We help people and organizations to achieve more with presentations. One thing is clear: presentations are everywhere. From the management team to the sales department, from events to marketing and communication. Almost all professionals need to convince, inspire or inform stakeholders using PowerPoint.
Unfortunately, the professional appearance of presentations often falls short, and the quality is not optimal. We see that many organizations can achieve significant gains in this field. It's time to make an impact, work more efficiently, and present consistently and on-brand. But who takes responsibility for this?
Who Is in Charge?
The communication department is involved in maintaining the corporate identity and ensuring a professional appearance. We often see that the development of important presentations is operated by the communication department on a project basis. They are asked to develop a corporate presentation, together with the commercial team they work on a sales deck and the management team seeks help for investor relations decks, fundraising pitch decks or important on-stage performances.
However, is the communication department solely responsible for maintaining the corporate identity, or does the message also play a role? Is user friendliness taken into account? Additionally, who is responsible for presentation visuals, content, innovation, access, and updates?
Usually, managing presentations is not explicitly part of the Communication Manager's job description. But is it part of any job description in the organization?
Ineffective, Inefficient, Unprofessional
We have all attended internal project updates that go on and on for hours without a clear direction. We have seen sales teams spending hours building their story and formatting it in PowerPoint. We have been exposed to presentations with out of proportion logos and a poor selection of stock imagery.
Altogether, poor presentation performance harms your brand, makes your organization look unprofessional, makes you lose deals and costs a whole lot of money.
Director of Presentations
How do large corporations tackle this? They hire a Director of Presentations. A role mainly seen in large financial corporations, but we believe more organizations should assign presentation management.
Someone who is responsible for the message, tone of voice, brand consistency, tool usage, usability, and distribution. A single point of contact making sure presentations make impact, people can work efficiently and both messaging and look and feel are consistent and on brand.
Of course, this person cannot create all the presentations. Together with a team or partners they set a strategy, create assets, take care of distribution, provide training and facilitate the overall presentation game to improve.
The Benefits
Appointing a Director of Presentations brings numerous benefits:
Improved quality
Presentations are taken to a higher level. Employees can use approved storylines, templates, visuals, and slides that enhance impact.More control
There is greater control over the message conveyed. The message becomes consistent and effective.Time savings
Employees spend less time creating presentations. They have access to ready-to-use presentation materials.On-brand
All resources used are pre-approved by the Director of Presentations, ensuring that the presentation aligns with the brand and desired image.Single point of contact
The Director of Presentations acts as a specialist, elevating the overall quality of presentations.
Presentations are a crucial part of organizational success. On average, professionals spend over 20% of their time working in PowerPoint. Often working very inefficiently and creating presentations or reports that are not as effective as they could be.
We help our clients effectively manage presentations within their organization. We co-create cross-department presentation strategies with a tailor-made mix of creation, tooling and training. We build roadmaps in order to improve the overall quality without our clients having to engage an agency for each presentation or report.
Not every organization has the resources to hire someone exclusively dedicated to presentations. However, explicitly assigning accountability and making someone responsible for presentation performance will make a huge difference.
How does your organization manage presentations? Do you recognize the situation described? Do let me know, we're eager to learn from our network.
