Product Manager's Guide To High Impact Presentations

In today's post, I share some tips and tricks I learned about building high-impact PowerPoint presentations. As an AI aficionado, I like to find ways where AI can help be more productive at work...

Image by kalhh from Pixabay

When John asked me for feedback on his presentation, I thought to myself, "Throw it into the garbage." I told John that it did not meet our standards or achieve the goals we had in mind for this presentation.

We were one week away from John's presentation to our product leadership on a highly technical area of our platform that only some comprehended. This presentation was an excellent opportunity to educate our C-level Executives and give John the visibility he deserved.

John did not go light on the content: twenty slides covering everything his team was working on, sometimes in-depth, with all the acronyms and technical jargon one could expect. John even planned to bring two speakers to cover a few slides in their respective areas. We had thirty minutes to make an impact. This was going to be an epic disaster.

We worked on the deck and streamlined the entire pitch. John worked hard to develop a six-slide deck (four without the agenda and Q&A slides) and a 12-minute talk track, leaving equal time for Q&A. His intro was catchy and had a personal story. John decided to be the sole speaker. He introduced several of our key accounts to illustrate the importance of his work and dropped all technical jargon except one: the name of his service. Brilliant! John scored that day when he presented to leadership.

Mid-career PMs rarely get to pitch in front of execs. Like John, when this opportunity presents itself, you put your best face forward to make an impression. Everyone can excel at this exercise.

Salesforce is renowned for its excellent marketing and product positioning. I spent years learning from the best and carry to this day old bruises from less-than-optimal presentations :-)

I share some tips and tricks on building high-impact PowerPoint presentations in today's post. As an AI fan, I like to find ways where AI can help me be more productive at work and simplify my life. I am sharing my favorite LLM prompts and techniques that I have been using to build excellent presentations.

Defining What Success Looks Like

Before crafting a presentation, ask yourself: Who is this presentation for, and what does success look like?

Defining success is of paramount importance. In the end, you want to be relevant and deliver on expectations. Perhaps your boss needs your help getting Lila's buy-in on your product strategy and a green light to invest, or your leadership team requested an update on your progress to ensure your team will deliver on time and within budget.

Be clear and specific when defining success. Discuss it with your manager and the person asking you to present. The last thing you want is to miss expectations. This exercise should help you understand your primary audience and the individuals in the room you need to influence.

Relevance Leads to Success

Once you have identified the presentation goals and your target audience, building content that addresses their needs and expectations is critical. It is very different to present a roadmap to business Executives two levels above you than to peers in your product group or Engineering team.

As you build out your presentation, follow those core principles:

• Tailor your content to your audience's needs and interests

• Optimize your message to target the decision-maker(s)

• Speak the language of your target audience, e.g., business benefits and customer impact for C-level execs vs technology and capabilities for Engineers.

• Identify individuals potentially against you; be ready to address their concerns or objections.

Crafting Your Message

PowerPoint is an excellent tool for vision, strategy, business proposals, project updates, etc. Used properly, it can help align stakeholders on your pitch or idea.

Contrary to written documents, PPT presentations provide little detail. You control the narrative and messaging. However, it is rare for individuals to leverage PPT to its full potential. Why? Because of poorly constructed presentations: too long, too many details, poor framing, and poor messaging.

Before you build a deck, you'll need to decide how much time to allocate to presenting the slides and how many slides you need to create. I like the adage: less is more. I suggest allocating half of the meeting to speaker time, e.g., 15 minutes in a 30-minute meeting. Three to five minutes per slide is a good rule of thumb, i.e., three to five slides for a 15-minute presentation (not counting slide fillers like intro, agenda, and transition slides).

This approach forces you to focus on your core message and gives you ample time to pitch your proposal and engage with your audience. What about the slide layout and the look & feel? If your company offers corporate templates or top-notch presentations, steal them to save time!   

For the first draft, I like this simple approach:

• Build the slide outline with a title for each slide

• Capture the key talking points

• Make sure the narrative flows well

• The first two or three slides (problem, state of the union, why this is important, etc.) build-up towards your golden slide.

• Get to your golden slide in five minutes, a maximum of ten

• Write a high-level talk track for each slide; bullet list of top messages and ideas to get through

No need to overthink it. Thirty minutes should get you close.

Tip: Avoid linearity (equal time per slide) and be purposeful about where you spend your time. While the context and build-up matter, you should spend more time on your "golden slide." and engaging with your audience.

AI Prompt #1 - Presentation outline

Let's bring AI to create a slide outline and see how it fares against ours. Here's a baseline prompt you can customize to your needs (hint: the more details and accurate the prompt, the better the output).

You are a Director of Products in an Enterprise software company. You present a roadmap to your product leadership (VP and SVP level). The topic is [product_roadmap]. The audience expects a clear, easy-to-follow presentation that outlines the challenges and opportunities and justifies why the company should invest in this initiative. You have 50 minutes to present. You want 50% of your time presenting and 50% for Q&A. Ideally, you'd like to keep 5 minutes of speaking time per slide. You are presenting in PowerPoint. Build a slide outline that includes the slide title, the objective of the slide, the time spent on each slide, and a short bullet list of points to cover."

