

A well-prepared strategy presentation is a powerful tool for communicating an organization’s objectives. Presenters should focus on leveraging their graphical assets so the text inside slides is reduced to the minimum—content that can be shared in handouts for presentation format—which guarantees a smooth experience for the audience.

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Presentation Approaches, Strategy Filed under Business

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Blog Beginner Guides How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

Written by: Krystle Wong Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

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Strategy presentation: A comprehensive guide

In ths guide learn how to define your goals, design your slides, and deliver your ideas clearly and persuasively.

Raja Bothra

Building presentations

Welcome to the world of strategy presentations, where ideas take shape, plans are laid out, and visions become reality.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll delve deep into the art of crafting a compelling strategy presentation that not only captivates your audience but also ensures your message is crystal clear.

Whether you're a seasoned professional or a newcomer to the world of strategic communication, you'll find valuable insights here to elevate your strategy presentation game.

What is a strategy presentation?

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of creating an effective strategy presentation, let's start with the basics. What exactly is a strategy presentation? In simple terms, it's a structured communication tool used to convey your strategic plans, business goals, and initiatives to a diverse audience, which could include stakeholders, executives, team members, or potential investors.

Types of strategy presentations

Strategy presentations come in various flavors, each tailored to a specific purpose and audience. Let's explore some common types:

1. Strategic plan presentation

• Strategy : A comprehensive overview of your organization's overarching strategy.
• Presentation : Delivering this strategy to stakeholders, often in the form of a roadmap.

2. Marketing strategy presentation

• Strategy : Focused on marketing goals and tactics.
• Presentation : Outlining marketing plans, target audiences, and value propositions.

3. Change management presentation

• Strategy : Addressing organizational changes.
• Presentation : Communicating the need for change and how it will be executed.

4. Business model presentation

• Strategy : Explaining your company's business model.
• Presentation : Outlining the company's objectives, target audience, and value proposition.

5. Product development presentation

• Strategy : Discussing the creation or enhancement of products.
• Presentation : Detailing the product roadmap, key success metrics, and execution plans.

These are just a few examples, but strategy presentations can be customized to suit various scenarios and industries.

How to structure an effective strategy presentation

Creating an effective strategy presentation is an art form. It requires meticulous planning, a clear structure, and an engaging delivery. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you structure your presentation for maximum impact:

1. Define your objective

• Objective : What do you want to achieve with your presentation?
• Slide : Start with a concise slide stating your objective.

2. Know your audience

• Stakeholder : Understand your audience's interests and concerns.
• Overview : Provide a brief audience overview.

3. Create a compelling opening

• Presentation : Begin with a captivating story or fact.
• PowerPoint template : Use an engaging PowerPoint template to set the tone.

4. Outline your strategy

• Strategy : Present your strategic plan or initiative.
• Diagram : Use visual diagrams to illustrate key points.
• Icon : Incorporate icons to make information visually appealing.

5. Set business goals

• Business goals : Define your business goals and objectives.
• Update : Regularly update these goals to reflect progress.

6. SWOT analysis

• SWOT analysis : Analyze your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Executive : Create an executive summary of the analysis.

7. Effective strategy execution

• Effective strategy : Discuss how you plan to execute the strategy.
• Outline : Provide a step-by-step outline of the execution process.

8. Gain buy-in

• Buy-in : Explain how you'll gain buy-in from team members and stakeholders.
• Methodology : Detail the methodology you'll use.

9. Concrete plans

• Concrete plans : Present concrete plans of action.
• Team members : Highlight the roles of team members.

10. Emphasize key success metrics

• Key success: Identify key success metrics.
• Jargon: Avoid using jargon; make it easy for everyone to understand.

11. Articulate the big picture

• Company strategy : Show how your strategy fits into the company's overall strategy
• Plan of action : Outline your plan of action concisely.

12. Adapt to disruptions

• Disruption: Be prepared to adapt to disruptions.
• Metric: Monitor relevant metrics for any deviations.

13. Maintain a high-level view

• High-level: Keep a high-level view throughout your presentation.
• Goals and initiatives: Always tie back to your goals and initiatives.

Do’s and don'ts on a strategy presentation

Now that you have a structured framework for your strategy presentation, let's take a moment to discuss some do's and don'ts to ensure your presentation is a resounding success.

• Create a clear narrative : Craft a compelling story that connects with your audience.
• Use visual aids : Incorporate graphs and dashboards to illustrate data.
• Practice : Rehearse your presentation multiple times for a smooth delivery.
• Engage your audience : Encourage questions and discussions.
• Stay concise : Keep your presentation concise and to the point.

Don'ts:

• Overload with information : Avoid overwhelming your audience with too much data.
• Read slides verbatim : Your slides are a guide, not a script.
• Lose focus : Stick to your main objectives; avoid going off on tangents.
• Use complex jargon : Keep it simple and understandable.
• Rush through : Take your time; don't rush through the presentation.

Summarizing key takeaways

Strategy Presentation Fundamentals :

• A strategy presentation is a vital tool for sharing strategic plans and gaining support.
• Different types cater to specific goals and audiences.

Structuring Success :

• Start with a clear objective and audience understanding.
• Craft a compelling opening, use visuals, and keep it concise.
• Focus on high-level views and key success metrics.

Effective Do’s and Don'ts :

• Do tell a compelling story and engage your audience.
• Don't overwhelm with information or read slides verbatim.

Summary Strategies :

• Execute strategies effectively and gain stakeholder buy-in.
• Monitor key success metrics and adapt to disruptions.
• Always maintain a big-picture perspective.

1. What is a strategy presentation, and why is it important?

• A strategy presentation is one of the key tools business leaders use to present a strategy to their teams or stakeholders. But why do they need to create one?

A strategy presentation template can be an effective way to present a business strategy ppt using powerpoint or google slides. It helps present a strategy in a clear and organized manner, making it easier for the audience to understand the strategic goals and align with them. The presentation powerpoint slides also serve as an indicator of the company's competitive position and the importance of various aspects of the plan.

2. How do I create an effective strategy presentation?

• To create a strategy presentation that gets buy-in from your team or stakeholders, you'll need to create a plan. But how do you go about it?

Start by using a strategy presentation template or a business strategy PowerPoint template. These editable templates provide a structured layout to help you lay out your business strategies effectively. Whenever possible, include case studies and visuals in your slide deck to support your points and illustrate the execution of plans. Identify new opportunities and highlight how your strategy aligns with the company's existing products or identifies new ones.

3. Can you provide tips on using powerpoint for strategy presentations?

• PowerPoint is a popular tool for creating strategy presentations, but how can you make the most of it?

When using PowerPoint presentation slides, remember to keep the content concise and focused on the important aspects of your strategy. Use visuals to make the presentation more engaging and to help your audience understand complex concepts. Additionally, consider using the McKinsey 7S framework to align your strategy with various aspects of your organization, such as structure, systems, and skills.

4. Why is alignment in a strategy presentation critical?

• Alignment is a crucial element in strategy presentations. Why is it so important?

Presenting a strategy that aligns with your company's strategic goals and existing products is essential to get buy-in from your team. An aligned strategy ensures that everyone is working toward the same objectives, helping the company execute its plans effectively and maintain its competitive position in the market.

5. How can strategy presentations impact recruitment and business growth?

• Beyond the boardroom, how can a strategy presentation affect other aspects of a business, like recruitment or launching a new product?

A well-executed strategy presentation can serve as a powerful tool to attract top talent during recruitment. It showcases the company's vision and strategic goals, making it an appealing prospect for potential employees. Additionally, presenting a clear strategy can support business growth by identifying new opportunities, aligning resources, and guiding the development of new products or services. It's an essential tool for communicating the path forward to all stakeholders.

Create your strategy presentation with prezent

Prezent can significantly assist in creating your strategy presentation by leveraging its powerful features tailored for enterprise teams. Here's how Prezent can help you with your strategy presentation:

• Audience-centric approach : Prezent enables you to tailor your strategy presentations to your specific audience's preferences and needs, ensuring better engagement and understanding.
• Brand consistency : With access to brand-approved designs and templates, Prezent helps maintain brand consistency in your presentations, reinforcing your company's image.
• Real-time collaboration : Collaborate seamlessly with team members in real-time, making it easier to create and refine strategy presentations together.
• Time and cost savings : Prezent's efficiency features can save you up to 70% of the time spent on presentations and reduce communication costs by up to 60%, allowing you to allocate resources more effectively.
• Extensive content library : Benefit from a vast library of over 35,000 slides and content elements to enhance the quality and visual appeal of your strategy presentations.

In conclusion, a strategy presentation is more than just a set of slides; it's a means to convey your strategic vision, gain buy-in, and drive success. By following the structure and guidelines outlined in this comprehensive guide, you'll be well-prepared to create strategy presentations.

Sign up for our free trial or book a demo ! Start creating your strategy presentation today and take your strategic communication to the next level.

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Strategy Presentation: How to Successfully Develop and Communicate Your Corporate Strategies!

In the business world, it‘s pretty common to have to present your corporate strategy or internal strategies (e.g. a strategy presentation for a product launch) in front of an audience. Such strategy presentations are particularly important for start-ups, to set out the company’s vision and goals, and show the pathway there to both employees and stakeholders.

So this article is about how to skillfully develop a strategy, and how present it optimally.

Different types of strategy presentation

A strategy presentation does not necessarily have to be an all-encompassing corporate strategy. Strategies concerning internal company processes can also be presented within a strategy presentation. These can be, for example:

• Corporate Strategy
• Product Launch Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Human Resources Strategy
• Growth Strategy
• Social Media Strategy
• Finance Strategy

Developing Corporate Strategy

Every company needs a strategy for the company to grow. The corporate strategy forms a central element of management. By defining the strategy , internal company priorities are set and visions as well as goals are defined.

Note: Developing a company strategy takes time . Rushing the process can be seriously counterproductive.

The term “strategy” needs to be clarified first. Many confuse this with a goal, a vision, or the action necessary to achieve a goal . A strategy is made up of all of these . It represents a long-term plan that defines what you need to do to achieve your goals.

In order to develop a successful, future-oriented strategy, you need to consider a wide variety of aspects. The following questions will help you to develop a good strategy :

• What makes your company unique? What sets it apart from your competitors?
• How do you attract prospective customers?
• How can you market your company/product/idea?
• What’s the available budget?
• What is the personnel situation?
• What problems may arise in the implementation of certain operations?
• What are the strengths/weaknesses?

