You’ve spent time working on a project that could be a potential game-changer for your company or client. Now you’re buzzing to present it to your team, investors and other key stakeholders.
Creating and delivering project presentations can be nerve-racking and you probably have one question running through your mind.
How do you get the decision-makers to understand your project or secure their buy-in?
Considering that some companies have had about 12% of failed projects in the past year, you want to create presentations that are not only convincing but memorable.
With the right project presentation deck, you can win and keep your audience’s attention long enough to explain project details and why it’s sure to succeed.
Not sure how to create successful project presentations? We’ve got you covered.
This article will show you how to set project goals and create winning presentations that take your project to the next level.
Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit project presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:
Before you dive into the main details of your project presentation, you want to answer these questions:
If you have to make long guesses before answering these questions, you’ve got a lot of work to do.
Here’s what you should know. Beautiful or well-articulated project presentations aren’t a substitute for project planning. Without clear goals, your project is already set up to fail. And your investors might think, “why bother listening?”
Many project managers tend to rush through the goal-setting phase, but we don't recommend this. That’s because you could be setting yourself up for failure.
Once you clearly define your project goals, you can get stakeholders to buy into them.
Now the question is, how do you set goals for your project and achieve them? One way to do that is by using the SMART goal setting method.
SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.
SMART goals are a staple for planning and executing successful projects. It takes a deeper look into the finer details your audience care about, such as:
For example, let's say your project aims to improve customer experience on web and mobile devices. Notice this example describes the end goal. But it doesn’t specify how you’ll work to enhance customer experience.
Here’s how using SMART goals provides direction for your planned project.
When setting your goals, be clear and specific about what you want to achieve in the end.
A specific goal could be: “We want to build a responsive website and mobile app for our company to improve customer experience. This project will require inputs from our product design, software and marketing department”.
During your presentation, you'd have to answer questions like:
Having metrics in place will help you evaluate your project. Plus, you’d be able to monitor progress and optimize your project to achieve better results.
It doesn’t matter if you’re planning a short-term or long-term project. Ensure you set metrics and milestones that count towards your goal.
From our earlier example, a measurable goal could be to have:
One of the most critical questions you want to ask during goal-setting is, “Can we achieve our set goal?” Do we have the resources to accomplish the goal within the available time frame?
If the answer is no, then you’d have to consider what it would take to achieve those goals. This may require adjusting your goals or the resources needed to achieve your goal.
Although it’s okay to be ambitious, you should also be realistic. For example, getting 200,000 app downloads in one week could be overly ambitious if you’ve just launched your app. However, if you set out to achieve that goal in three months, that could make your project practicable.
Your project goals need to align with your broader business goals. Are your goals relevant to the growth and success of the company? Are they worth allocating resources for?
For instance, if your company is B2B and doesn’t plan to expand to the B2C market, launching an e-commerce website would be an irrelevant goal.
Regardless of your project type and size, you should set time frames. Setting target dates for deliverables creates a sense of urgency and motivates you to hit your goals.
From our example above, a time-bound goal could be “We aim to achieve 100,000 mobile app downloads and a 15% conversion rate by the end of the fiscal year. Our company will launch the mobile app by Q3 with a robust marketing campaign that will run through the end of next fiscal year.”
Setting SMART goals doesn’t have to be a challenging task. Use the template below to set project goals that position your business for success.
After you've set your goals, your team will play a key role in helping you achieve them. So you ensure they understand these things:
Unless you’re clear on this, the project can derail and move in all sorts of unwanted directions.
Rather than slam the goals you’ve set on your team, make it a collaborative effort. Spend time talking to your team and stakeholders about the project goals.
Don't limit your communication to people within your department. You can reach out to people in other departments like sales, operations, finance, etc., to see how well your goals align with theirs.
To give your team a better understanding, you can communicate your project goals in a variety of ways, including:
By doing that, you’re sure to get their valuable feedback, buy-in and commitment to the project. Plus, getting your team on board with your project plan will up your chances of successful execution.
Once you’ve set your goals, the next big step is to outline how you'll achieve them. An excellent place to start is by organizing your project into an actionable plan and steps for execution.
