Anyone have any tips on putting together presentation materials?

Does anyone have any tips on putting together presentation materials? I realize this is kind of a vague question but am looking for any insight that I can get on this.

I am the lone associate in my group (first year on the team) and am often asked to put together presentations for board meetings, weekly deal flow meetings and a variety of other ad-hoc tasks. The VP's on my team were operating without an associate before I joined and were not really using slide decks to help with presentations. This task has now been asked of me.

I think generally what I put together is solid and easy to follow but I am wondering if I can take this to another level. Are there any best practices or must have items for slide decks? Any helpful resources that anyone can send to me.

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Couple tips:

  • Perfect formating - utilize the slide master feature. I also recommend turning on the "View Gridlines" feature. I may be a bit OCD about this but I was taught early on that bad formatting = bad presentation.
  • Utilize graphs /graphics as much as possible. A picture (graph in this case) is worth 1,000 words.
  • Use bullets and be concise.
  • If being asked to present the material, include a speaking part that is insightful and not immediately apparent in the data/whatever you're presenting

Think of every presentation to your execs of an opportunity to show you're the real effing deal.

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