Working through these points will give you a solid foundation . Steps to help you find the right strategy :

Strategic planning is worthless – unless there is first a strategic vision .” John Naisbitt-US futurologist

Every business idea is based on a vision. What do you want to achieve with your company? What gap in the market do you want to fill? Define the purpose of your business. Define its exact reason for existing .

A company vision also includes a defined goal. This does not necessarily have to be financial. What do you want from your company in the future?

• The Competition

Any business idea normally has competitors offering something similar. It’s essential to analyze the market environment.

What trends are competitors following? How successful are they? What sales opportunities might you have with your idea?

When you have a start-up with new business ideas, market analysis can be extremely tricky. Lack of prior evidence makes it very challenging to estimate possible future success.

• Strengths and weaknesses

This is where you turn the spotlight on your company. What niche are you aiming for in the market? How many employees will you need and what is your current staffing situation? If you already have sales figures, how are they developing?

External consultants are often called in at this point to provide an unbiased assessment of your company.  You can also use online tools for this assessment. Some of these are freely available and can give you a quick insight into your conversion rate, web analytics, etc. Once you have an assessment, you can use it as a basis to determine a strategic direction for your company.

Tools and methods to aid strategy development

There are various methods and tools which can help here:

• SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis aims to determine the position of your company in the industry overall. Both internal company factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external aspects of business (risks and opportunities) are analyzed, and how the areas correlate with each other is considered.

SWOT analysis helps to sustainably leverage strengths and opportunities in order to minimize weaknesses and risks, aiming to maximize your company’s competitiveness in its field in the long term. SWOT analysis involves inputting measured facts about your company into a matrix, which results in a framework for action.

Use our professionally designed templates from our shop for the SWOT analysis!

• STEP Analysis / PEST Analysis

STEP/PEST analysis is a great tool for strategic planning of your company. This analysis involves four major factors of influence: Political (P), Economic (E), Social (S) and Technological (T).

Analyzing your company’s measurements on these seminal factors allows you to understand your market, develop targeted strategies and neutralize negative influences.

Looking for templates to apply STEP/PEST analysis and present your findings? We have professionally designed PowerPoint templates at your fingertips in our store !

• Other tools

There are many other tools that can be used to help refine your strategies; what you need will depend on your particular field. Our strategy toolbox contains a wide range of different strategy models for creating and visualizing your company’s strategies!

Why is PowerPoint so good for strategy presentations?

Microsoft Office PowerPoint’s easy-to-use user interface means that it allows you to visualize and present complex relationships in simple and clear format. A PowerPoint presentation allows you to present all the important information at a glance , meaning that decisions on open questions can be made quickly and conclusively.

Strategy presentations: what and how?

So you’ve developed your optimal strategy –now it’s time to present it. What’s the best way to get your strategy over effectively to your audience?

One of the most important things to bear in mind is that a strategy presentation is NOT just presenting a plan . You can’t just present a to-do list with a timeline attached. Your strategy is the underlying idea – explaining it is how you convince your audience that your plans are necessary.

Your strategy represents your guiding principle . Supporting your guiding principle by presenting facts and figures in a visually interesting way is very effective – using well-designed tables to present your key performance indicators, for example.  As well as solid evidence-based slides to appeal to the intellect, though, you need to involve emotions to get your audience on side.

Tell a story , and weave your key facts and figures into it! We go into the whys and hows of this in our storytelling blog .

What slides should I put in a strategy presentation?

There is no one answer to this question – each strategy presentation is unique , so requires slides tailored specifically to the strategy.

However, the following basic pattern is useful as a guide:

• Slide #1: The task

The first slide you present should always be thoroughly thought through and well designed; it is the first impression your audience gets, and will influence how they feel about your ideas.

So, on the first slide, explain why you’re giving the presentation . State the goal or business problem around which the strategy was built. A great way to do this is by using a diagram or a picture, illustrating this visually. Then elaborate on the content as you speak  – this way you can be sure that your audience is actually listening, and not just reading the content of your slide.

Don’t go into too much detail at this point. The idea is that your audience should understand the context of your strategy, and will then pay attention to what you have to say in the rest of the presentation.

• Slide #2: Insight

Your strategy is based on an insight; an idea which will move you towards your goal and away from your problem. Where possible, this will be backed up by solid research and market analyses. The insight slide presents the results of your market analysis .

Your narration then gets your point over to your audience. For example, if your slide states that: “In summer, Brand X light drinks have higher market share”, you can present your insight as “When it’s hot, people want refreshment, so will choose light drinks”.

It works best to use sentence form for the insight slide. Depending on who you’re presenting to, you may want to put exact numbers or trends you’ve identified before the insight sentence, to clarify the context. Even if you don’t include this data on the slide, you should have it prepared in the appendix of your presentation, in case there are any questions.

• Slide #3: Guiding principle

The guiding principle slide is the first slide to show your strategy.  So it needs to be as persuasive as possible. Take your time choosing the wording and editing it. Your guiding principle, or mission statement, should be clear and concise , in plain, jargon-free English.

The choice of words is important because your mission statement needs to be memorable . Pay attention to the way the slide is designed, too – don’t overload the slide; keep the focus on the key phrase.

• Slide #4: Visual model

Your strategy is based on solving a problem, and showing how this might work. It is a pathway to the future success of your company, based on data and experience. To make this complex issue as understandable as possible, a visual model can help.

A model can show all the steps and actions needed, and which ones should be prioritized. It can also show how they can interact to achieve your goal.

You could, for example, represent your strategy as a diagram – think Venn diagrams, pyramids or a flywheel. There are so many options available! Why not head over to our store to find the perfect visual model for your strategy? ► Shop

Venn diagrams from PresentationLoad. Like all our PPT slide templates, professionally designed for you!

• Slide #5: Tactics

You might need more than one slide here, as you need here to include all the tactics you have planned to achieve your goals . Explain all the steps in detail , while staying clear and concise.

Your audience may well have questions during this section of the presentation. You’ll need to think through all the possibilities, and either answer them in the presentation or put further information in the presentation appendix, ready for you to retrieve on demand.

• Slide #6: Timeline

Timelines are essential during a strategy presentation to visually show the timing of specific tasks. Include the duration of different strategy phases as well as milestones you want to have achieved by specific dates.  Show when you expect to have achieved your desired outcome.

Try to be as realistic as possible about your strategy.

Why not use PresentationLoad’s excellent timeline templates ? They are professionally designed for you. Have a look in our Shop! We have a range of different timeline templates for you to download. Like these:

• Slide #7: Closing slide

As in any presentation, you need to pay particular attention to the last slide of your strategy presentation, as it’s the last thing your audience will see and hear from you and will stay in their minds. So make sure what they remember is the best you can give!

Briefly summarize the most important points again. This doesn’t mean an overloaded slide (remember, less is often more); you can verbally elaborate.

You might like to end with a relevant quote, representing your inspiration, or with a list of the immediate steps to take. Whatever you choose, it gets over that you stand behind your strategy and are positive about your company’s future .

Time for follow-up questions should also be planned at this point. Be prepared for detailed questions; you will demonstrate your competence and reassure your audience by being able to answer their questions, perhaps even with slides supporting your answers which you included in the appendix.

Extra tip: PRESENT your presentation professionally

It doesn’t matter how well your slides are designed and thought out if you come across as unprofessional and awkward when you present them. Your strategy presentation will only be taken seriously if you’re seen as competent, confident and self-assured . Don’t panic, though!  We’ve covered this thoroughly in our blog just check out these articles and you’ll be able to present your strategy as professionally as possible:

• Body Language in Presentations
• Humor in Presentations
• PowerPoint Speaker View
• Storytelling in Presentations
• Public Speaking Skills for Presentations
• And many more

Conclusion: Now you know how to create and present the best strategy presentation!

Your next strategy presentation is going to be brilliant!  Following our tips, it will be clear and well thought out, you will present it calmly and professionally, and your audience will be convinced, with the necessary strategic follow-up decisions made quickly and efficiently.

Have more questions about strategy presentations, or indeed PowerPoint in general? Feel free to email us at [email protected] . We’re always happy to help! Looking for professionally designed slide templates to support your strategy presentation? Check out our store! We have a huge range of PowerPoint slide templates ready to download, covering all the business topics you need. Take a look today! ► To our Shop

We’ve even developed PPT templates specifically for strategy presentations – professionally designed and ready to download and solve your presentation problems ► Strategy Presentations

You might also be interested in the following articles:

• Company Presentations with PowerPoint
• Short Presentation with PowerPoint

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How to Deliver Great Presentations

Presenting like a pro.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Key takeaways:

• Connect with and understand your audience . Who is attending and why? What are their needs and expectaions?
• Prepare your content . How to start and finish strong. Tips to keep your audience engaged.
• Deliver confidently . Get comfortable with your visual aids. How to use body language effectively.
• Control the environment . Practice, practice, practice! Handling equipment failures. Have a back up plan.

Ever been to a really bad presentation? You know, the kind where the speaker stands behind the podium, uses slides that mirror what he is saying directly, and includes lots of data tables to validate his position.

But. "What's so bad about that?" you ask. "Isn't that how most presentations are given?" Yes. That is how most presentations are delivered, but that doesn't mean that's the most effective way to deliver them. This kind of presentation risks boring your audience to the point where they start wishing for a fire alarm to go off so they can escape. And once you lose someone, it is next to impossible to bring her attention back.

If the information you are presenting is important enough for you to deliver orally, then it demands an appropriate amount of planning and preparation so that the information you present is memorable – for the right reasons. Give a bad presentation and you'll be remembered all right: it just won't be the type of impression you want to leave in anyone's mind.

When someone presents well, it sends the message that the person is capable, confident, intelligent, and competent. These people get noticed and that type of attention bodes well for your career. Even if you don't make formal presentations in your current position, think about the future and keep in mind that you do have to present your ideas and opinions on a daily basis. The same basic principles of effective delivery apply.

Four Principles of Great Presentations

• Connect With and Understand Your Audience.
• Prepare Your Content.
• Deliver Confidently.
• Control the Environment.

1. Connect With and Understand Your Audience

To deliver a great presentation you have to consider the following audience characteristics:

• Profile – Who are they? What is the common element that brings them together?
• Needs – Why are they attending the presentation? What do they need to know after you've finished?
• Wants – What do they want from the presentation? Do they want to increase knowledge, learn something or be entertained? How can you connect their interests with your message?
• Expectations – What do they expect in terms of content and length?
• Current Knowledge – How much explanation do you need to provide? What assumptions can you make?