You might wonder why this step is important for creating a successful project presentation.
Whether you’re planning a small or big project, writing a detailed plan, structure and layout puts everything into perspective. It eliminates vagueness and helps your audience grasp the project roadmap without missing the points.
Your project plan should contain the technical and non-technical project details. Therefore, you want to give yourself an edge by using a project presentation template that clearly explains all the activities and steps.
Not only that, your presentation structure should be simple and easy to follow.
Depending on the project type, your plan could include key details such as:
There's no hard and fast rule for laying out your project plan. However, if you want to create a memorable plan that will keep your audience engaged, you could break it down into three parts, including:
Your introduction should provide a brief overview of what you’re going to talk about and why it’s relevant to your audience. You could start by writing down the project name and the executive summary.
Think of your executive summary as an abridged version of the project plan.
If your audience read only your executive summary, would they have all the information they need about your project? If the answer is yes, your executive summary has served its purpose.
The length of your executive summary will depend on what you intend to cover in your project plan. However, we recommend keeping your executive summary one or two pages long.
You can include key information such as:
Keep in mind that not everyone will have the time to dive into the details of your project plan.
Having a snapshot of your project brings clarity to key stakeholders and collaborators. It also enables people who aren't actively involved in the project to understand it at a glance.
our browser does not support the video tag.The body of your project plan is where you have the full project details and everything relevant to its success.
Here you can break your project into deliverables, tasks, milestones and schedules (start and end dates).
Ensure you precisely define the resources you need to complete the project, including finances, team, time, technology, physical resources and more.
This is the part where you sum up your project plan with key takeaways. Your conclusion should include what you expect from your audience, including key action points and next steps.
Writing your intro, body and conclusion may sound like a lot of information. But instead of writing multiple pages of text, incorporating visuals can make your project presentations more effective.
By using images, videos, infographics and charts , you can capture all the vital information and help your audience understand your message better.
Visme presentation templates are effective for visualizing different sections of your project plan. They are professionally designed and easy for anyone to craft high-quality project plans that keep their team on track.
Use the project plan templates below to kickstart your project planning process.
You've just spent time crafting your project action plan. Now it’s time to communicate your project plan and goals with your audience.
Project presentations are a lot like sales pitches. Whether you’re presenting your project plan to clients or creating a pitch deck for investors, your job is to keep your audience hooked right from the start till the end.
One of the most potent ways of grabbing your audience's attention is by highlighting their pain points.
It’s not enough to have beautiful slides that showcase your amazing product features and project activities.
Make sure you set up your project presentation to:
In a nutshell, your audience should have a clear insight into how your project makes their life better. When they’re clear on this, they’ll most likely listen to the solutions you bring to the table and take the desired action.
Don’t make sweeping assumptions about your audience.
If you’re looking to get them on board, dedicate a slide to discuss their problems and solutions. Make them understand how your project benefits them.
Not sure what your audience's pain points are? Go ahead and do these things:
When creating project presentations, prioritize quality over quantity. Be sure to keep your slides short and simple. When you do this, your audience will be glad you value their time.
Remember, this isn’t the time to slam your audience with lengthy and irrelevant jargon. Instead, keep your slides on topics and hit the main points without the boring and unnecessary details.
Here’s why you need to keep your presentation brief:
How do you keep your project presentations short?
For example, the 10/20/30 rule by Guy Kawasaki is one of the most popular methods used by experts. The rule recommends using ten slides for 20 minutes presentations (about two minutes per slide). It also specifies using a font size of at least 30 for text.
This will enable your audience to digest the messages on your screen while you’re talking.
Keep in mind that this isn’t an iron-clad rule for presentation. There are other rules such as Pecha Kucha method , Takahashi method, Lessig method, etc. You can adapt any of these rules to suit your project presentation needs.
Another great way to keep your slides brief yet interesting is using less text and more visuals.
Remember, your slide should aid your verbal presentation and not replace it. So you want to avoid crowding too much information on one slide.
Cluttering your presentation with too much text could:
Instead, use one slide to present each idea. Marketing guru Seth Godin recommends no more than six words per slide .
