This article looks at the consulting presentation framework. All business strategy and management consulting firms, such as McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and Booz Allen, use presentation frameworks. In general, they are all variations of the same concepts and design. Since consulting firms are known for developing beautiful, structured slides, the consulting presentation framework represents the optimal way to structure and present your information in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.
It involves very specific rules for fonts, font sizes, type of grammar rules to follow, etc. At the very least, adopting and religiously sticking to the frame will greatly enhance the look and professionalism of your slides.
Over the years, I have come across several of these presentation frameworks from the various companies I worked for. Borrowing from all of them, the framework presented in this article is a combination of the components that I felt worked best.
Now, let’s dig deeper.
In a typical content slide, there are 3 main components: the title, the body, and the bumper.
The header
The headline is at the top of the slide. It is a sentence that introduces the slide. Many people use this space for the ‘title’ of the slide. In this frame, the ‘title’ will go to the Body (described in the next section).
The title must be Arial Narrow, font size 24 and bold. Do not use any final punctuation (for example, no period).
As mentioned, it is 1 sentence and 1 sentence max. It should also not exceed 2 lines. If you think it is longer, rewrite it and shorten the title. If the headline is longer than 2 lines, your audience will be lost and / or bored. As you progress from slide to slide, the sentences in the headlines need to connect to tell a coherent story for your audience to follow.
The body
The body is the bulk of the slide. Contains all colorful content (eg text boxes, diagrams, etc.). Everything you put in the Body should be based on what has been entered in the Headline. All text within the body must be Arial font. The minimum font size to use is size 10, because any smaller size (using Arial) is too difficult for most people to read. This is especially true if you are projecting your presentation.
At the top left of your body, you should have your slide title. The title is what people traditionally place in the title area. It is a short phrase that categorizes what the Body illustrates. Examples include ‘6 Phase Approach’, ‘Ebook Goals’, ‘Strategic Hierarchies and Related Challenges’. As you noticed, capitalization follows a book title (according to the MLA). The title must be Arial, font size 16, bold and italic.
If you have any numbers or information on your slide that needs to be fetched, be sure to do so. The font should appear in a text box in the lower left of the Body. It must be Arial, font size 10 and start with the text “Font:”. The consultants use a variety of methodologies and frameworks to structure and design the Agency’s content. We will not discuss these other teachings in this article.
The bumper
All consulting firms have this last component, but they can call it in different ways. Deloitte & Touche calls it Take-Away, AT Kearny calls it Tombstone, and Capgemini Consulting calls it Kicker.
The purpose of the bumper is to address the “so what?” question your audience may have. While the Headline provided an introduction and context to the slide, and the Body embellished that message with clarifying details, numbers, diagrams, etc., you risk your audience thinking: Okay, this information is interesting, but what about what? ? Why do I need to know this? Why should I care?
Those are all fair questions and you should answer them with the bumper. If you can’t think of anything meaningful to put on the bumper, ask yourself if you really need to have this slide on the deck. In other words, if the slide doesn’t offer any additional information that is important to your audience, why include it all? Of course, there are many valid reasons to have a slide without a bumper. For example, the slide only presents the agenda, is a transition slide, or only provides key contact information. Sometimes they just slide around to present raw data.
The bumper is in the shape of a light-colored box at the bottom of the slide. It must be Arial, font size 14, bold and italic. Unlike the title, it should have a final punctuation. Like the title, it is only 1 sentence and 2 lines maximum.
To make things easier for you, I have created a PowerPoint template that fits within this framework for you. You can download it here: http://learnppt.com/downloads/sampletemplate/.