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Business plan update: How to be crystal-clear with large chunks of data

Some business people are handling their presentations or their reports in a very complex way. Pretention or complexity don't help convince decision makers. On the other hand, flip-floppers make their audience uncertain and dubitative about what they really mean. In the same vein, if you happen to U-turn in your presentation, without being clear about the reasons why, or if your slides give a weird impression, chances are that you won't reach your audience and be surprised by a weak result or a failure.

Anecdotally, I'm writing this post sitting in an airport lounge, "patiently" waiting for another late plane, so I'll have plenty of time to give you a short report on my last business plan update meeting today with a group of managers. Goal of the meeting was to finalize the presentation to the board and get approval on business and action plans. As not everything was booming in this activity, the management team had to demonstrate mastery of figures and high maturity in setting up innovative and advanced solutions.

I won't elaborate here on the specific business plan but on one major issue: translating complex Excel sheets into convincing powerpoint slides by using clear structure and adequate animation. It's more about smart communication than about technicalities, although you're better off if you combine both.

Here below, you'll see a terrible slide. No comment. I know that you'd never present such a slide. It's the extreme slide.

You might be a brilliant analyst and an expert in excel, juggling with PivotTable reports. But when your first 100-line and 25-column summary sheet is ready, how do you put this onto powerpoint? Yes! you can divide it in parts by freezing some panes, but, come on, you'll end up with too many slides and poor readability, won't you?

Sure thing, your content is rich and remarkable. But unless you have to work again on the figures --in that case, you don't need a PowerPoint presentation.

→ What is the solution to this?

Simplify, simplify, simplify!

Summarize, summarize, summarize!

Use subtotals and concentrate on the essentials.

Your tables and slides should be perfectly readable. What are your key points?

With the same data as above, I have prepared an example here, on one single reasonably animated slide. --It's short, you said? Yes, but everyone in business understands this. In addition, if you are #8 to submit your BU plan, you need dynamite. No vaporware. No complex set of financial variations for decision makers to clarify the knotty points...

 You may need to refresh your screen to see the animation. Sorry for low-res.

You know that I'm all yours to assist you if you're not too sure in such a circumstance. Drop me a line here, with absolutely no commitment, whatsoever. I'll give you a username and a password to send your material.

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Other articles on COMMUNICATION:

How not to ruin a meeting although there are too many slides

Emailing these slides to communicate your message: Does it make sense?

10 great tips to avoid the overconfidence trap

Focus your sales presentation and jet-propel your leads into action!

No PC. No slides. No flipchart. How about your presentation?

Resolve false presentation timing issues: Apply these 10 KISS principles.

Strong content to communicate urgently? Kick the tires with a booming presentation!

Great lessons learned to control presentation timing

No connection with the video projector: What to do?

Nick Paulus © 2012. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.smilingresults.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.