When you know your audience, you can prepare content that appeals to them specifically. If you pass over this first crucial step you risk delivering a presentation that is content rich and relevance poor.

2. Prepare Your Content

Now that you know who you are presenting to and why they are there, you can determine what to present. Here are some tips for content preparation:

• Don't try to cover everything. As Voltaire said, "The secret of being a bore is to tell all." Great presentations stimulate thoughts, questions, and discussion. Develop your content so that it covers the main points but leaves room for the audience to apply the information to their own circumstances.
• Start off well with a great hook – you only have a few minutes right at the start to fully engage the audience. Don't use this time to present background information. Get your audience charged up and eager to listen. Make the relevance immediately obvious.
• Also, start by telling your audience where you are heading. Don't make them wait for your conclusion, tell them up front what your premise or purpose is. This helps your audience stay focused. They may or may not agree with you at the start, but they will be able to quickly spot all of your supporting arguments.
• Your presentation should have five to seven take-away points. This follows the chunking principle , which you can learn more about here .
• Tell a story, make comparisons, and use lots of examples. Be sure to mix up the type of content to stimulate audience interest.
• Present your ideas logically using supporting evidence as necessary.
• Provide only as much background information as needed.
• Outline actions or next steps that are required.
• Develop a strong close, including a summary. Bring your conclusions back around to audience need and the hook you created. Consider ending with a question designed to stimulate further discussion.

For a similar but a subtly different approach, see our article on the Rhetorical Triangle .

3. Deliver Confidently

There are two main aspects of your delivery: your visual aids and your style. We'll look at them separately.

Unless your presentation is very short, you will need some sort of visual aid to keep the attention of your audience. There is a fine line, though, between drawing attention to your points, and distracting the audience from what you are saying. Here are some key factors to consider when designing slides:

• Keep slides simple and easy to understand.
• When explaining, start with the overall concept and then move to the details.
• The information on the slide should add value to your presentation or summarize it – it is not meant to be your presentation.
• Ensure that any charts, graphs or tables you include are very simple and easy to read. Use them sparingly.
• Use images (clip art and photos) sparingly and make sure the image means something and isn't just there to fill up space.
• Use pleasant color schemes, high contrast, simple fonts, and bold and italic to add meaning to words.
• Don't use fly-ins, fade-ins or outs or other animations unless absolutely necessary to really emphasize a point. How many times have you been put into a hypnotic state watching words or lines fly into a presentation?

Delivery Style

The way you deliver the content is often what makes or breaks a presentation. Here are some pointers to remember:

• Use gestures for meaning, not for comfort. Try not to talk with your hands or move about carelessly. Everything you do should have purpose i.e. gesture to the visual aid to draw the audience's attention.
• Pause for effect after main points or after you present a visual aid.
• Step out from behind the podium and connect with your audience – make sure you have a remote control device to change slides or cue other types of visuals.
• Talk loudly enough for people at the back to hear, or use a microphone.
• Make eye contact and hold it for three to five seconds. Any less and it looks like you are merely scanning the crowd.
• Be passionate – show your audience that you care about what you are saying.
• Consider putting up a blank or low-content screen between slides – this puts the attention where it should be: on you!
• Change your pace and style from time to time.
• Be natural – don't try to be a comedian if you're not.
• Finish early rather than late.

When you present with confidence and authority, your audience will pay attention and react to you as someone who is worth listening to. Fake it if you need to, by turning your nervousness into creative and enthusiastic energy.

4. Control the Environment

You won't ever eliminate all sources of problems, but through diligent planning and preparation, you can mitigate your risks.

• Practice, practice, practice: The ultimate goal is to deliver your presentation note-free. Short of that, you want to be sure you are comfortable with the material and that nothing comes as a surprise. Consider practicing in front of a video camera and reviewing your delivery. Don't take short-cuts here because it shows! The point is for the presentation to look effortless – when you struggle, the audience focuses on you, and not on what you are saying.
• Keep the lights on: when you darken the room, the screen stands out, not you. And it also encourages sleep, which you want to avoid at all costs!
• Always have back-ups and a backup plan. What if you forget your material? What will you do if the CD won't load? What if the equipment doesn't arrive on time? Plan for as many contingencies as possible.
• Dress appropriately for the situation – find out in advance what the dress code will be.
• Have a policy for answering questions – let your audience know when they can ask questions so you aren't inappropriately interrupted.
• Finish on time, every time. Last impressions are just as important as first ones.

Presenting is not a natural activity and to do it well requires careful thought and lots of practice.

You can choose to be average, or even below average, by simply emulating what most other presenters do. Or, you can take your presentations to the next level and leave your audiences with a powerful message that they remember, while keeping them interested and connected from start to finish.

To do this you need to pay strict attention to your audience analysis, content preparation, delivery style, and the external environment. When you control these for optimum audience relevance, interest, and engagement you are ready to deliver a great presentation.

The final element you must add is lots and lots of practice. Make your next presentation great by planning and preparing well in advance and making it look like it does come naturally to you.

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• PRESENTATION SKILLS

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Presentation Skills:

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• Deciding the Presentation Method
• Managing your Presentation Notes
• Working with Visual Aids
• Presenting Data
• Managing the Event
• Coping with Presentation Nerves
• Dealing with Questions
• How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
• 7 Qualities of Good Speakers That Can Help You Be More Successful
• Self-Presentation in Presentations
• Specific Presentation Events
• Remote Meetings and Presentations
• Giving a Speech
• Presentations in Interviews
• Presenting to Large Groups and Conferences
• Giving Lectures and Seminars
• Managing a Press Conference
• Attending Public Consultation Meetings
• Managing a Public Consultation Meeting
• Crisis Communications
• Elsewhere on Skills You Need:
• Communication Skills
• Facilitation Skills
• Teams, Groups and Meetings
• Effective Speaking
• Question Types

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How can you make a good presentation even more effective?

This page draws on published advice from expert presenters around the world, which will help to take your presentations from merely ‘good’ to ‘great’.

By bringing together advice from a wide range of people, the aim is to cover a whole range of areas.

Whether you are an experienced presenter, or just starting out, there should be ideas here to help you to improve.

1. Show your Passion and Connect with your Audience

It’s hard to be relaxed and be yourself when you’re nervous.

But time and again, the great presenters say that the most important thing is to connect with your audience, and the best way to do that is to let your passion for the subject shine through.

Be honest with the audience about what is important to you and why it matters.

Be enthusiastic and honest, and the audience will respond.

2. Focus on your Audience’s Needs

Your presentation needs to be built around what your audience is going to get out of the presentation.

As you prepare the presentation, you always need to bear in mind what the audience needs and wants to know, not what you can tell them.

While you’re giving the presentation, you also need to remain focused on your audience’s response, and react to that.

You need to make it easy for your audience to understand and respond.

3. Keep it Simple: Concentrate on your Core Message

When planning your presentation, you should always keep in mind the question:

What is the key message (or three key points) for my audience to take away?

You should be able to communicate that key message very briefly.

Some experts recommend a 30-second ‘elevator summary’, others that you can write it on the back of a business card, or say it in no more than 15 words.

Whichever rule you choose, the important thing is to keep your core message focused and brief.

And if what you are planning to say doesn’t contribute to that core message, don’t say it.

4. Smile and Make Eye Contact with your Audience

This sounds very easy, but a surprisingly large number of presenters fail to do it.

If you smile and make eye contact, you are building rapport , which helps the audience to connect with you and your subject. It also helps you to feel less nervous, because you are talking to individuals, not to a great mass of unknown people.

To help you with this, make sure that you don’t turn down all the lights so that only the slide screen is visible. Your audience needs to see you as well as your slides.

5. Start Strongly

The beginning of your presentation is crucial. You need to grab your audience’s attention and hold it.

They will give you a few minutes’ grace in which to entertain them, before they start to switch off if you’re dull. So don’t waste that on explaining who you are. Start by entertaining them.

Try a story (see tip 7 below), or an attention-grabbing (but useful) image on a slide.

6. Remember the 10-20-30 Rule for Slideshows

This is a tip from Guy Kawasaki of Apple. He suggests that slideshows should:

• Contain no more than 10 slides;
• Last no more than 20 minutes; and
• Use a font size of no less than 30 point.

This last is particularly important as it stops you trying to put too much information on any one slide. This whole approach avoids the dreaded ‘Death by PowerPoint’.

As a general rule, slides should be the sideshow to you, the presenter. A good set of slides should be no use without the presenter, and they should definitely contain less, rather than more, information, expressed simply.

If you need to provide more information, create a bespoke handout and give it out after your presentation.

7. Tell Stories

Human beings are programmed to respond to stories.

Stories help us to pay attention, and also to remember things. If you can use stories in your presentation, your audience is more likely to engage and to remember your points afterwards. It is a good idea to start with a story, but there is a wider point too: you need your presentation to act like a story.

Think about what story you are trying to tell your audience, and create your presentation to tell it.

Finding The Story Behind Your Presentation

To effectively tell a story, focus on using at least one of the two most basic storytelling mechanics in your presentation:

Focusing On Characters – People have stories; things, data, and objects do not. So ask yourself “who” is directly involved in your topic that you can use as the focal point of your story.

For example, instead of talking about cars (your company’s products), you could focus on specific characters like:

• The drivers the car is intended for – people looking for speed and adventure
• The engineers who went out of their way to design the most cost-effective car imaginable

A Changing Dynamic – A story needs something to change along the way. So ask yourself “What is not as it should be?” and answer with what you are going to do about it (or what you did about it).

For example…

• Did hazardous road conditions inspire you to build a rugged, all-terrain jeep that any family could afford?
• Did a complicated and confusing food labelling system lead you to establish a colour-coded nutritional index so that anybody could easily understand it?

To see 15 more actionable storytelling tips, see Nuts & Bolts Speed Training’s post on Storytelling Tips .

8. Use your Voice Effectively

The spoken word is actually a pretty inefficient means of communication, because it uses only one of your audience’s five senses. That’s why presenters tend to use visual aids, too. But you can help to make the spoken word better by using your voice effectively.

Varying the speed at which you talk, and emphasising changes in pitch and tone all help to make your voice more interesting and hold your audience’s attention.

For more about this, see our page on Effective Speaking .

9. Use your Body Too

It has been estimated that more than three quarters of communication is non-verbal.

