Have a thorough meeting with your team to get their feedback on the project presentation before you present your project. If you maintain your confidence, you can win the client with ease. If it’s your first time, you might be nervous and trembling out of concern that someone might judge you. Reading this article, you will completely learn how to present successfully.
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How to Create a Successful Project Presentation?
How do you explain your project to the decision-makers and win their support? Here is a list of 8 project presentation templates that you can edit, share, and download using Visme. View more templates below:
Set Goals for Your Project
Before you dive into the main details of your project presentation, you want to answer these questions:
- What objectives do you have for your project?
- Why is it crucial that you and your team meet the objectives you have set?
- How are you going to explain your objectives to your audience?
You have a lot of work ahead of you if you must make lengthy assumptions before responding to these questions.
What you should be aware of is as follows. Project planning is still necessary, even with attractive or well-written project presentations. Your project is already destined to fail if it lacks clear goals. And your investors might think, “why to bother listening?”
The goal-setting stage is often rushed, but we don’t advise project managers to do this. You might be positioning yourself for failure, which is why.
You can persuade stakeholders to support your project goals once you have clearly defined them.
The issue at hand is how to set and accomplish goals for your project. SMART goal setting is one strategy for achieving that.
Setting SMART Project Goals
SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
For successfully planning and carrying out projects, SMART goals are essential. It takes a deeper look into the finer details your audience care about, such as:
- Project plan and schedule,
- Resources,
- Project timelines,
- Milestones,
- Potential roadblocks and more
Let’s say, for instance, that the goal of your project is to enhance the customer experience across desktop and mobile platforms. You’ll see that this example explains the final objective. But it doesn’t say how you’ll go about improving the customer experience.
Here’s how setting SMART goals can give your project direction.
Specific
Be clear and precise when defining your goals in terms of what you hope to accomplish in the end.
A specific goal could be: “To enhance the customer experience, we want to create a mobile application and responsive website for our business. This project will require inputs from our product design, software, and marketing department”.
Measurable
During your presentation, you’d have to answer questions like:
- How will you measure whether you achieve the goal?
- How will you know when you’re on the right path?
Setting up metrics will enable you to assess your project. Furthermore, you’d be able to keep an eye on development and tweak your project for better outcomes.
Whether you’re organizing a short-term or long-term project doesn’t matter. Make sure to establish benchmarks and metrics that contribute to your goal.
From our earlier example, a measurable goal could be to have:
- Over 100,000 mobile apps have been downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Playstore.
- a 20% bounce rate and a 15% conversion rate for mobile and desktop.
Attainable
One of the most critical questions you want to ask during goal-setting is, “Can we reach the objective we’ve set?” Are we equipped with the necessary tools to complete the task in the time allotted?
You would need to think about what it would take to accomplish those goals if the answer is no. This might necessitate changing your objectives or the means by which you plan to achieve them.
Although being ambitious is acceptable, you should also be grounded in reality. Getting 200,000 app downloads in a week, for instance, might be too ambitious if your app has just been released. However, if you set out to accomplish that goal in three months, it might be possible to complete your project.
Relevant
The objectives of your project must be consistent with the bigger business objectives. Are your objectives consistent with the development and prosperity of the business? Do they merit allocating funds?
Launching an online store, for instance, would be pointless if your business only deals with businesses and has no plans to enter the B2C market.
Time-Bound
No matter the size or type of your project, you should establish deadlines. Setting deadlines for deliverables instills a sense of urgency and inspires you to reach your objectives.
From our example above, a time-bound goal could be “By the end of the fiscal year, we hope to have 100,000 downloads of our mobile app and a 15% conversion rate. By the third quarter, our business will release the mobile app, and a significant marketing campaign will run through the end of the following fiscal year.”
A simple task like setting SMART goals can be accomplished. Setting project goals that position your company for success can be done using the template below.
