In this video I'm going to show you 10 real consulting presentations from firms like McKinsey,
Bain, and BCG. I'll show you which ones are effective and why, and which ones are less
effective. We'll also talk about what specifically you can learn from each, and where you can
download the full presentations yourself absolutely free. All that and more, coming up.
Hi everyone, Paul here from The Analyst Academy where we teach people PowerPoint and presentation
building skills like what you might find at a top consulting firm. We've taught thousands
of people all over the world from a wide range of professions, so if you're interested in
courses for you or your company be sure to check us out at theanalystacademy.com. Make
sure you also stay connected with us on YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more content just
like this.
One last thing before we get started... if you want to download the presentations I'm
going to cover you can find direct links to these 10, and a whole bunch more over on our
blog. They're all free and publicly available, so go check them out.
Alright here we go...
"(0:22) The first presentation on our list is a great choice if you're looking for something
you might see on a real consulting engagement. It's a presentation from BCG called Loose
dogs in Dallas: Strategic Recommendations to Improve Public Safety and Animal Welfare.
And just like it sounds, it's a presentation BCG did for the city of Dallas to help address
its dog population, which aside from being a mildly interesting topic, is just really
easy to understand without the need for additional context or industry knowledge.
The presentation itself is huge, and comes with some actual white paper style reports
kind of mixed in, but if you're looking to understand how top consulting firms put together
a final report from a project, this one is great. You can see some of the intro slides
around the context and scope of the project, the type of work that was done, and of course
some of the key findings.
You'll also see some details that you typically only find in real client presentations, such
as really long and detailed footnotes, dense data-heavy slides, and a really large appendix.
This next presentation is from McKinsey and is more of an industry and research report
in collaboration with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The title is
"High-growth emerging economies and the companies that propel them".
The design and organization of this presentation isn't amazing, but what makes it a good presentation
to study is that it comes with so many different types of charts. The authors really do a good
job of highlighting different insights using charts that are really easy to understand
and interpret.
Charts like this one for example, which is just a basic line chart but they've done a
good job of creating a good legend with clear colors that makes it easy to see the takeaway.
Or this dot chart of sorts that uses GDP per capita growth, and combines it with their
own heat map score to put economies in quartiles, and then overlays a matrix on top to show
which emerging economies are likely to become outperformers. It's a good lesson in adding
elements to your chart to callout the insights, rather than making your audience do it themselves.
Presentation number 3 is from LEK and it's called "The 4th Annual New Mobility Study
2019". This one also has some great charts in it. Unlike the last presentation though,
these ones more closely resemble what you might see in a client presentation. There
are a few filler slides, but pay attention to the slides with data.
Notice how the titles of each slide are in a full sentence, and they summarize the main
idea of the slide. When you're showing data in your presentation it's important to specifically
callout the insight, even if you're showing something objective like survey result data,
and the titles are a great place to do that. In this slide for example , it says "Usage
of cabs and rental cars has continued to decline in the US, mass transit use has stayed stable,
and ride hailing growth has plateaued", and you can see each of those represented in the
chart below. By having a title like that, I don't have to look through every bit of
detail to see what they want me to see.
And then also with this presentation you get a good variety of chart types, some of them
pretty unique and insightful.
This next one from Bain is a little bit older but has lots to like. It's called, "2011 China
Luxury Market Study", and it gives a nice overview of the china luxury market. Presentations
from Bain are actually really hard to come by for a variety of reasons, so it's nice
to have one directly from their website that gives us a small glimpse into how they build
slides.
It's not a long presentation but one thing you'll notice throughout is their strategic
use of red throughout. A great way to improve your slides and charts is to use colors that
draw attention to the insights, and Bain does that well here by using muted colors for information
that doesn't matter as much, and then red for information they want you to focus on.
On this slide for example, they highlight the new customers in red, because they're
trying to show that more than 60% of growth is coming from those new customers. And even
without thinking my eyes are already drawn to that part of the chart. We actually did
a full detailed breakdown of this exact slide so if you're interested make sure you check
that out.
Presentation number 5 on our list is from BCG and is another great example of a realistic
client presentation. It's called, "Evaluating NYC media sector development and setting the
stage for future growth". It's very similar to the dogs presentation just not quite as
long. It's got a very consistent structure throughout, which is very typical of BCG client
presentations, and again it has all the pieces of a typical presentation including an intro,
executive summary, transition slides, main content slides, and appendix.
This one is especially good if you want to see how to structure your slides correctly.
They use the Pyramid Principle incredibly well with clear and actionable titles, then
subtitles that provide a breakdown of those titles. And you can see it in the clarity
and readability of each slide. It's a very classic, consulting style presentation.