That means that as well as your tone of voice, your body language is crucial to getting your message across. Make sure that you are giving the right messages: body language to avoid includes crossed arms, hands held behind your back or in your pockets, and pacing the stage.

Make your gestures open and confident, and move naturally around the stage, and among the audience too, if possible.

10. Relax, Breathe and Enjoy

If you find presenting difficult, it can be hard to be calm and relaxed about doing it.

One option is to start by concentrating on your breathing. Slow it down, and make sure that you’re breathing fully. Make sure that you continue to pause for breath occasionally during your presentation too.

For more ideas, see our page on Coping with Presentation Nerves .

If you can bring yourself to relax, you will almost certainly present better. If you can actually start to enjoy yourself, your audience will respond to that, and engage better. Your presentations will improve exponentially, and so will your confidence. It’s well worth a try.

Improve your Presentation Skills

Follow our guide to boost your presentation skills learning about preparation, delivery, questions and all other aspects of giving effective presentations.

Start with: What is a Presentation?

Continue to: How to Give a Speech Self Presentation

See also: Five Ways You Can Do Visual Marketing on a Budget Can Presentation Science Improve Your Presentation? Typography – It’s All About the Message in Your Slides

• Google Slides Presentation Design
• Pitch Deck Design
• Powerpoint Redesign
• Other Design Services

• Business Slides
• Guide & How to's

Stunning strategy plan presentation to turn your slides into a story

Communicating your strategic plan is equally as important as creating it. If your internal and external stakeholders do not understand your strategic direction, what’s the point of having and presenting one? In this five-minute read, we’ll discuss the peculiarities of a business strategy ppt and offer some of the most effective tips on how to present strategy in PowerPoint, so let’s get right into it!

What’s a strategy presentation?

A sales strategy ppt is not the pitch you will give to your clients. It is where you get corporate buy-in for your sales approach, ensuring that messaging, price, product specifications, sales media, and other campaign aspects are understood and agreed upon.

In your strategy plan ppt, you will discuss your target market, competition, sales strategies, tactics your sales team will implement to achieve its objectives and drive revenue growth, and much, much more. Your priority is gaining backing for your strategy, which may involve budget approval. Therefore, offering enough detail and conveying the most significant points without overwhelming your audience is critical.

What are you trying to achieve in your business strategy ppt? What is the overall reason for creating this brand strategy? Make sure there is an alignment of the following:

• Expression.
• Experience.

Next, define key messages and use a pyramid structure to tell your story. Place the core messages of your business strategy slides on top of the pyramid. This way, the story will become in-depth and more filled with details.

Include key takeaways:

• Opportunity – what happens in the market that makes it an excellent time to start your company?
• Target Market – who are you trying to serve?
• Challenge – what is the challenge specifically in your company’s communication?
• Value Proposition – what distinguishes you from other similar services?
• Mission – why does your company exist?
• Positioning – how do your customers think about the marketplace?

After that, encapsulate those key takeaways in the core messages of the strategic plan presentation:

1) Big Idea

A big idea functions as an organizational “totem pole” around which behavior, strategy, communications, and actions are aligned.

2) Unified Value Proposition

What is the overarching value proposition that is true for all customers?

3) Story/Pitch

What is the basic story about your solution in the larger context? It is the moment when you pull everything together: you’ve collected ideas, the company’s mission, the big idea, so it’s high time to tell your story.

Long story short, if you want your slides to evoke the WOW effect, add some drama and follow the next pattern:

✓ Current state of the world. ✓ Where are you heading? ✓ The problem. ✓ The solution.

And what better way to design strategy presentation than by hiring a professional presentation design agency ? This way, you will not only get a top-notch design for your strategic plan ppt presentation but also ensure it effectively communicates your ideas.

Strategy presentation structure

Each strategy plan presentation is unique and requires strategy slides PowerPoint explicitly tailored to the strategy and the brand identity. However, you can use the following basic structure as a guide:

Slide #1: The task

The first slide you give should always be carefully thought out and professionally designed. Explain why you’re presenting and describe the purpose or business problem that inspired the strategy. A diagram or an image to visually illustrate your points is a fantastic method to do this. Then, while you speak, build on the material to ensure that your audience is genuinely listening and not just scanning the text of your slide.

Slide #2: Insights

The insights slide is where you summarize the findings of your market research. Make sure it includes the specific data or trends you discovered during the market analysis stage. If you don’t include this information on the slide, you should have it ready in the presentation’s appendix in case there are any questions.

Slide #3: Guiding principles

This is one of the slides where you present your strategy. Therefore, it must be as convincing as possible. Take the time to select proper wording and polish content to perfection, as your mission statement should be clear, concise, and written in plain English. Pay attention to how you design your presentation as well: don’t clutter the slide with too much information, and keep the focus on the critical data.

Slide #4: Visual model

Your strategy revolves around solving a specific problem and demonstrating how this might work. The best way to explain your approach is through using a visual model (for example, a diagram or a flywheel), which can not only help you explain all the steps and actions that need to be taken in the most understandable way but also show how they can interact to achieve your goal.

Here’s a good flywheel template to visualize your data:

Slide #5: Tactics

You may need more than one slide to include all of the tactics you have planned to attain your goals. Explain all the steps in great detail while remaining clear and to the point. Be ready to answer the audience’s questions as they frequently arise during this section of strategy PowerPoint presentations.

Slide #6: Timeline

Timelines are crucial during a strategy plan ppt. Therefore, include the duration of each strategy phase and milestones you intend to attain by particular dates. Try to be as realistic about your strategy and desired outcomes as possible.

Slide #7: Closing slide

As with any presentation, you should pay special attention to the last slide of your strategy ppt as it is the last thing your audience sees and hears from you. Briefly summarize the most relevant points and consider including a meaningful quote that represents your inspiration or concluding with a list of the steps that need to be taken. Whatever you choose, make it clear that you are optimistic about your strategy and the company’s future.

Now that you know the basic structure of this type of presentation, let’s find out how to present a strategy in the most effective way.

5 tips on how to present a strategic plan on a presentation

Follow the recommendations below to make sure you’ll give your strategy presentation at your best:

Even though it sounds like a no-brainer, how many people do you know who just show up and deliver an awesome presentation? The way you give your presentation will influence the outcome, so dedicate enough time to polishing slides and practicing your presenting skills.

2. Begin with the ending in mind

What are the goals of your presentation? What do you want your audience to feel when you’re done? What do you want them to do when you’re done? All this requires you to explain the information presented to make your presentation memorable. For example, if you have numbers, do not just show them in a chart but tell WHY they matter.

3. Be clear and concise

Stakeholders are busy people, so don’t ramble. To avoid being cut off, prepare by reading, saying it aloud, and rehearsing your content beforehand. Make sure your speech is logical and juxtaposed with your slides.

4. Tell stories

The majority of people grow on stories. They like good stories and understand information based on examples better. Stories are just data with a soul, so make sure to bring yours to life. Personalize your data and connect to the audience with a good story.

5. Don’t read — talk

Make sure you are NOT talking through a slide by reading bullets. Instead, talk to the slide and your audience. Your PowerPoint is not your teleprompter. The presentation is not for you but for your audience.

Last but not least, to make certain that your presentation is professional, organized, and well-received by the stakeholders, contact the pitch deck design agency and focus on the speech part. This investment is worth a good night’s sleep and positive results.

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• Presenting techniques
• 50 tips on how to improve PowerPoint presentations in 2022-2023 [Updated]
• Keynote VS PowerPoint
• Types of presentations
• Present financial information visually in PowerPoint to drive results

Give a project plan presentation (expert senior-level tips)

How to create a business plan presentation?

30 60 90 day plan: a blueprint for professional growth

Strategy Presentation Template

Present the key points of your strategy using a Strategy Presentation Template. Ensure that your team understands the direction to take and how to execute plans.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Strategy Presentation Template

This Strategy Presentation Template helps transform strategic ideas and thinking into actionable plans. With a clear template, you can present a strategy to your team to ensure that everyone is on the same page about where your business is heading. 

Visual learning is a great way to engage employees and get them on board with never-before-seen ideas. The Miro Strategy Presentation Template will ensure that everyone listening understands the strategy presented and has a clear idea of the role they’ll play.

What’s a strategy presentation?

Strategies are the ideas and approaches business leaders map out to secure the future of a company. A strategy isn’t a plan. Rather, it’s a list of methods your team will use to achieve the company goals. These tactics refer to the what, how, and why of certain ideas to get everyone on board with the moves your team will make. 

Presenting your strategies is the best way to allow people to understand what the business will focus on in the future. Strategies are often more abstract than concrete plans. 

So, being able to discuss and present them to an audience can be challenging. A well-structured presentation is a great way to get employees to understand their roles and responsibilities in applying future strategies. 

What should be in a strategy presentation? 

The success of a presentation depends on the content included in it. It must be holistic, easy to understand, and flow well to keep listeners engaged. Your strategy presentation should: 

Discuss the big picture. The big picture should be your starting point for your strategy presentation. The overall goals and aims of your business should guide your strategies and provide an overview of the end goal. It’s important that listeners learn about this overarching approach to understand the rationale behind certain strategies.

Focus on the “why” of each strategy. It’s important that the team members involved in the strategy execution understand the “why” behind the business strategy. This will motivate and direct them as they complete their specific tasks within the overall strategy.

Benefits of a strategy presentation 

The following are the biggest advantages of a strategy presentation:

It establishes a sense of direction. The main benefit of a strategy presentation is to bring everyone in the business on board with the company’s direction and goals. It’s important that everyone understands this direction to work collaboratively and effectively to achieve the strategic goals. 

It improves focus within the team. A strategy presentation helps everyone understand the business objectives and key results , the actions they need to take to deliver the strategy, and their role in the business’s success. Based on this critical information, employees and workers will focus more on the tasks they need to complete.

It presents information visually. A strategy presentation is an effective way to visually communicate ideas to everyone on your team. Technical speeches with a lot of business jargon might be difficult for some to understand, but a strategy presentation template can help.

How to use the Strategy Presentation Template 

Here’s how to use this template to effectively communicate and present your strategy:

1. Fill in the frames with your strategy information

The Strategy Presentation Template has frames that act like editable slides for your presentation. Start by filling in each frame with the key information regarding your strategy. From the big picture and individual strategies to roles and jobs to be done, it’s important that you include all the ideas you want to discuss.