Communicate Project Goals to Your Team Members
Your team will be crucial to your success in achieving your goals once you’ve set them. So you ensure they understand these things:
- Why the project goals are in place
- What it’s supposed to deliver for your business and customers
- How their role, team, and department contribute to the success of the project
If you aren’t clear on this, the project may veer off course and go in a variety of undesirable directions.
Make it a team effort rather than imposing your objectives on your team. Talk at length about the project goals with your team and stakeholders.
Don’t confine your communication to colleagues from the same department. You can make contact with staff members in other divisions, such as sales, operations, finance, etc., to see how well your goals align with theirs.
Lay Out Your Project Plan
Outlining your strategy for achieving your goals is the crucial next step after setting them. Putting your project into a workable plan with steps for execution is a great place to start.
You may be curious as to why this step is crucial for making a project presentation that is successful.
Writing a thorough plan, structure, and layout puts everything into perspective, regardless of how big or small the project you’re planning is. It removes ambiguity and aids in helping your audience understand the project roadmap without skipping any important details.
Both technical and non-technical project information should be included in your project plan. Use a project presentation template that outlines all the tasks and steps in detail if you want to give yourself an advantage.
Additionally, the organization of your presentation should be straightforward and simple to understand.
Depending on the project type, your plan could include key details such as:
- The goals and objectives you outlined earlier
- Your project scope, methodology, and framework
- Project milestones, deliverables, and acceptance criteria
- Project schedule and timelines
- estimates for resources and the budget, etc.
For organizing your project plan, there is no one set format that must be followed. However, if you want to create a memorable plan that will keep your audience engaged, you could break it down into three parts, including:
- Introduction
- Body
- Conclusion and key takeaways
Introduction
You should briefly summarize your topic and explain why it’s important to your audience in your introduction. You could begin by outlining the executive summary and the project name.
Consider the project plan as a condensed version of your executive summary.
Would the information about your project be sufficient if the audience only read the executive summary? Your executive summary has accomplished its goals if the response is in the affirmative.
Depending on what you plan to cover in your project plan, your executive summary’s length will vary. But we advise you to keep your executive summary to one or two pages.
You can include key information such as:
- Objectives of the project
- Key points of the project plan
- Results, conclusions, and project recommendations
Remember that not everyone will have the time to thoroughly examine your project plan.
Key stakeholders and collaborators gain clarity by having a snapshot of your project. Additionally, it makes it possible for those not directly involved in the project to quickly comprehend it.
Body
You should include all of the project’s specifics and information important to its success in the project plan’s body.
This section allows you to divide your project into deliverables, tasks, milestones, and schedules (start and end dates).
As you plan your project, be sure to list all the resources you will need, including money, a team, time, technology, physical resources, and more.
Conclusion
This section should include a summary of your project plan’s main conclusions. The key takeaways and recommended actions from your audience should be included in your conclusion.
Writing an introduction, body, and conclusion might seem like a lot of work. However, including visuals in your project presentations can increase their effectiveness rather than writing pages and pages of text.
Outline the Problem and Solution
The project action plan you just created took some time. It’s now time to inform your audience of your project’s goals and plan.
Similar to sales pitches, project presentations are made. Your goal is to keep your audience engaged from beginning to end, whether you’re presenting your project plan to clients or building a pitch deck for investors.
Highlighting your audience’s problems is one of the best ways to get their attention.
Having stunning slides that highlight your incredible product features and project activities is insufficient.
Make sure you set up your project presentation to:
- Outline your audience’s pain points
- Emphasize how your project, product, or service works to address their pain points
- Explain how they’ll benefit from using your product or investing in your project
In essence, your audience should be able to clearly see how your project improves their quality of life. When they understand this, they’ll probably pay attention to your suggestions and act accordingly.
Don’t assume anything about your audience in general.
Give them a slide to discuss their issues and potential solutions if you want to convince them to join you. Make sure they comprehend the advantages of your project for them.
