In my previous post, I took you briefly through the whys and wherefores of using Microsoft PowerPoint and explained why it’s such a popular application with management consultants. PowerPoint is the medium you will use to deliver much of your communication when pitching to customers, providing project updates, and sharing the end results.
However, a mistake made by many consultants, especially when starting out, is to focus intently on the slide deck and its content, while giving minimal thought to the actual delivery.
Sharpen Your Consulting Presentation Skills
Because you are reading this post, you are not going to make the all-too-common error of overlooking presentation delivery. Instead, you have the benefit of awareness—the awareness that your presentation content will only account for around 10% of audience response. The rest will be dependent on the way you deliver that content.
That figure surprises people. Ten percent. You could spend three days perfecting your slides, getting the data visualisations just right, agonising over font choices—and it accounts for a tenth of whether your audience walks away convinced.
I worked with a consultant a few years back who’d come from a technical background. Brilliant analyst. His slide decks were genuinely impressive—clear, logical, beautifully structured. But he’d stand up to present and read directly from the slides in a monotone, eyes fixed somewhere around the back wall. The content was excellent. The delivery made it almost impossible to absorb.
The thing is, most of us aren’t natural presenters. That’s fine. Presentation skills can be learned like anything else. But you do have to actually learn them, not assume they’ll sort themselves out.
Even the briefest crash course in content delivery can’t be provided effectively in a short blog post, but what I can do is introduce you to three important points to remember and to research further. These three presentation skills are consulting fundamentals, but are also easy to omit if you aren’t used to speaking in front of an audience.
#1: Engage your audience with some stories and anecdotes that tie into the topic you are presenting. That’s so much more interesting than listening to a list of facts and actually helps the audience to absorb the message you are delivering.
#2: Work out what’s most important to your audience. While it’s necessary for you to have gathered many details, you don’t have to regurgitate them all. Focus on giving the information that your customer will find most useful and actionable.
#3: Anticipate the questions you are most likely to be asked and prepare your answers carefully. Savvy customers will often test you with questions, even if they know the answers. When you are able to reply confidently with informed responses, your audience will afford you the credibility you deserve.
Reading the Room
One thing that’s harder to teach but worth mentioning: you need to pay attention to your audience while you’re presenting, not just before.
Honestly, I’ve seen consultants plough through forty slides while half the room has mentally checked out by slide twelve. The CEO keeps glancing at her phone. The operations director is whispering something to his colleague. And the presenter just… keeps going. Because that’s what the deck says to do.
If you notice you’re losing people, you’re allowed to adapt. Skip ahead to the recommendations. Ask if there are questions. Say “I can see we’re pressed for time—let me jump to what I think matters most here.” Your audience will thank you for it.
The opposite happens too. Sometimes you’ll be three slides in and someone asks a question that’s answered on slide twenty-seven. Don’t say “I’ll get to that later.” Just go to slide twenty-seven. The presentation exists to serve the conversation, not the other way around.
Take a Lesson From the Best
Finally, remember the numero-uno most important presentation skill in consulting, which isn’t really a skill at all, but a discipline—it’s called rehearsal.
Don’t just practice your presentation delivery method. Rehearse every presentation before you deliver it.
Even the best and most confident speakers know not to take their delivery for granted. The reason they are so slick is that they spend hours going through their presentations as if in front of an audience. If you do the same, your confidence will shine through and your audience will concentrate on your message, instead of noticing your (perfectly natural) nerves.
One practical tip: rehearse out loud, not in your head. There’s a significant difference between thinking through what you’ll say and actually saying it. You’ll catch awkward phrasing, realise certain transitions don’t work, and get a realistic sense of timing. It feels a bit silly, talking to an empty room. Do it anyway.