2. Customize the template

One of the main benefits of using this template is its flexibility. If certain frames don’t suit the message you want to convey, you can easily remove slides or edit them to suit your needs. You can move frames, arrange content on frames in a grid-like mode, and hide content on frames from your collaborators’ view. The frames are easy to manipulate, and the template is set up in a way that makes it easy to jump between slides to facilitate discussion and collaboration.

3. Use presentation mode

Once you’ve organized the information on each frame, it’s time to present. After entering full-screen presentation mode , use the arrow icons or arrow keys to navigate between frames as you showcase your strategy like a professional. 

4. Get feedback

Developing a strategy should be a collaborative process. It’s easy to share your strategy presentation with the rest of your team by creating a link or adding others as collaborators. Share your slides and get feedback anytime, anywhere.

How to pull off a great strategy presentation 

Presentations can be daunting, and getting your message across isn’t always an easy task. Keep the following tips in mind to help your strategy presentation communicate your strategic ideas effectively:

Make sure your insight is focused

Before you start thinking about presenting your company strategy, it’s important that your information is well researched and focused. It must not be scatterbrained, and claims must not be made without research to back them up. This is where you must collaborate with different people in your business to understand their opinions. You should also have a clear picture of the positions within the company and the role each person plays in carrying out the strategies.

Communicate the principles

The listeners of your presentation should understand the principles the strategy is based on. For example, if a strategy is focused on increasing productivity using a certain method, the principles of that method should be discussed. This brings it back to the “why.” The “why” must be explained and discussed throughout the presentation for your strategy to be properly received.

How do you start a business presentation strategy?

The best way to start a business presentation strategy is to discuss the job at hand. In other words, the presentation should start with the problem that needs to be solved. After this problem is understood and discussed, move on to the strategies that will be employed to solve it. After the introduction, this is the best way to engage the audience and make sure they understand the entire picture.

How do you structure a strategy presentation?

Having a well-structured strategy presentation is key to maintaining your audience’s attention and getting your point across. Begin by discussing the problem that needs solving. Secondly, discuss the principles that will underpin the strategies to be discussed later — the “why.” Lastly, after listeners begin thinking about solutions to the problem, present your ideas and tactics. This lends itself to a brainstorming and collaboration session.

When do you use a strategy presentation?

Strategy presentations can be used in any business sector that needs a revamp or has a problem that needs to be solved. For example, if your company wants to boost its online presence, it might be helpful to plan a social media strategy presentation. These strategic planning presentations can be used in all aspects of your business, from expansion to improving customer experience.

Get started with this template right now.

Training Presentation Template

Works best for:.

Presentations, Education

Creating an engaging training presentation that effectively helps your employees level up is no easy feat. With the Training Presentation Template, you can slash presentation development time and spend more energy on the transformative elements of your training. Plus, it’s so easy to collaborate with other training staff when you develop your training slides in Miro.

Pitch Deck Template

Presentations, Meetings

Stand out and leave a lasting impression with the Pitch Deck Template. Make people care about your idea and gain supporters everywhere.

Demo Presentation Template

Present your ideas confidently and professionally with this Demo Presentation Template. Use it to show potential and existing customers how your product or service works so they can fully appreciate its value.

Product Roadmap Presentation Template

Presentations

Use the Product Roadmap Presentation Template to outline your plan for product development. Whether starting from scratch with a new product or updating an existing product, delivering a roadmap presentation aligns your team and keeps partners in the loop.

Proposal Template

Presentations, Strategic Planning

Create the perfect proposal presentation for your prospects with the Business Proposal Presentation Template. Plan, structure, and deliver all the key information in a professional and visually-appealing presentation.

Logo Presentation Template

Presentations, UX Design

Make your logo ideas shine with the Logo Presentation Template. Use it to deliver logo designs, explain the thought process behind them, and show how they work in various contexts.

My favorite strategy presentation template

• March 16, 2023

How much time do you waste building and rebuilding PowerPoint slides?

How much time does your team waste?

If you’re anything like I used to be, the answer is, “waaaaaay too much”.

For years now, I’ve sat back and watched while everyone around me wasted countless hours designing and redesigning slides for business strategy presentations and updates. And here I was, Mr. Template (self proclaimed …) watching it all go down. Well those days are over. We need to stop wasting our time and energy building strategy presentation slides so we can focus on being creative and strategic.

I locked myself in a room for the past two weeks and assembled a collection of more than 40 of my favorite business slides in a comprehensive strategy presentation template . These are the slides I use over and over again. They are battle tested over two decades. They work.

What is in the Strategy Presentation Template?

In the package, you’ll find over 40 slide templates and a fully baked example strategy presentation to show you exactly how I use these slides in practice.

I built the slides to be visually attractive but simple to edit. I designed most slides using well-constructed PowerPoint tables instead of shapes to make it easier for you to format and change. They look great but they don’t break when you try to change a word or add a section. I created multiple versions of every slide – image versions, plain versions, versions of varying lengths. Whatever I could think of to make your life easier, I’ve done it. Instead of spending 3 hours building a presentation for your boss next week, you can spend 15 minutes by using my slide templates.

Buy the strategy presentation template

If I already had you at “strategic slide templates” and you just want to buy them now and get on with it, click here . In the package you’ll get 40 strategic slide templates and a fully baked example version to show how I would use them in practice.

If you want to learn a bit more about what’s inside the template, I’ll outline below.

I’ve probably built hundreds of strategy and business presentations over the years. I have evaluated hundreds more. And during that time, I’ve developed a set of slides I always use because they make sense and they work.

Mission Slides (2 slide templates)

It’s good to start every strategic presentation or plan with a reminder of the highest level mission. It provides an anchor point for all plans and strategies. In the strategic planning template, I’ve given a simple template and a visual template to communicate your mission.

Situational Analysis Slides (7 slide templates)

I start every strategy presentation with a review of the current situation. This can include analysis of internal factors like your team or budget as well as external factors like competitors and markets. Situational analysis slides are critical to setting proper context. You can’t build an effective plan or presentation without at least one. In the strategy presentation template, I’ve provided several slides to use when analyzing the current situation.

Goals Slides (3 slide templates)

Once you have assessed the situation, you need to communicate your goals in a way that is specific and measurable. Goals are ultimately tied to your mission but should reflect the situational analysis you’ve just done. I’ve given you a few templates for communicating your goals.

Transformation Slides (4 slide templates)

Every company is transforming in some way. Every team is transforming. I find it very useful to use transformation slides in my business presentations. I’ve built a few of my favorites for you to use in the strategy presentation template.

Strategic Initiatives Slides (3 slide templates)

In my experiences this is the most important section of a strategic plan or presentation. Once you’ve identified your goals and desired transformation, you need initiatives to get it done. In this section I’ve given you a few templates to communicate and describe your strategic initiatives in a compelling way.

Comparative Analysis Slides (4 slide templates)

In many business and strategy presentations you will need to compare markets, competitors, features and other attributes. I do it all the time. I’ve designed four of my favorite slides for comparisons and included in this template.

KPIs and Dashboard Slides (2 slide templates)

You can’t have a strategic plan without some sort of measurement dashboard. I use the same basic dashboards in every plan I do and I’ve included two versions of it for you in this package.

Budget and Resources Slides (2 slide templates)

Most strategic plans need to contemplate resources and budget requirements. I created a couple of simple slide designs that embed excel sheets into them. This makes it way easier for you to edit and adjust based on your specific needs.

Execution Plan Slides (4 slide templates)

Once you’ve aligned everyone to your strategic and the key initiatives, you need to present a project plan and timeline. Most people spend too much time building these or they try to copy and past something from excel that is not legible. I’ve included 4 slide designs I use all the time when presenting my execution plans.

Decision Framework Slides (2 slide templates)

How often do you need to decide between two options? All the time, right? I’ve included a couple of slides I use when I need to get executive alignment or a key decision made between two reasonable options.

Risks and Request Slides (4 slide templates)

Most good presentations end with a statement of risks and some requests for support or help. I’ve included 4 of my favorite templates for doing that. They should help you save time in future plans and presentations.

I hope this package is helpful for you and saves you a ton of time. Send me an email and let me know how it goes!

Get the template .

Latest Posts

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Skyrocket your career with my favorite templates

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Home » MTD Sales Blog » 13 Steps For Creating Your Sales Strategy Presentation

13 Steps For Creating Your Sales Strategy Presentation

But when it comes to ‘how to write a sales strategy’ and ‘how to present a strategy’ , where do you even begin?

We’ve got 13 useful steps to help you create an effective Sales Strategy Presentation that your stakeholders will love! From start to finish, we’ll cover everything you need to make it a huge success. Including a sales presentation structure to follow, and a strategy slide template to use. Let’s get started!

• What Is a Sales Strategy?
• What Is a Sales Strategy Presentation?
• How to Create Your Sales Strategy Presentation
• Effective Sales Strategy Presentation Template
• Wrapping Up

A Sales Strategy is a plan which aims to maximise sales whilst coordinating the plan across your whole sales team and aligning it with the corporate strategy.

Research giant Gartner defines Sales Strategy as “an organisation’s detailed plan to drive sales performance, innovation and growth by better penetrating existing markets and growing share of current customer wallet.”

This definition downplays the corporate alignment aspect and focuses on sales performance. However, a Sales Strategy does not merely consist only of delineating your sales approach.

In brief, a well-written Sales Strategy can be said to have three main aims:

• To ensure all reps are working to the same playbook and adopting a uniform approach
• To ensure that sales methods, messaging, and media reinforce corporate priorities
• To maximise sales revenue, within given targets and KPIs

The above list is not ordered in terms of priority—all three aims contribute vitally to your Sales Strategy.

When we’re talking about a presentation, it’s important to distinguish this from the pitch you’ll give to your clients. A Sales Strategy Presentation is where you obtain corporate buy-in for your sales approach, making sure that messaging, pricing, product specs, sales media and other details of your campaigns are clarified and agreed across the board.

In this presentation you’ll describe your target market, competitors, sales techniques , and the composition of your sales team, amongst other information. The aim is to secure support for your strategy, which may include budget approval. It’s important to include enough detail to convey the main information, without overburdening your audience.

Below, we’ll look at how best to go about preparing your presentation, alongside some tips for maximising audience attention and approval. If you can nail this presentation, you’ll be off to a flying start with your strategy, so it’s worth putting the hours in to get it right.

The most important thing to get right is your structure. This should be logical and narrative-driven, leading the audience from big picture to fine detail. It should be compelling and as brief as possible, without short-changing your audience. Remember that you’ll be asked plenty of questions when your presentation is complete!

