Standing in front of a crowd gives most of us jitters, and when the crowd consists of people like top management or potential investors, the stakes get even higher. You certainly wouldn’t want to ruin it.
However, business presentations can fall prey to 2 things quickly if presented poorly – the context can get lost, and with that interest of the audience.
If you don’t want to be the perpetrator of death by PowerPoint, you need to be thorough with one aspect that helps keep the presentation lucid and engaging – a presentation summary.
This article covers everything you need to know about summarizing business presentations. Let’s explore!
What Do You Mean by Presentation Summary?
A summary is an essential part of a presentation as it provides a bird’s eye view of everything essential. It condenses the main idea or significant details of your presentation into key takeaways, important points, or recommendations, helping the audience understand and remember it effortlessly.
Why is it Necessary to Summarize Business Presentations?
Adding a summary to your business presentation will help you in the following ways-
- It will help you clearly showcase the core message or gist of your speech to the audience and make it easier to explain.
- The reiteration and reinforcement of vital information will aid in learning and retention.
- A summary serves as a reference to which the audience can refer in the future.
- It will enable you to think clearly as a presenter. If you have trouble crafting the summary, it will give you insight into the complexity of your entire business presentation, which you can revise accordingly.
- Providing a summary will ensure that people don’t lose the context of your business presentation.
What Should You Include in Your Business Presentation Summary?
Your presentation summary should consist of these essential components-
a). Key Takeaways
The main purpose of the summary slide is to cover and reinforce the key message of your business presentation.
The slide will be your quick reference of the central points that you want people to take away with them. Condense everything important in bullet points to give a clear structure to your star content.
b). CTA (Call To Action)
Your CTA is another significant thing that should be there in your summary, along with the key points. Whether you want to introduce a new product or service or inspire some action, everything requires a meticulous CTA to encourage and facilitate further steps.
CTA in your summary will help strengthen the message. You might include everything else in your summary, but it won’t do much good if people forget to act upon it later.
c). Visuals
Visuals help us remember and retain information better. If your presentation summary includes complex data and statistics, showing it with the help of visuals would make the information attractive and easy to process.
Create an attractive visual summarizing the main points. You can even create a video to make your summary appealing and simplified.
d). Contact Details
Sharing your contact details will help people connect with you post-presentation. It can serve as an opportunity to strengthen your brand and expand your business.
It will also tell people that you are willing to connect and engage, which will help build connections, thereby serving the purpose of your presentation.
How to Summarize Your Presentation?
Now that we have gone through the ‘why,’ let’s cover the ‘how.’ The points below will help you create a crisp and engaging summary.
1. Figure Out the Main Points
As mentioned above, your business presentation should iterate the key points. Concretize your message by considering the following points-
- The goal of delivering the presentation.
- The key insights people should leave with.
- The problems/concerns you are addressing with the presentation.
Analyze these points along with the content of your presentation. It will help you zero in on the key message and idea of your presentation that you can highlight in your summary.
For instance, the presentation is about your business plan. The content includes information about competitors, SWOT analysis, market trends, case studies, etc. The questions above will help you condense the information in a summarized format.
2. Craft An Outline
Just like the presentation, you should create an outline for your summary, too. It will help you align what you seek to present from all the content. Collect your thoughts, take notes, and create a logical sequence that best defines the gist of your business presentation.
Note – You can segment all your material into different sections (for instance, next quarter forecast, previous reports, and growth prospects) to figure out key points from each section.
3. Take Help of Key Presentation Content
If you are uncertain about what content to include in your summary slides (along with the key message), consider incorporating important highlights of your business presentation.
For instance, if your presentation features the current and anticipated growth trajectory of your business (business forecast), you can include key trends in your summary slide.
4. Include Critical Data, Figures, and Analysis
Your slides will have pieces of information that are too important to mention just once. It could be crucial financial figures, data, statistics, analysis, etc., which need to be remembered by the audience.
Summary slides are a great tool for quick recalls and focused attention. Include the vital information in a bullet list, graphics, timelines, business matrices, or different colored texts to make it stand out as the most pivotal part of your presentation.
Note – Use a relevant layout (colors, images, graphics, etc.) that supports the context and content of your summary slide.
5. Use Self-Explanatory Visuals
Visuals (icons, illustrations, images) help explain complex ideas in a single image without needing any outside explanation.
It can really help condense your information while making it easily graspable since you can’t make your summary long and tedious for obvious reasons.
For instance, you must have seen the pictures of the dragon and the planet. It explains the economic concept of unlimited wants and resources, where the dragon (wants) is seen to eat the entire planet (resources).
You can download pre-designed summary templates featuring infographics, diagrams, bars, charts, etc., and include them in your presentations to make your summary outstanding and memorable.
Final Words
Just like an agenda slide is crucial to open your presentation and give the audience an idea about what they can expect in the next 30-40 minutes, a summary slide is essential to provide an impressive closure to your speech.
A well-designed summary slide gives a synopsis of your idea and a quick recap of critical points, ensuring all the audience members are on the same page.
It will also serve as your last chance to woo people.
So, don’t think of a summary slide merely as a formality; it’s an integral part that can make or break your presentation. Therefore, take the help of the above tips to create a compelling summary slide and enable your audience to drive home with the takeaways you want them to remember for longer.