Uncertain of the problems your audience faces? Go ahead and do these things:
- Publish a persona survey or interview current clients. As a result, you will be able to create a data-driven user persona that you can apply to all kinds of business and marketing decisions.
- Consult your customer success and support teams. They are familiar with the issues and desires of your customers because they have close relationships with them. Do them a favor and develop a customer success program if they are unaware of these things.
- Engage in community interaction and solicit input and participation. You will better comprehend your customers’ problems as you interact with them, work to find solutions, and gain their loyalty to your brand.
- Keeping an eye on relevant social media trends, Twitter hashtags, and Facebook trends
- Join a forum on a topical website, such as Quora, Reddit, Stack Exchange, etc.
Keep Your Presentation Slides Short
Prioritize quality over quantity when creating project presentations. Ensure that your slides are brief and uncomplicated. Your audience will appreciate that you value their time if you do this.
Always keep in mind that this is not the time to bombard your audience with dense jargon. Instead, keep your slides on topic and focus on the main points without including boring or superfluous details.
Here’s why you need to keep your presentation brief:
- Simple presentation slides are not only effective, but they are also memorable.
- According to studies, 30 minutes into the project- or business-related presentations, attention spans start to rapidly wane. Long presentations run the risk of losing the audience’s interest midway through.
- Nobody wants to spend hours watching you flip a ton of slides. You can engage your audience and direct their attention to the message with shorter slides.
- The majority of people may be time- or attention-constrained. They would therefore prefer to quickly process information before moving on to the best alternative.
How do you make sure that project presentations are brief?
- A slide shouldn’t be included in your deck if it doesn’t improve your presentation.
- Supercharge your slide deck with captivating visuals that capture more information
- Adopt proven methods for preparing your slide
One of the most well-liked strategies employed by professionals is the Guy Kawasaki 10/20/30 rule. For presentations lasting 20 minutes, the rule suggests using ten slides, or roughly two minutes per slide. It also stipulates that text should be in a font size of at least 30.
In this way, your audience will be able to absorb the information on your screen as you speak.
Do not mistake this for an unbreakable presentation rule. Other rules include the Takahashi, Lessig, and Pecha Kucha formats. Any of these guidelines are adaptable to your project presentation requirements.
Use Less Text and More Visuals
Utilizing less text and more images is another excellent strategy for making your slides interesting and succinct.
Keep in mind that your slide should support your oral presentation, not replace it. You should therefore refrain from cramming too much information onto a single slide.
Cluttering your presentation with too much text could:
- Overwhelm your audiences and bore them
- Your presentation will be less effective if your audience starts to focus more on the text.
Instead, present each concept using a single slide. Seth Godin, a marketing expert, advises using no more than six words per slide.
When information is presented visually and in manageable chunks, people retain it better. Project managers, B2C and B2B consumers, and business executives are all affected.
Business executives generally prefer watching videos to reading about a topic, according to 59% of them. As a result, it’s essential to enhance your project presentation with eye-catching graphics that draw the audience’s focus to the key points of your speech.
How to improve your presentation with compelling visuals can be seen in Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Keynote speech from 2007.
Steve Jobs demonstrated the operation of the iPhone 1 with the help of real-time, interactive visuals.
Continue reading for more advice on producing captivating presentations that will astound your audience.
You can create stunning project presentations with the presentation maker from Visme that feature a compelling mix of text and visuals. With outstanding project presentation templates like the one below, you can captivate your audience and motivate them to take action.
Use Quality Visuals, Diagrams, and Presentation Aids
Making successful project presentations requires the use of visuals. Viewers retain 95% of a message when it is presented visually, in addition to grabbing their attention and keeping them interested. However, they only retain about 10% when sent as text.
There are many types of visual aids you can use in your presentations, including:
- Images
- Videos
- Graphs and charts
- Heat and choropleth maps
- Scatter plots
- Screenshots and more
You will increase the likelihood that your call-to-action (CTA) will be reacted to favorably by using images and videos.