1. Start with an Overview of Your Company

Begin by outlining the current state of play within the company. If you are an agency selling your strategy to a company, here’s your opportunity to demonstrate a rounded understanding of the company and its priorities, as well as giving a summary of your agency, and what it does.

If you are heading up an in-house sales team, you have the chance to maximise corporate buy-in, and ensure your strategy is fully supported with the necessary resources.

Don’t go into exhaustive detail – offer the sort of brief “executive summary” you find at the front of annual reports. Do use bullet points and figures where these are impressive enough to support your case. Highlight the opportunity your Sales Strategy will address, whether it’s a gap in the market, the chance to cross/up-sell a new product, or some other benefit you’ll bring.

2. Touch on Your Target Market

Here’s where you identify who your ideal customers or clients will be, and really hit home that you understand your customer.

You can use buyer personas , which may include graphics depicting “typical” customers, to help your audience visualise who you’ll be selling to. In terms of aggregate markets, you can include Venn diagrams or other graphic means to delineate core customers and subsidiary consumers.

For instance, if you’re selling an app for video editing, your core customers may be corporate content producers, but your subsidiary audience may be far wider, touching upon anyone who regularly uploads content to YouTube or other social media platforms.

You’ll need to describe how you’ll approach all your significant markets elsewhere in your presentation (see step 5).

3. Discuss the Value of Your Proposition

USP or Value Proposition (VP) is a concise statement of what makes your product stand out in your chosen marketplace. It’s a vital concept for sales reps to grasp because it’s the main reason why a consumer would choose your product over a rival’s. It’s important that all stakeholders buy into the value proposition because it’s a key factor in building brand identity.

For instance, some footwear brands stress comfort as their USP, while others highlight value, durability, style, or exclusivity. Your VP could also be a combination of factors, i.e. going back to the app for video editing example, “we offer the most accessible, best value for money and most fully featured video editing app on the market”.

Key to your VP is describing the “problem” a customer might have and how your product is the perfect solution to that problem. How will your customers uniquely benefit from the product you’ll be selling?

You can use comparisons with rival products, and data taken from market research, showing what consumers want, and how your product addresses those needs. Literal quotes taken from review sites can be helpful, revealing how real customers feel about their purchases.

The main takeaway is that your sales team are enthusiastic about the value they are offering customers, and that they understand how to characterise the benefits and features of the product.

4. Consider Any Competitors

It’s essential at this stage to factor in your competitors. Unless you are first to market or are offering a very niche product, the chances are you have a host of rivals eager to bite off chunks of your customer base. Here you need to emphasise that your sales team have the answers to the question “why us?”

Differentiation is key! What solutions does your product offer that rivals cannot? It’s important not to underestimate the competition and respect the successes that other players in the sector have scored. Much can be learned by studying the achievements of legacy brands, while offering something that builds upon previous offerings.

It can be a good idea to tabulate your top three or five competitors and show how their success provides an opportunity, rather than a threat. Remember that competitors should be understood in the broader context and can help you turn your weaknesses into strengths.

For instance, Netflix hasn’t only got to worry about Amazon Prime TV, Disney Plus and other streaming services. It must compete with cinema, social media and podcasts too. These are all popular draws upon customers’ leisure time.

5. Outline Your Marketing Strategy

Now you can summarise how your product will be marketed. Will conventional advertising be used? Will social media play a significant role? Is this a B2B campaign or will the product appeal to individual customers? Will buyers be targeted at work, or at home?

Perhaps you have partners working on marketing campaigns. If so, introduce them, and their best work to date. Provide examples of finished campaign materials if you have them or works in progress if that’s all you have at this stage. This is a good opportunity to use dramatic visuals or video, rather than text or graphs, which can become boring if overused.

Your marketing strategy should include the following five elements:

• The target audience for the campaign
• The goals or objectives
• How your brand will stand out against competitors
• What content has or will be created
• Any KPIs that have been agreed

You can finish by briefly describing how marketing and sales departments will cooperate and coordinate their efforts.

6. Go Over Your Sales Process

Here you can drill down into the specifics of the sales process. What does your sales funnel look like? Where are you getting your leads and how are you qualifying them? Will cold calling or email drip campaigns be a major part of the process? Will you have a presence at any trade shows or events?

Do you have scripts that you can share to offer an example of a typical sales contact? Provide concrete examples to help your presentation feel solid. If you have incentives planned for your sales team, or KPIs you expect them to achieve, then outline them here too. You can break down your sales activities into:

• Prospecting (including lead sources)
• Lead segmentation and qualification
• Research processes – market research, customer surveys
• The sales pitch – a typical call or contact
• How your team will handle sales objections
• The process for closing .

Once you have outlined what you’ll do to make sales, it’s time to explore who will do what.

7. Review the Current Sales Team Structure And Roles

Begin with an organisational diagram of your sales team, so that your audience will get a clear picture of command structure. Outline the responsibilities of each role, lines of reporting and (if relevant) base salaries.

If you are creating a sub-team for this project, then show the diagram for that sub-team. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel with an organisational chart since everyone understands the traditional flowchart model. Use that, to save valuable time.

Explain any unfamiliar roles or unexpected team members. Perhaps you have an in-house social media researcher, or a CRM specialist . Make sure you highlight and explain anything unexpected. You can also identify roles that are not filled yet, which will help when it comes to steps 10 and 11.

8. Summarise Any Sales Materials Used

If you have leaflets, landing pages, product listings, demonstration videos or anything else that will be key to the sales process, then here is a suitable time to hand out samples or give demonstrations. If you’re offering a free demo version of a piece of software, you can quickly run through its features and how you plan to convert free users to paid subscribers.

Remember that if you provide handouts, your audience will lose eye contact with you while they pore over them, so use this option sparingly. You can always provide supplementary handouts or follow-up emails, after your presentation is over.

9. Talk Through Goals, Sales Metrics and KPIs

All goals and objectives expressed should conform to the SMART principle, being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant , and time-based.

Try to be specific with sales targets, without promising more than you can reasonably deliver!

You can have nested targets—fair, good, and excellent anticipated results—while stressing that you’ll always be aiming for the latter. You can also express goals in terms of short, medium, and long-term. This is especially relevant when you’re launching a brand-new product, or entering a new market, where it would be unrealistic to achieve full market penetration immediately.

It’s very important to obtain buy-in on your goals and targets, so that there’s transparency across the organisation, and you can be held accountable if you fail to deliver. That’s the downside of getting specific with KPIs, but it’s also a great motivator for sales teams. On the plus side, you can also mention any incentive or bonus structure you’ll be offering your sales team for achieving ambitious goals.

10. Explore Training and Development Requirements

If you know you’ll need to train up staff to understand a new product, software system, or working process, then it’s valuable to admit this upfront. Training needs affect the bottom line, as well as your process timeline. You have the opportunity here to demonstrate that you’ve thought through all human resource requirements and researched training opportunities. You may already have Sales Training Providers you’ll partner with (mention them now) or if you’re still looking why not check out our Essential Selling Skills Training or Telesales Training Course.

Spending time on this aspect of your Sales Strategy will also build stakeholder confidence. They’ll know you aren’t throwing your reps in at the deep end. Instead you are preparing them properly for success.

11. Consider Any Budgeting Needs

With resources in mind (IT, human resources, content creation, research costs and other expenses) outline what you expect your operating sales budget to be. There is no point in understating your anticipated costs, since overruns may occur, and senior management will often try to make cost savings. It pays to build in a little wriggle room for negotiation.

Don’t blind or bore your audience with spreadsheets; just give the headline figures. Highlight any areas of expenditure that are loosely estimated, or unclear. Remember to allow for hiring costs for any unfilled sales team roles you described in step 7 (see above), and for staff training.

Remember also to include cash flow, as well as overall expenditure. How much money will you need and at what milestones? Sometimes success can be more expensive than failure; for instance, when it necessitates a sudden recruitment drive to expand your sales team. It’s vital for stakeholders to appreciate key dates when funding must be made available.

12. End With Next Steps And Future Action Plans

If you’ve prepared a simplified GANTT chart, you can show where in the project timeline you currently sit. Explain what your next actions will be, and what the future holds. Here you can build further confidence by demonstrating that you’ve thought everything through.

Remember to build in a little more time than you think you’ll need for more flexible stages like research, training, and lead prospecting. Make sure you highlight any immovable deadlines, like sales events or product launches, and how you’ll ensure you’re prepared for them.

You should also be building excitement and enthusiasm here, so don’t make it too dry. This is a thrilling time—you’re about to hit the go button on a brand-new sales campaign. Get your audience to feel your enthusiasm and you’re halfway to achieving buy-in.

13. Don’t Forget To Use Engaging Visuals Throughout!

The cliché is true – a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes a short video or meme can make a more dramatic point than yet another set of bullet points, facts, or figures.

There’s a popular rule of thumb with PowerPoint slides, called the 7 x 7 principle. This states that no single slide should contain more than seven lines of text, and each line should contain no more than seven words. How many presentations have you witnessed that fail to pass that test? Too many, most likely!

Avoid this issue by preferring visual content over words. After all, you are there to deliver the verbal component of the presentation. You can do this so much more effectively with your communication and interpersonal skills. You already know this — you’re a salesperson!

Finally, make sure you leave time for questions (and prepare some answers to likely ones in advance). Thank your audience for their time… and relax!

Now you know how to create your presentation, it’s time to have a go at making it! Here’s a PowerPoint template you can download to kick you off.

The deck includes 13 slides covering all the sections we’ve touched on. Just customise the template by adding your own branding font and colours – and don’t forget to add some of those engaging visuals we’ve spoken about!

Perhaps it’s worth leaving you with a simple thought – you can enjoy this moment! After all, it’s the culmination of a complex sales planning process, and now you get to share your vision with everyone who matters. That opportunity doesn’t come around very often. So, take a moment to congratulate yourself on your hard work, and have fun!

Finally, here are some parting thoughts on presentations, from writers and speakers who’ve been there:

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” –Carl W. Buechner, politician and church leader.

“The first 30 seconds and the last 30 seconds have the most impact in a presentation.” –Patricia Fripp, Sales presentation expert and speech coach.

“You are not being judged, the value of what you are bringing to the audience is being judged.” –Seth Godin, dotcom executive and bestselling author.