We did a breakdown of a slide from this one as well, and it's been one of our most popular
videos. I'll be sure to link to it below.
Alright this next one might be my favorite presentation from the list. It's another one
from BCG, and it's called "The Electric Car Tipping Point". It's from back in 2017 and
it's all about the future of electric cars globally.
The reason why I like it so much is because it's a really good example of clear, yet insightful
visuals. It frustrates me when people confuse complicated visuals with good visuals. In
this presentation the visuals are nice looking and simple, but yet they still pack a punch
when it comes to insights.
On slides 13 and 14 there's a couple of really nice and clean looking tables where they've
used these boxes and callouts to help the message stand out a little more, which is
really effective I think.
Then on slide 17 there's another great example of a slide with a clear message and simple
visuals. The title says, ""Autonomous mobility varies by region and can have a range of outcomes"".
What I like about this slide especially is how they've split up each chart to isolate
the message. Most people would have probably put this all in a single line chart, but by
splitting it out you can see each country pretty clearly without having to reference
a legend.
This next one is another good one from a project McKinsey did for the US Postal Service. This
is before their rebrand so the slides are a bit ugly, but that's actually what makes
it so interesting. For a long time McKinsey's slides weren't the prettiest, but the analysis
was always on point and the organization of the deck told a clear story. And I think that's
what's happening here. It's a good example of why decks with solid logic and clear insights
are much better than those with flashy and over the top visuals but a weak storyline.
The whole point for McKinsey is to strip away the fluff, and focus on actual insights. This
slide is a great example of that. It's just a simple line chart that shows how the cost
of each piece of mail is expected to exceed the revenue that comes from each piece of
mail over the next 11 years. I'm not saying it's a perfect slide, but it does a good job
of focusing on what matters without trying to draw attention to things that don't matter.
Here is a presentation from Deloitte consulting called "Consumer Privacy in Retail", and it's
pretty short but there's a lot to like and a lot that can be learned from it. The first
thing is the effective use of titles throughout the deck. Each title provides a summary of
the main idea of the slide, spelling out very clearly what you should takeaway from each
slide.
The presentation is also good in it's use of color and also it's use of icons. Both
color and icons serve a functional purpose of helping the audience to understand what
you're trying to tell them, and Deloitte clearly understands that well. Slides 6 and 7 are
pretty good examples of this. Notice the role the icons play in helping us understand these
categories more quickly, or that color plays in helping us make the connection between
both of these two charts. We actually did a full breakdown of slide 6 so make sure to
check that out if you're interested.
This next one is somewhat similar in it's overall approach as the Deloitte presentation.
It's from PwC and it's called, "Project Management: Improving performance, reducing risk". What's
nice about this one is their use of qualitative visuals. You'll see lots of different ways
to categorize and display ideas which is something that can be difficult to do while still keeping
your slides nice and professional. There's also a few illustrative charts in here which
are basically just charts with no numbers that are used to illustrate a concept.
Like this one from slide 9 that shows different phases of a project and how the cost to make
changes rises with time, and the opportunity to add value on the project falls over time.
It's a pretty simple concept but the chart makes it clear and easy to digest.
Overall the presentation is probably a good example of something you might see at a conference,
but isn't a good example of a client presentation. The titles are a little too short, and it
doesn't quite have the same substance you might find in a client deliverable.
The final presentation on our list is yet another one from BCG. This one is a bit different
than the others though in that they put a lot of emphasis on the design of each slide,
and the overall aesthetic of the presentation feels much more upscale. It's called, "True-Luxury
Global Consumer Insights" and it's clearly more of a marketing tool than an actual client
deliverable. All the charts are very nice looking, but the important thing is that the
insights are still clear and interesting.
Take this slide for example, which plots the appetite for different consumer goods on this
scatter plot, but then takes it a step further and categorizes each data point using a matrix,
which then highlights the winners and the losers. It's a great way to make your data
more digestible, which they've clearly done here and in other places throughout the deck.
So there you have it, 10 real consulting presentations that you can download yourself to see how
consulting firms tell stories, show data, and communicate insights.
If you're interested in learning more make sure you check out our advanced presentations
course. We basically went through hundreds of these presentations to understand what
the best communicators due to build slides that are clear, insightful, and engaging and
we simplified it down to a list of principles that you can apply to your own slide making
- all taught with crystal clarity including examples, exercises, and demonstrations. It
really is a fantastic course, so make sure you check it out. I'll leave a link to that
and everything else in the description below.
And if you're not quite ready for that, be sure to stay connected with us on YouTube,
Instagram, or LinkedIn for more videos just like this. Thanks for watching. "