When I tested the prompt with ChatGPT, it gave me 12 slides. I used this follow-up prompt to reduce the number of slides to the bare minimum:

Too many slides. Limit it to 6 slides, including the Title slide and Q&A slide.

Alternatively, you can compare the output with your version and get the best of both worlds:

Here’s my draft slide outline:

- slide 1: [x]

- ....

- slide n: [z]

Compare this slide structure against yours. What are the pros and cons?

With a few more prompts, you will get to the minimum viable number of slides for maximum impact.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

I like to sleep at night on the outline, and if I still like it the next day, I build out my slides. Getting nice-looking and balanced slides that convey your message can be challenging. Here are a few tips and tricks to help:

• Do not write sentences; let keywords convey the idea, i.e., from "we seek to have the leading AI Platform in the industry" to "Leading AI Platform"

• No long bullet lists; condense to deliver using the "magic three" approach (three ideas, three topics or concepts, etc.)

• Leverage visuals (images, graphs, etc) to convey your message

• Use color and fonts wisely; only emphasize when critical; even better, ask your UX designer to beautify key slides towards the end

• Decide what content should go above and below the fold; less is more!

• Watch out for the altitude! Product experts love to go into details; keep it simple and on-point

• Do not keep slides "just in case"; move them to your backup section at the end and only use them if needed

• Bring the "no screw up" squad team to remove content on the slide that will spur debate, controversy, or bring useless questions, e.g., what does XYZ acronym mean?

• At the risk of repeating myself: don't indulge yourself. Use fewer slides for high impact.

Important: When you show a new slide, your audience automatically scans the content as you start talking. Reducing text, words, and concepts to the bare minimum lets you control the message because they stay focused on your talk track (nothing visually interesting to distract them). It also avoids tripping by getting irrelevant questions. You can use "content scanning" to your advantage by purposefully anchoring your audience into the critical messaging you are trying to deliver. For this to work, you will need well-chosen keywords and no visual distraction on the slide.

Crafting Powerful Slide Titles

The best marketers know that the title is a strong anchor. Your audience stares at it the whole time. Spend the time needed to optimize your slide title. Few tips:

• Use the slide title to deliver the critical message; be bold if needed!

• Avoid descriptive or generic titles; sell the benefits, not the features

• Ask yourself: can this title be reused in other presentations? If the answer is yes, it means it is too generic. Rewrite it to fit your message.

• Optionally, add a sub-title to reinforce the key message in the title (helps get a level two message without overcrowding your title)

Your slide title drives the slide positioning. It anchors your audience in the idea you want to convey. Descriptive titles are for inexperienced presenters. For instance, when presenting an opportunity, do not use "A Great Opportunity Ahead of Us" as a title. Instead, call out the benefits behind the opportunity, e.g., "XYZ will unlock $300M in ARR by 2026". Now you get my attention!

As domain experts, we put everything we can think of on a slide. It is your job to "dumb it down" for your audience and leave only content that matters. Many struggle with the simplification process. Remember: the slide is just a visual support. Your talk track should not repeat verbatim what is on the slide but bring new elements and facts to the audience.

AI Prompt #2 - Slide title

I use ChatGPT to research titles and headings for my substack articles. It works for slides, too. I provide two prompts: one to enhance a draft slide title and the second to brainstorm a slide title.

Note: we assume your LLM still has the content from previous prompts

Help me craft a title for my problem statement slide. The goal is to [X] audience [Y] and focus their attention on [problem 1, 2, 3]. The supporting talk track for this slide: [talk track]. My current title is: 'X Product: Stagnating business; down from 30% y-o-y growth'. Suggest five titles. Write them concisely and clearly.

Help me craft a title for my problem statement slide. The goal is to [X] audience [Y] and focus their attention on [problem 1, 2, 3]. Suggest five titles. Write them concisely and clearly.

Notice how the first prompt provides as many details as possible, including a talk track, when the second one is lighter. I never get great titles the first time, and I like to play with the LLM to fine-tune the answers and refine the one or two titles I like the most.

If you have a detailed document on the topic covered in the slide, you may as well paste it into your prompt as context for your LLM to come up with a better title.

How to Connect with Your Audience

Let me tell you a secret. The concept of natural great speakers is oversold. Flawless delivery comes from hard work and preparation. Do yourself a favor: when asked to pitch your product, put in the time and energy needed to show the best version of yourself. Concretely:

• Spend more time rehearsing the message than building the slides

• Rehearse at least once; record and time yourself

• Replay and fix weak spots

• Know your talking points by heart; you should be able to present from brain memory without seeing the slides

Earlier in my career, I used to learn my talk track by heart. I stopped. Instead, I focus now on delivering my key points, supporting examples, assessing how the audience could react, and being ready to answer any question thrown at me. I optimize for impact rather than perfect sentence delivery.