People retain more information when it’s presented in bite-size chunks and visuals. This applies to B2B, B2C audiences, project managers and corporate executives.
About 59% of business executives say they’d rather watch a video about a topic than read about it. Hence the need to supercharge your project presentation with compelling visuals that capture and bring your audience’s attention right where you want it.
Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Keynote presentation in 2007 is an excellent example of how to enhance your presentation with compelling visuals.
During the presentation, Steve Jobs used live and interactive visuals to show how the iPhone 1 works.
Read on to learn more tips on creating engaging presentations that will wow your audience.
With Visme's presentation maker , you can make stunning project presentations with a rich blend of text and compelling visuals. Hook your audience and inspire action with stellar project presentation templates like the one below.
Visuals are important for making successful project presentations. Beyond grabbing the audience’s attention and keeping them engaged, viewers recall 95% of a message when presented in visual form. But when shared via text, they retain only about 10%.
There are many types of visual aids you can use in your presentations, including:
Using images and videos will up your chances of getting audience engagements and positive responses to your call-to-action (CTA).
Gantt charts, whiteboard drawings and mind maps are ideal for visualizing early-stage project designs. You can use charts, diagrams, maps and trees to present the project architecture for technology-related projects.
If you’re working on product development projects, consider adding sketches, flowcharts, models and prototypes to your slide.
Pie charts are excellent for showing percentages. Vertical bar charts indicate changes over time, while horizontal bar charts help you compare quantities.
Infographics are perfect for visualizing data and explaining complex information like market trends.
Here’s the interesting part. Visme has the tools you need for every job. The software allows you to add different visuals, infographics, charts and graphs to your deck and customize them to suit your needs.
You can change design, text and background colors, add or remove legends, animate charts, etc.
You can also use maps to represent geographic information. Or, use progress bars, thermometers, radials and widgets to visualize stats and figures as shown in the template below.
When adding visuals to your slide, don’t go overboard. Stick to a minimum of two images per slide. In addition, make sure your visuals are relevant to your project presentation.
While designing your presentation slides , always stick to high-quality visuals. Blurry or low-resolution images or videos can be a major turn-off for viewers.
With high-quality visuals, your presentations will be crisp and clear, even on large screens.
The slide below is an excellent example of how to power your presentations with compelling visuals.
Want to create impressive presentations that pop? If the answer is yes, you need to pay attention to your design details. Your design can make or break your project presentation.
Whether you are an experienced designer or a novice, design tools like Visme give you an edge. You can create compelling presentation designs for your business in a few minutes.
The beautiful thing is that you don’t have to break the bank to make stunning project presentations. You'll find beautiful ready-made templates and millions of stunning royalty-free images for your slides.
Here are tips you should consider while designing your slides.
If you want to make your presentations appealing, use color moderately.
We get it; everyone loves color. But using too many colors can make your presentations look chaotic and unpleasant.
Your color choice can influence how your audience grasps and responds to your presentation. A general rule of thumb is to pick colors that evoke positive emotions in your audience.
For example, warm colors like yellow, orange and red convey feelings of excitement and positivity. On the other hand, cool colors (blue, green and violet) reflect an aura of calmness.
When combining colors, aim for a balanced color scheme. For example, if your slide or image background is dark, your text and design elements should have bright colors. This contrast will make your project presentation legible and visually appealing.
You can learn about color psychology and how to use it in your next presentation design by watching the video below.
Optimizing your typography can make a difference in how people perceive your message. So you want to make sure your slide looks organized, professional and sends the right message.
Here’s how you can make this happen:
In addition, remember to present your text using the color scheme we mentioned earlier. This will keep your text visible over your background.
Take a look at this slide from one of our presentation templates. Notice how the design, fonts and color combination blends in to make the visuals pop.
Whether you’re a newbie or pro, creating project presentations that pack a punch can be time-consuming.
Let’s say you’ve got a deadline looming. You’d have to deal with writing your project outline, preparing your slide notes, designing your slides, sourcing and incorporating visuals and more.
Handling these things from scratch could slow you down or make your presentations untidy.
Using presentation templates could save you from all the stress. They help you make professional-looking project presentations fast and easy.