Early-stage project designs can be visualized best using Gantt charts, whiteboard sketches, and mind maps. For projects involving technology, you can present the project architecture using graphs, maps, diagrams, and trees.
Consider including sketches, flowcharts, models, and prototypes on your slide if you’re working on product development projects.
Pie charts work incredibly well for displaying percentages. You can compare quantities using horizontal bar charts while vertical bar charts show changes over time.
Infographics are excellent for illustrating data and deriving complex concepts, such as market trends.
The interesting part is right here. For every job, Visme has the tools you require. The software enables you to add various graphics, infographics, charts, and graphs to your deck and tailor them to your requirements.
Changes can be made to the design, text, and background colors, as well as the legends and animated charts.
Maps can be used to visualize geographic data. Alternatively, you can use widgets to display statistics and data, such as the template below, or progress bars, thermometers, radials, and thermometers.
Don’t go overboard when including visuals on your slide. Limit your use of slides to no more than two images. Additionally, make sure the images you use are appropriate for the project you are presenting.
Always use high-quality visuals when creating your presentation slides. Viewers may be greatly turned off by blurry or low-resolution photos or videos.
Your presentations will be clear and sharp even on big screens if you use high-quality visuals.
An excellent illustration of how to use compelling visuals in your presentations is the slide below.
Pay Attention to the Design
Want to design captivating presentations? If the response is affirmative, you must be careful with the specifics of your design. Your project presentation may succeed or fail based on your design.
Design tools like Visme give you a competitive advantage whether you are an expert or novice designer. For your company, you can quickly design captivating presentation layouts.
The wonderful thing is that creating visually stunning project presentations doesn’t have to be expensive. For your slides, you can choose from millions of stunning royalty-free images and lovely pre-made templates.
Here are some suggestions to keep in mind as you design your slides.
Use the Right Color Combination
Use color sparingly to add appeal to your presentations.
Everyone enjoys color, that much is obvious. However, if you use too many colors, your presentations may appear disorganized and unpleasant.
The color scheme you choose can affect how well your audience understands and reacts to your presentation. Pick colors that make your audience feel good as a general rule of thumb.
For instance, warm hues like yellow, orange, and red evoke feelings of elation and optimism. Conversely, cool hues like blue, green, and violet reflect a serene aura.
A balanced color scheme should be your goal when combining hues. For instance, if the background of your slide or image is dark, use vibrant colors for your text and design elements. By using contrast, you can make your project presentation more readable and eye-catching.
Use Clear and Consistent Typography
The way people understand your message can be affected by how well your typography is executed. Therefore, you should ensure that your slide looks well-organized, and professional, and conveys the intended message.
Here’s how you can make this happen:
- Use fonts that embody the spirit of your brand
- In your presentation, use a consistent text style. We advise you to use no more than three fonts.
- Don’t use tiny text or fancy fonts that will strain the reader’s eyes. Use legible fonts that are appropriate for both small and large screens, such as Arial, Time News Roman, and Calibri.
- For body text and titles, use a font size of at least 30.
Additionally, keep in mind to present your text using the previously mentioned color scheme. This will keep your text against your background visible.
Look at the slide below, which is taken from one of our presentation templates. Take note of the way the design, fonts, and color scheme work together to enhance the visuals.
Start With a Presentation Template
Making project presentations that are compelling can take time, whether you are a pro or a novice.
Assume you are approaching a deadline. Writing your project outline, creating slide notes, designing your slides, locating and incorporating visuals, and other tasks would be required of you.
Making these decisions from scratch could cause you to lose time or produce messy presentations.
You could avoid all the stress by using presentation templates. You can quickly and easily create project presentations that look professional.
You’ll find a place to insert every piece of content you require because the slides are already designed. There is a design for everything, including progress bars, graphs, tables, videos, and images.
