You got through the written version of the annual report, but now you need to turn that sucker into a PowerPoint presentation that people will actually listen to.

The material may be dry, but it doesn’t have to look dry. A key tip for you:

Don’t turn each page of your annual report into a slide for your PowerPoint presentation!

If your annual report is 200 pages long, don’t be tempted to create 200 slides! How many people in your audience will be riveted by the presentation come slide number 167? Yeah, not many.

We’ve written a lot about presentations since that’s one of our key services: we’ll take that 200-page behemoth and turn it into an engaging 18-minute presentation. However, if you’re going to do it yourself, then that’s exactly what you are going to have to do – turn 200 pages into about 20 slides. If you want some tips on how to do that, see what we wrote HERE. HERE. and HERE.

An annual report presentation follows the same rules as any other presentation. The presentation needs to boil down the material into simple, clear slides and you – the presenter – must tell a really good story. Never, ever, read the slides – that equals BORING! Tell a well-crafted story instead.

So where do you start?

• Pick three main points. Usually something like: what happened last year, what’s happening currently, and what the plan for the future is.
• Break those points down into simple engaging looking slides.
• Answer the inherent questions from these main points.
• Give a copy of the 200-page behemoth to each audience member, so they can get the fine details after the presentation is over.

The hardest part of creating any presentation and an annual report is no exception, is boiling the content down into the main points and sticking with them. It’s easy to create 20 slides filled to the brim with bullet points that no one is going to read, it’s harder to simplify those slides into material your audience will remember. There is no point working hard on the annual report presentation, only for no one to actually pay attention.

People WILL pay attention, however, if the presentation is presented in an engaging way. Simple as that.

Now if your 200-page report has become a 200-kilo albatross, throw it to us and we can trim the fat and turn it into a fantastic looking presentation.