Hopefully, this article has reminded you of some principles you already understand and has given you the inspiration to really smash your Sales Strategy Presentation!

If you need any extra sales support for you or your team, please contact us for further information on our Sales Management Training and Account Management Training solutions, also take a look at our popular portfolio of Sales Training Courses .

Happy Selling!

Sean McPheat Managing Director MTD Sales Training

• General Sales Skills

Updated on: 13 June, 2023

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How to Conduct an Effective Sales Strategy Presentation

As a sales professional , you’re used to selling to customers, but selling to stakeholders in your own organization is a different story. When you conduct a sales strategy presentation, that’s exactly what you’re doing: Demonstrating what you expect your team to accomplish to benefit the rest of the organization.

Your sales strategy is written. You’ve got all your numbers in order. Now, all that’s left is to present that strategy to your leadership team. 77% of people have a fear of public speaking, but that’s never applied to you… until now. Conducting a sales strategy presentation can be a lot of pressure.

I’ll give you my top tips for conducting a sales strategy presentation that is guaranteed to align your organization and excite the other stakeholders in your business.

What Is a Sales Strategy Presentation?

Before we provide the steps to conducting an effective sales strategy presentation, let’s first outline what a sales strategy presentation looks like.

A sales strategy presentation is your opportunity to ensure your sales goals and strategies are aligned with the goals and strategies of the other stakeholders in your organization. You will use this time to outline opportunities you see for the business to win new customers, as well as outline your plans to structure, train, and develop your sales team.

RELATED READ: How Long Does It Take to Develop a Modern Sales Force

It is my experience that sales leaders don’t spend enough time or energy teaching, training, and indoctrinating their sales force in their strategy—if they have one at all. This is one of the reasons that sales managers find themselves continually telling certain salespeople they are not allowed to match their competitor’s pricing or offering some concession that would break the strategy.

There are three groups that should be included in a sales strategy presentation. First, your senior sales leaders should be included in the strategy and the presentation. Second, your marketing team should also participate, as it will be important to acquire their help with things like market research and positioning, as well as the content the sales force will need. Third, and finally, the sales force needs to understand what their strategy requires of them.

Your strategy is a tool to create alignment within your sales force and your organization. It provides a structure that keeps everyone on the same page and helps you reach revenue growth goals. It’s a mistake not to use it for this purpose.

Start With Goals and KPIs

Your first step in conducting an effective sales strategy presentation is to nail down goals and KPIs . In your presentation, discuss performance over the past period. In a modern sales approach, we tend to spend a lot of time working on helping our clients answer, “why should I change now?” In this case, you are going to ask and answer this question yourself.

When you introduce your strategy or an update, data around your past performance helps to make the case for change, something John Kotter of Harvard describes as “a burning platform.” By answering “why change” first and enlightening your audience with the data that proves you not only capture their attention but also provide a justification for what comes next.

Establish goals your team will be shooting for over the next period. Even if you have to make a conservative estimate of the better results you are going to create in the first quarter you use your strategy, start with the goals and the KPIs you will be tracking.

Outline Your Market Strategy

What markets will you be targeting? Sometimes it makes sense to target a single vertical, but in many more cases, your strategy should be targeted to address the needs of customers in multiple markets, increasing the number of customers that will benefit from what you sell and how you deliver customer value.

When it is possible to identify the companies that spend the most in your category, putting forth the time and effort to pursue them will create greater net new revenue, speeding your results, provided you get your strategy right and your team properly trained and enabled.

How did you establish this? You want to help your leadership team, your marketing team, and your sales force to understand why you made the decisions as to who and why you have chosen these targets and how your strategy is going to improve results.

Present data to support your strategy. Presenting the data that is driving your decisions not only helps you inform your team about your choices, but a conversation with your teams can identify other considerations and modifications that make your plan even more powerful.

Describe Training & Development Efforts

Plan for team training and development to hit key metrics. Most sales leaders don’t recognize the connection between their sales force’s effectiveness and their ability to execute the company’s strategy. Without being trained to execute the strategy, you risk failing to execute the strategy well enough for it to produce the results you need. This is critical if your strategy requires a consultative approach, as most salespeople have never been taught to use a modern sales approach.

Our training and development on the Sales Accelerator Platform provides the curriculum to train salespeople to execute your strategy and provide them with a culture shift, one that reinforces your strategy and one with proven results.

Discuss Budgetary Needs

Lastly, a strategy shift comes with expenses. Some of these expenses include training and development, marketing assets and tools, and in some cases, hiring a number of new salespeople who have a track record in executing your chosen strategy. Ensure you’re making your budgetary needs known during your presentation.

An Effective Sales Strategy Presentation is Only the Beginning

Conducting an effective sales strategy presentation is a vital step to aligning your team with the rest of your organization, and securing the budget you need to move your team forward in the next period. Following the steps outlined here, you should have all the tools you need to conduct a sales strategy presentation that everyone can agree upon.

But the sales strategy presentation is just the beginning! To get the results you need and hit those metrics you’ve outlined, you’ll need some help. Our Sales Accelerator can help you level up your team’s skills, giving them the ability to crush the goals in your sales strategy. Check out Sales Accelerator today!

Written and edited by human brains and human hands.

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Master the Art of Authentic Presentation: Planning and Delivery

May 21, 2024

Authenticity continues to be a challenging yet dynamic concept within the professional space because it requires a balance between what an organization defines as standard and welcoming the personal elements of the people within that organization. One context where authenticity can be pretty tricky is when we give presentations. How do I remain authentic in this context? How do I determine how much of myself I can bring to this presentation?

At the core of authenticity is remembering that it refers to a person’s state of being and does not necessarily mean behaving the same way in every context. Varying contexts warrant varying norms and behaviors , and the same goes for delivering presentations.

First, you can be authentic when planning the presentation.

In planning your presentation, you must have a clear understanding of context to determine how to position yourself authentically. The presentation itself, platform of delivery and audience are all important considerations in this phase.

An avenue for maintaining your authentic self in your planning is through using various tools to connect with your audience. Storytelling will always be a powerful avenue to create relatability and connection. It is one of the most effective methods that distinguished speakers use to make their presentations more personable and to bring themselves into what they’re sharing.

Let’s suppose you’re delivering a presentation on professional brand development to high school seniors. An example of a storytelling technique that represents your authenticity and connects well with the audience may be recalling one of your profound experiences as a high schooler that led to paving your professional path. That’s just one example – feel free to explore the endless possibilities that keep your identity and authenticity within the presentation and connect well with the audience.

Second, you can be authentic in the delivery.

You’ve spent all this time creating an authentic presentation, and now it’s time to deliver. The delivery aspect can sometimes be daunting when considering nerves and other realities such as time constraints and unforeseen circumstances. Additionally, if you tend to rely on presentation notes a lot, it may seem scripted, which can impact how authentically you experience yourself and how authentic your audience perceives you to be.

The most important part of delivering your presentation is to be attuned to your audience. Of course, you want to stick with your plans as much as possible but be open to meeting your audience where they are. When you adopt that perspective, it allows you to connect with them more deeply while you present and create opportunities for conversations in which you can bring in your authentic lived experiences and stories.

Maintaining authenticity in your presentations can be challenging, but it is the most profound way to deliver impactful and memorable presentations. Remember, you are most confident when you are being yourself!

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Breneil Malcolm graduated from ACE with an M.Ed. in Higher Education, with a focus of study in Leadership. They are currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Learning, Design and Technology with Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Their research interests focus on diversity, equity and inclusion through the interdisciplinary frameworks of pedagogical, psychological and critical theories. Breneil has served as academic support faculty at St. George’s University for the past five years. While there, they managed an intensive feedbacking professional communication program and served as an instructor teaching learning strategy. Breneil’s goal is to leverage their doctoral research to secure a career in research and academia that enhances social justice for underrepresented groups.

Breneil enjoys training at the gym and has been a personal trainer and group fitness instructor for the past 4 years. With prior educational background in psychology, Breneil uses an integrated approach that combines skillsets from positive psychology, writing and leadership to promote authentic expression, personally and professionally. Breneil welcomes comments, questions and interested collaborators.

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Priced Out of Housing, Communities Take Development Into Their Own Hands

Across the country, neighborhood groups are uniting to fund mixed-use developments that meet housing and business demands, giving locals a place to live, work and learn new skills.

By Keith Schneider

Reporting from Traverse City, Mich.

As the owner of the coffee retailer Higher Grounds Trading Company, Chris Treter had a problem: Business was booming, but his new hires couldn’t find affordable places to live.

“Traverse City is becoming Myrtle Beach meets Hilton Head — a place catering to a population outside the region,” Mr. Treter said. “Our work force can’t live here anymore.”

Mr. Treter and others in this small Lake Michigan community with a population of nearly 16,000 came up with a solution: a 47,000 square-foot building that offered spaces for residences, businesses and community activities that had been in short supply as gentrification in the city pushed prices up and local residents out.

What sets this project apart from others like it is how it’s paid for. Mr. Treter developed the space with Kate Redman, a lawyer who works with nonprofit organizations, and several other entrepreneurs who were dealing with similar challenges. They created a crowdfunding campaign that recruited nearly 500 residents to invest $1.3 million as a down payment to help finance the project’s construction and earn up to 7 percent annually in dividend payments. Roughly 500 more residents contributed $50 each to join the project as co-op members.

The $20 million development, called Commongrounds, opened late last year. It is at full occupancy and consists of 18 income-based apartments (rent below market rate based on median income), five hotel-like rooms for short-term rentals, a restaurant, three commercial kitchens (for the restaurant and to be used for events and classes), a food market, a coffee training center (for new hires and developing new drinks), a 150-seat performing arts center, a co-working space, offices and a Montessori preschool.

The owners, made up of over 1,000 co-op members, also embrace a cooperative management approach to operations. Shareholders, business tenants and apartment renters elect the project’s nine-member board of directors.

Commongrounds is the latest and largest example of what developers of similar projects across the United States call “community-owned cooperative real estate.” The strategy was developed a decade ago by a nonprofit legal group and a nonprofit neighborhood group in Oakland, Calif., and has been refined by legal and development groups in Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and other cities.

The cooperative strategy enables neighborhood groups to finance unconventional construction or renovation projects that banks and institutional lenders, which prefer strong cash-flow operations, won’t touch.

“It’s part of a robust movement for community control and affordable real estate, rather than enabling high-priced development at the whims of the market,” said Mohit Mookim, a lawyer at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a nonprofit group in Oakland that helped develop the strategy.