Here's a list of tips and tricks that I regularly go back to:

• Start strong to capture the attention of your audience, e.g., bold statement, storytelling, business challenges, etc

• Build credibility early to support your narrative: customer examples, personal or team expertise, business KPIs

• State your points and arguments clearly and once; avoid useless repetitions

• End strong with critical takeaways or a call to action.

• Most presentations are boring; if you can be Mr. Fun, by all means, bring that guy to the show

• If dealing with non-experts, dumb down the message; remember. You want them to get it!

• Use company acronyms and industry jargon with caution

• 50% presentation and 50% Q&A is an ideal mix; structure your talk track to leave room for Q&A

• Connect with your audience on each slide (Any question? Does it make sense?) and validate they get it

• If you want feedback from an individual, engage early by asking questions.

• Presentations rarely go according to plan when the audience is engaged; run with the flow

• Control the timing until you deliver your key message (golden slide)

• Many questions are of limited value and do not support your objectives; you can either dismiss them (short canned answer) or reframe them with an answer that refocuses the audience on what matters.

In my experience, two slides are pivotal when you present. The first one is the problem statement. It explains the why: Why are we here? Why should you care? The second one is the solution or proposal (golden slide).

The following AI prompts can help fine-tune your messaging.

Note: we assume your LLM still has the content from previous prompts

AI Prompt #3 - Problem slide

Help me explain the problem statement for [product X] to [audience Y]. Use a logical structure with a maximum of three key ideas or topics. Write it in a summarized bullet list format. The points to cover include:

• [problem statement 1]

• [problem statement ...]

Optimize the message for simplicity and high impact. Focus on information that is highly relevant for [product X].

Ensure the message is highly relevant to our target audience. From past discussions, we know that they care about:

• [item 1]

• [item ...]

Tell me if you need more information.

This detailed prompt should take you a long way to validate your talk track.  

AI Prompt #4 - Solution slide

This prompt will also help craft a strong message for your solution slide (golden slide).

Help me articulate the proposed solution to [problem X] for [audience Y]. Start with a strong transition from problem to solution and explain the critical opportunity. Then, drill down into details to explain the solution. Use a logical structure with a maximum of three solution pillars. Topics to cover include:

• [solution pillar 1]

• [solution pillar ...]

Write it in a summarized bullet list format. Optimize the message for simplicity and high impact. Ensure to address the problems for [product X] discussed earlier.

Managing Objections

It may take a few tries to reach a message delivery you like. Next, focus on objection handling.

AI Prompt #5 - Objection handling

Here's a simple prompt to brainstorm objections:

Identify the possible objections to our solution and draft a talk track in bullet list format. Potential known objections include:

• [objection 1]

• [objection ...]

Do not limit your analysis to those objections; bring relevant ones not listed. Tell me if you are missing critical information.

If you want to practice objection handling, you can set up a virtual role-play with an objector and a LLM judge. I did it recently and truly enjoyed the experience -like many out there, I hate losing an argument :-)

Here's how you set it up:

• Assumption: the LLM has full context of the proposal

• Tell the LLM to bring an actor (e.g., Senior Exec with X/Y/Z expertise) who will bring objections to your slide and debate with you.

• Tell the LLM to bring a second actor, a judge, to assess how you fared (solid/weak argumentations) and what you could have done better. Tell him to bring the judge when you type "Judge."

• Choose a slide you want to debate and provide the talk track.

• Start the debate with the first actor providing his list of objections; limit it to three and number them so you can debate each one separately (or not)

• After a few iterations with your opponent, call the judge.

• Move to the next objection and repeat until the last one

• Voilà!

Putting The Final Touch

When ready, you may consider a rehearsal with trusted peers, your peers, or team members. Ideally, those people have the same level of expertise on the topic covered as your target audience.

If your company uses an AI tool to record meetings, I recommend using it for rehearsal. It will help identify weak points in the delivery and provide tips to improve.

I played with Otter.ai. I like it a lot, and it can do so much more for you, such as acting as a note-taker when you are walking outside and capturing that idea or task right away. I also tested Fireflies, and I think Otter.ai is better.

Alternatively, if you have the paid version of ChatGPT, you will easily find GPTs that analyze videos. You could point them at your recording and interact with the GPT to see how you are doing. I have not personally tested GPTs for this use case, but some offer superior summarization capabilities than ChatGPT (paid version).

Conclusion

Those tips and the AI prompts can benefit your next presentation. If you need slide examples to get started, you can look at Dreamforce keynotes or presentations from other big tech companies (AWS, Apple, Google, etc.).

I am always looking for valuable article ideas for Product Managers at the intersection of AI that can help them in their day-to-day jobs. Feel free to reach out on Substack or LinkedIn if you have a suggestion.