Running a consultancy firm, you know that it’s crucial to stand out in a competitive marketplace. And you know that an effective consistency is the best way to build trust with your clients and prospects. This can be achieved with an effective deck – Maybe you’ve read our previous article, or perhaps you learned it elsewhere. Whatever the case, you’ve invested in your company’s visual branding, and you feel great about it!
But applying that branding in your day-to-day communications is another matter. After all, you’re not a designer. Producing branded documents takes work, and that can quickly mount up, pulling you away from the client work that’s your passion and purpose. Besides, how do you know if you’re getting it right?
Believe me, I sympathise. I founded Beyond the Surface as a graphic design company, and I feel just the same when I have to focus on business areas that aren’t design-related. The good news is that there are simple ways to minimise the effort while keeping your communications slick, professional and visually appealing.
Do the work once
In the previous article, I went through a few simple steps to make your consultancy decks visually effective and help you attain your goals – whether that’s attracting more prospects, or growing trust with your current clients.
For this to keep working in the long run, you need to maintain consistency every single time. You might worry that this means spending a lot of time and effort on things that aren’t in your area of expertise, but there’s an easy solution. Many of the crucial elements of your decks can be saved into a template. This means they only need to be set up once, either by you or by a design partner like Beyond the Surface.
Once you’ve got your branded template, all you have to do for every new slide is fill in the relevant information. You’ve saved yourself time and stress, and you can be sure your decks are making you look good.
Want to know more about how templates can help you and your business or how to ensure you’re using an effective consultancy deck?
Consistency on every front
Decks aren’t always a solo effort. Sometimes you need input from other colleagues, or even other departments. The financial team crunches the numbers so you can give the right projections to the client. The data team sends over charts and analysis to steer your recommendations, and marketing provides a few on-point visuals to liven up the deck. In other words, everyone’s doing what they do best.
The result? The deck’s brilliantly informative, it’s accurate… and it looks like a mess. That’s because each department, maybe even each person, is working on a different template. Some of them might even have old templates saved from previous jobs, simply because they’re familiar and easy to use. Now you’re the one who has to sort it all out. Is that really how you want to spend the day before a big presentation?
This is where those templates can really help you out. As well as making PowerPoint templates for your own deck, you can also create them for any other software your team uses. Excel, for example, which your finance and data people will be using to crunch numbers and generate charts.
Giving the entire team branded templates makes everyone’s lives easier. They can focus on their part of the process, and you can put the whole deck together without any extra formatting. Your time is your own, and you can use it to sharpen your presentation.
If you want to streamline the process further, templates can also be installed as the default option on each team member’s device. When they open the software, they’ll see the correct version right away. This means they’re much less likely to use those old, familiar, out-of-date templates and make your job harder.
Use your budget strategically
If you’ve got some budget set aside to improve your communication, it only makes sense to save it for the things that really make a difference. It’s the high-impact areas of your decks that’ll really advance you towards your goals.
Not sure which areas need the most attention? Ask yourself:
- Do prospects sometimes get confused about the process diagram which you include in every deck you create?
- Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, using the same stock photos over and over again? Do you suspect that these photos don’t actually speak to your prospects, and may even be turning them off?
- Do your texts end up longer and longer because you’re not sure that you’re hitting all the right points to make your argument truly persuasive?
These very common examples are all areas where getting professional help will make your work faster, easier and far more impactful. Since you’ve already cleaned up your deck creation workflow by using branded templates, you know you’ve sorted all the basics. You can use the budget you’ve saved to contract the right designer, photographer or copywriter who can power up your deck’s performance.
Feeling lost? Just reach out!
I hope that the information I’ve provided in Parts 1 and 2 of this article has shown you that creating a compelling, effective consultancy deck doesn’t have to be a long, hard process. If you follow the steps I’ve laid out, you’ll save a lot of time, work and worry in the future – and not just for yourself, but for the whole of your team. And you’ll be able to face your clients and prospects secure in the knowledge that you’re always putting your best foot forward.
If the effort involved feels like a lot, that’s understandable, and there’s a simple solution. Just reach out, book your free consultation, and we can talk about creating a set of easy-to-use branded MS Office templates for you and your team. In other words, we’ll do our job so you can get on with doing yours!
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