Since the slides are pre-designed, you’ll find a place to insert every possible piece of content you need. Be it a progress bar, chart, graph, table, video or image, the design is right there.
All you need to do is type your content, input data or insert the image. And boom, your presentation is ready to go.
In addition, using presentation templates offers brand consistency in terms of font, style, layout, colors and overall design. You can customize and share templates with your project team to keep your presentations uniform.
The title and main body slide, image and chart layout and fonts are set in the template. Therefore formatting your slide becomes a breeze—no more messy or cluttered project presentations.
Visme has a wide selection of templates designed to make your presentations shine. You’ll find millions of pixel-perfect graphics, icons, design elements and professionally designed templates for any purpose, industry and project type.
Regardless of your skill level, you can customize your templates like the one below. Just add your content and your project presentations will be ready in a few minutes.
If you follow all the tips we shared above, you’ve probably got the perfect project presentation on paper. Great stuff, but your job isn’t done yet.
Your delivery is the final piece of the puzzle, and you’ve got to make it count.
Here’s the thing. Your presentation could flop if the delivery isn’t convincing. Hence the need to plan your delivery and drive your message across with passion and enthusiasm.
Here's how to deliver project presentations that leave an impact.
Did you know that Steve Jobs used to spend two days prepping for presentations? Yes, you read that right.
Practice is one of the key steps to nailing your delivery.
You can practice by reading out loud in your quiet space. While you’re at it, make audio and video recordings and watch them repeatedly.
Ask your friends and colleagues to serve as a test audience and give feedback on your presentation.
This run-through will help ensure your presentation captures the main points within the allotted time. It will also help you maintain the correct body posture during your project presentation.
Make time to check if the equipment is working and get familiar with the settings and operations. This is especially important if you plan to use video or audio in your slides.
Your audiences could have short attention spans, so make those first moments count. With solid openings, you can hook your audience and set the mood for a successful presentation.
Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech at Stanford is an excellent example of having a solid opening. With over 4 million views on YouTube, it’s one of the most memorable and watched speeches in history.
Notice how he hooks the audience with powerful anecdotes about his life, beginning from dropping out of college. And then, he goes on to share the lessons he learned in his early days at Apple, losing his job in 1985 and reflections on death.
Here’s how to make an excellent opening speech that grabs the audience’s attention and convinces them you’re worth listening to:
Be sure to tailor your opening hook to your audience. To make this effective, it’d help to know about your audiences, including their likes, dislikes, cultural and ethical dispositions, etc.
If you want to learn more about making captivating presentation openings and more, read our guide on starting a presentation .
While presenting your project, focus on your audience’s needs. By doing this, you’ll build an emotional connection and drive action.
However, don’t go overboard. Be genuine and focus on getting the points across to them. This way, you’ll gain their trust and build excitement about your project.
Keep in mind that everything may not go as planned. It’s best to have backup materials and be flexible enough to make necessary adjustments. Preparing for unexpected events will give you more control over them.
After you've delivered a fantastic presentation, make sure you wrap it up in a memorable way. Doing this will leave a lasting impression and nudge your audiences to take action.
One way to end your project presentation is to use a powerful call to action.
You can also tell memorable stories, summarize the main points and highlight compelling figures about the project.
For example you can mention some really intriguing figures like:
The goal is to hype your audiences and stimulate them to take action.
You can check out our other article to learn more about ending your presentation on a great note.
our browser does not support the video tag.Creating a successful project presentation starts with setting your goals and having a clear plan to achieve them. It also requires crafting compelling content, paying attention to design and excellent delivery.
If you’re going to close those deals, you need a solid pitch deck to explain your project details and why it will succeed. We recommend using an intuitive project presentation software like Visme.
Visme is the perfect design tool for creating stunning and engaging project presentations . With Visme, you’ll have access to a wide range of features and tools to help bring your project ideas to life.
The tool has hundreds of presentation templates, design elements, font styles, built-in stock images and videos, data visualization tools and more to make your project presentation a hit. You can download your design in different formats and share it across multiple social media channels.
Now you have all the tips and tools for nailing your next project presentations. Go ahead and make it memorable with Visme's project presentation software.