You only need to enter data, type content, or insert an image. Then all of a sudden, your presentation is prepared.
Additionally, using templates for presentations ensures brand coherence in terms of font, style, layout, colors, and overall design. To maintain consistency throughout your presentations, you can personalize and distribute templates to your project team.
The template has been customized with the title slide, main body slide, image slide, chart slide, and fonts. As a result, formatting your slide becomes a breeze; project presentations are no longer disorganized or cluttered.
With the help of Visme, you can create presentations that stand out from the crowd. For every need, sector, and project type, you can find millions of pixel-perfect images, icons, design components, and templates.
No matter your level of expertise, you can edit templates like the one below. Your project presentations will be prepared in a few minutes after you add your content.
Present Your Project Like a Pro
You’ve probably got the ideal project presentation on paper if you adhere to all the advice we provided above. Excellent work, but your work is not yet finished.
The last piece of the puzzle is your delivery, so you need to make it matter.
You see, if your delivery isn’t strong, your presentation might not succeed. Therefore, it’s important to prepare your speech and deliver it with enthusiasm and passion.
Here are some tips for making an impression during project presentations.
Practice Makes Perfect
Did you know that Steve Jobs used to spend two days preparing for speeches? You did read that correctly.
One of the most important steps to perfecting your delivery is practice.
In a quiet place, you can get some practice by reading aloud. Make audio and video recordings while you’re at it, then play them back repeatedly.
As a test audience, enlist the help of your friends and coworkers to provide feedback on your presentation.
By practicing, you can make sure your presentation covers the key points in the allotted time. Additionally, it will assist you in maintaining proper body alignment throughout your project presentation.
Take the time to make sure the equipment is operational and familiarize yourself with its settings and workings. If you intend to include audio or video in your slides, this is especially crucial.
Start With a Strong Opening
Make those opening seconds count because your audiences’ attention spans may be limited. Your audience can be captured and the tone for an effective presentation can be created with strong openings.
Observe how he engages the audience by sharing memorable anecdotes from his life, starting with his decision to leave college. Then he continues by discussing the lessons he learned during his early years at Apple, his 1985 job loss, and his thoughts on passing away.
Here’s how to make an excellent opening speech that grabs the audience’s attention and convinces them you’re worth listening to:
- Ask a question
- Tell a compelling story
- Share mind-blowing facts and statistics
- Show captivating videos and visuals that spark curiosity
- Open your presentation with humor
Consider your audience when developing your opening hook. Knowing your audiences’ likes, dislikes, cultural and ethical perspectives, etc., would be helpful for making this effective.
Read our article on presentation initiation if you want to find out more about creating compelling presentation openings and other topics.
Be Genuine
Consider your audience’s needs as you present your project. This will foster an emotional bond and motivate action.
Don’t go overboard, though. Be sincere and concentrate on communicating your points to them. By doing this, you’ll win their confidence and generate excitement for your project.
Keep in mind that not everything will always go as expected. It is best to have backup materials and to be adaptable enough to make necessary adjustments. You will have more control over unexpected events if you are prepared for them.
End Your Presentation on a High Note
After giving a fantastic presentation, be sure to conclude it in an engaging manner. Your audiences will be inspired to take action as a result of what you do.
A compelling call to action is one way to cap off your project presentation.
Additionally, you can highlight compelling statistics about the project, summarize the key points, and tell memorable stories.
For example, you can mention some really intriguing figures like:
- Expected growth rate, return on investment, and profit margin
- Potential company valuation in the following five to ten years.
- estimated profits, market position, etc.
Your target audience should feel hyped up and motivated to act.
Conclusion
If you are brand-new to project management and are unsure of how to present a project to a client or an audience, please do not worry or panic at all. Maintaining your self-assurance, planning the sequence of the steps you will discuss, practicing, and being deceptive in grabbing the audience’s attention will help you succeed in the project presentation.