Much of the approach stems from efforts by the federal and local governments to make it easier for small investors to put money into real estate developments. Federal rules once barred small investors — those whose net worth is less than $1 million or who make less than $200,000 a year in income — from participating in development projects; that changed in 2015. At the same time, a few states enacted laws allowing small investors to put their money into local developments.

“Until that change, 90 percent of the residents in a community couldn’t make direct investments in a real estate project,” said Chris Miller, the board chairman of the National Coalition for Community Capital, a nonprofit group. “Michigan allows nonaccredited investors to invest up to $10,000 in a project now. That was unheard-of before.”

Cooperative developments can now be found throughout the country. For this article, we identified roughly 15 cooperatively owned projects in the United States. Here are a few of them:

In Oakland, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is widely credited with being one of the first community groups to apply the community-owned cooperative concept to a neighborhood project. In 2019, the group raised $185,000 from a crowdfunding campaign that attracted more than 25 investors to help finance a $1.3 million project to buy and renovate Co-op 789, a four-unit apartment building in North Oakland.

Noni Session, a co-founder and the director of East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, said community-owned cooperative projects responded to the economic disruption caused by what she called the “standard capital pathway” of conventional development. Developers and private bankers who live and work outside the city, she said, typically ignore local residents as they pursue projects that are heralded as “neighborhood revitalization.”

“Almost all of that overlooks every single person in a nonaffluent community like West Oakland,” Ms. Session said. “Our model is economic inclusion. The goal is to reclaim our city and recapture power for how it develops.”

In Boston , 81 community investors raised $142,500 to start construction in 2022 on a vacant lot on Dorchester Avenue for a five-story building that consisted of 29 affordable apartments and a bookstore on the ground floor.

The developer, TLee Development, recruited the individual investors for the $9.65 million project, which was completed last year.

“We’re involved in 15 projects like this around Boston,” said Declan Keefe, a co-founder of CoEverything, a Boston architecture and development consultancy that specializes in community-owned cooperative projects. “The focus is community ownership so that people aren’t being displaced.”

In Atlanta , a worker-owned cooperative called the Guild established the Community Stewardship Trust, in which local residents could buy shares and have a say in future projects that the Guild is involved with. The Guild’s first project is the purchase of an abandoned 7,000-square-foot building on Dill Avenue that it is expanding to 21,000 square feet for 18 units of affordable housing, a grocery store, a co-working space and three commercial kitchens. The project is expected to open this year.

“Our goal is making sure that in neighborhoods that are gentrifying, the people that made these neighborhoods great get to benefit from the development that’s happening,” said Nikishka Iyengar, the founder and director of the Guild.

In Traverse City, Commongrounds was driven by some of the same principles of affordability and community oversight. Once a temperate seasonal beachfront outpost, the city has added 1,000 new residents over the past decade and evolved into a busy, increasingly expensive all-season urban center.

Downtown is booming with new and expensive residential and commercial construction. A one-bedroom apartment typically rents for over $1,900 a month, while annual median individual incomes have barely nudged above $31,000. The median price for homes climbed to nearly $400,000 in February, more than twice what it was in 2010.

Joe Sarafa, a local developer and property manager, helped guide Mr. Treter through the details of buying the half-acre Commongrounds site along the Boardman River, which flows through the city. Eight residents, most of them prominent community activists, invested $550,000 to buy the property and become the project’s first investors.

Ms. Redman, with the help of volunteers, organized public meetings to decide the project’s core mission and develop the crowdfunding strategy. They worked with city officials to adjust several zoning restrictions, such as drastically reducing parking requirements.

Another important player was Jeff Hickman, a vice president of Coastal States Bank who lives in Traverse City and arranged $8 million in rural business and industry loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The balance was funded by a nonprofit lender, and state and county grants.

The finished building, with its sunlight-filled public spaces and inviting offices and residences, was designed by Ray Kendra, a local architect.

“What I want to do now is work on more community-owned projects,” said Ms. Redman, who manages the building’s staff. “There’s interest here to develop more housing and more real estate that meets community needs.”

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5 Tips for Giving a Persuasive Presentation

When you need to sell an idea at work or in a presentation, how do you do it? Five rhetorical devices can help — Aristotle identified them 2,000 years ago, and masters of persuasion still use them today: Ethos. Start your talk by establishing your credibility and character. Show your audience that you are committed […]

When you need to sell an idea at work or in a presentation, how do you do it? Five rhetorical devices can help — Aristotle identified them 2,000 years ago, and masters of persuasion still use them today:

Source: This tip is adapted from “The Art of Persuasion Hasn’t Changed in 2,000 Years,” by Carmine Gallo

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The world is getting “smarter” every day, and to keep up with consumer expectations, companies are increasingly using machine learning algorithms to make things easier. You can see them in use in end-user devices (through face recognition for unlocking smartphones) or for detecting credit card fraud (like triggering alerts for unusual purchases).

Within  artificial intelligence  (AI) and  machine learning , there are two basic approaches: supervised learning and unsupervised learning. The main difference is that one uses labeled data to help predict outcomes, while the other does not. However, there are some nuances between the two approaches, and key areas in which one outperforms the other. This post clarifies the differences so you can choose the best approach for your situation.

Supervised learning  is a machine learning approach that’s defined by its use of labeled data sets. These data sets are designed to train or “supervise” algorithms into classifying data or predicting outcomes accurately. Using labeled inputs and outputs, the model can measure its accuracy and learn over time.

Supervised learning can be separated into two types of problems when  data mining : classification and regression:

• Classification  problems use an algorithm to accurately assign test data into specific categories, such as separating apples from oranges. Or, in the real world, supervised learning algorithms can be used to classify spam in a separate folder from your inbox. Linear classifiers, support vector machines, decision trees and  random forest  are all common types of classification algorithms.
• Regression  is another type of supervised learning method that uses an algorithm to understand the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Regression models are helpful for predicting numerical values based on different data points, such as sales revenue projections for a given business. Some popular regression algorithms are linear regression, logistic regression, and polynomial regression.

Unsupervised learning  uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and cluster unlabeled data sets. These algorithms discover hidden patterns in data without the need for human intervention (hence, they are “unsupervised”).

Unsupervised learning models are used for three main tasks: clustering, association and dimensionality reduction:

• Clustering  is a data mining technique for grouping unlabeled data based on their similarities or differences. For example, K-means clustering algorithms assign similar data points into groups, where the K value represents the size of the grouping and granularity. This technique is helpful for market segmentation, image compression, and so on.
• Association  is another type of unsupervised learning method that uses different rules to find relationships between variables in a given data set. These methods are frequently used for market basket analysis and recommendation engines, along the lines of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” recommendations.
• Dimensionality reduction  is a learning technique that is used when the number of features (or dimensions) in a given data set is too high. It reduces the number of data inputs to a manageable size while also preserving the data integrity. Often, this technique is used in the preprocessing data stage, such as when autoencoders remove noise from visual data to improve picture quality.

The main distinction between the two approaches is the use of labeled data sets. To put it simply, supervised learning uses labeled input and output data, while an unsupervised learning algorithm does not.

In supervised learning, the algorithm “learns” from the training data set by iteratively making predictions on the data and adjusting for the correct answer. While supervised learning models tend to be more accurate than unsupervised learning models, they require upfront human intervention to label the data appropriately. For example, a supervised learning model can predict how long your commute will be based on the time of day, weather conditions and so on. But first, you must train it to know that rainy weather extends the driving time.

Unsupervised learning models, in contrast, work on their own to discover the inherent structure of unlabeled data. Note that they still require some human intervention for validating output variables. For example, an unsupervised learning model can identify that online shoppers often purchase groups of products at the same time. However, a data analyst would need to validate that it makes sense for a recommendation engine to group baby clothes with an order of diapers, applesauce, and sippy cups.

• Goals:  In supervised learning, the goal is to predict outcomes for new data. You know up front the type of results to expect. With an unsupervised learning algorithm, the goal is to get insights from large volumes of new data. The machine learning itself determines what is different or interesting from the data set.
• Applications: Supervised learning models are ideal for spam detection, sentiment analysis, weather forecasting and pricing predictions, among other things. In contrast, unsupervised learning is a great fit for anomaly detection, recommendation engines, customer personas and medical imaging.
• Complexity:  Supervised learning is a simple method for machine learning, typically calculated by using programs like R or Python. In unsupervised learning, you need powerful tools for working with large amounts of unclassified data. Unsupervised learning models are computationally complex because they need a large training set to produce intended outcomes.
• Drawbacks: Supervised learning models can be time-consuming to train, and the labels for input and output variables require expertise. Meanwhile, unsupervised learning methods can have wildly inaccurate results unless you have human intervention to validate the output variables.

Choosing the right approach for your situation depends on how your data scientists assess the structure and volume of your data, as well as the use case. To make your decision, be sure to do the following:

• Evaluate your input data:  Is it labeled or unlabeled data? Do you have experts that can support extra labeling?
• Define your goals:  Do you have a recurring, well-defined problem to solve? Or will the algorithm need to predict new problems?
• Review your options for algorithms:  Are there algorithms with the same dimensionality that you need (number of features, attributes, or characteristics)? Can they support your data volume and structure?

Classifying big data can be a real challenge in supervised learning, but the results are highly accurate and trustworthy. In contrast, unsupervised learning can handle large volumes of data in real time. But, there’s a lack of transparency into how data is clustered and a higher risk of inaccurate results. This is where semi-supervised learning comes in.

Can’t decide on whether to use supervised or unsupervised learning?  Semi-supervised learning  is a happy medium, where you use a training data set with both labeled and unlabeled data. It’s particularly useful when it’s difficult to extract relevant features from data—and when you have a high volume of data.

Semi-supervised learning is ideal for medical images, where a small amount of training data can lead to a significant improvement in accuracy. For example, a radiologist can label a small subset of CT scans for tumors or diseases so the machine can more accurately predict which patients might require more medical attention.

Machine learning models are a powerful way to gain the data insights that improve our world. To learn more about the specific algorithms that are used with supervised and unsupervised learning, we encourage you to delve into the Learn Hub articles on these techniques. We also recommend checking out the blog post that goes a step further, with a detailed look at deep learning and neural networks.

• What is Supervised Learning?
• What is Unsupervised Learning?
• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning vs. Neural Networks: What’s the difference?

To learn more about how to build machine learning models, explore the free tutorials on the  IBM® Developer Hub .

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