A good result presentation is the reflection of my professionalism and my commitment to the services I managed toward my customers so creating a good one to present the results, it is a must to create a good trust. Particularly true if I have to do it face to face and because I am using Microsoft Office, all are done with powerpoint.

I have some rules to create my presentation. First, I use a template which is customized for each customer. In some companies I worked for, there was an official one. It is a good thing because I didn’t need to spend time to create one. For some who don’t have, I have no choice. Using a template saves me a lot of time because I don’t have to create a new one each month and it ensures that I will have the same design making easier for my customers to identify.

Powerpoint offers many default designs so normally I pick one of them then I customize it by:

• Putting the official color, the logo and the name of my company
• Putting the logo and the name of my customer

It is important for me that each customer has its own template because, psychologically, it will convey a stronger relationship and making my customers to feel not as a partner but as one single team without frontier. If you are lazy, you can create only 1 for all your customers. In this case, just put the official color, the logo and the name of your company.

The second step is the content. This is the most important part because it will provide to my customers how well I know their service. If I put wrong contents or irrelevant information, I will tell them indirectly that I don’t care even if it is not the intention. Main rules:

• Put relevant information in relation with the service. For instance, an IT service and a commercial service. I will not put how many tickets have been resolved for the commercial presentation and I will not put the sales figures for the IT presentation.
• Don’t hide the red. For instance, if SLAs and KPIs are all green, be proud to show how well the team did it but if there was only 1 single issue, don’t forget to mention it because if the customer will acknowledge it via another source, you will lost his trust. For each issue, I put a resume, the resolution and the improvement actions. If the improvement is in a long term, I will describe the period. For instance, in 2 months because 1 month to hire a new agent and 1 month for training.
• Don’t care about the number of slides but consider the meeting duration. For instance, if the meeting will last 1 hour, creating a presentation of 1000 slides make no sense because I will have no time to present everything.
• Take in consideration the feedback of the customer. For instance, if I have a meeting 3 days before the presentation day, usually, I have no issue to change it except if the data is not depending on me (for example, the quality data is managed by the own quality department of my customer). If I have a meeting 30 minutes before the presentation time, I will let them know that I will do my best and in the worst case, it will be done for the next month. Your flexibility is important in this case because it will show your proactivity.
• All results should be displayed in graphs with a brief comment. Don’t use a chart or a text to show the result because a graph is more visual, more clear and more understandable in one look. Don’t put a big comment, if there are questions, more details will be given during the meeting.

Some rules to create a good graph:

• It should be simple, don’t create a graph with many things, after all, you are not showing a chaos. When you select a type, ask yourself “is it easy to understand by looking at it without asking ?” by putting yourself in a shoes of someone who knows nothing.
• Show a trend instead of a single month. If it is a trend chart, show it until the last 12 months. Of course, if it is the first month, you will have only 1 but the next, you will have 2 and so on.
• Divide in 2 or more if there are a lot of parameters. In this case, group them. For instance, instead to have 1 graph for all components, do 1 graph for servers (windows, linux, etc.), and 1 graph for network (switch, firewall, etc.). Instead to have 1 graph for all level supports, do 1 graph for windows (1st, 2nd and 3rd level) and 1 graph for security (1st, 2nd and 3rd level)

Lastly, take note of any feedback so the presentation can be improved for the next meeting.

After the meeting, even if your customer don’t ask it, send them a copy. It will formalize that everyone is agreeing about the results even if it was done verbally. Don’t forget to put any positive and negative comments talked during the meeting because any unresolved actions should be reviewed in the next one. For that, normally, I will create a slide and I will include it in the presentation.

It is very unusual that the customer will ask you to send it days before the meeting but they can ask you to do it some minutes before the meeting. Don’t say no except if you have a really good reason, if not, they will think that you are hiding something.

A good result presentation is a presentation that doesn’t raise any questions (at least, the minimum) and very easy to understand in one single look. For instance, what is this, what means this, I don’t see the total of, etc. should not exist.

Finally, for the presentation to be a total success, you need to be well prepared. You need to anticipate the questions so to have ready the answers. If during the meeting, the customer will ask something that you didn’t think about, just say something like “I will check and let you know”. If you are not prepared, it is very annoying for the customer to hear “I will check and let you know” to all his questions.