12 Tips to Create a Great Proposal Presentation

Whether you’re selling products, services or proposing a new business venture, an impressive proposal presentation can influence your stakeholders and seal the deal. Merely a written proposal won’t sell your ideas to your audience, but projecting visual aids onto a screen can make a difference and give you an edge over your competitors. Here are 12 tips for creating an immaculate proposal presentation.

1. Proposal templates

Want your presentation to be different from your competition? Employing cliched stock templates won’t do justice to your business proposal. Instead, harness professionally crafted proposal templates from online websites to level up your presentation game.

Choose a proposal template corresponding to your brand’s ideals. Use varied slide layouts across your pitch deck to amaze your audience with every section and slide. Pick innovative and intuitive corporate-ready templates which render your presentation unique and formidable.

2. Seamless structure

A haphazard and disorganized slide deck leads to confusion among your clients. Forge your presentation with a robust and seamless structure, which will help you to navigate your slideshow seamlessly. Systemize your presentation, starting with a title slide, and then the next slide should have your goals, mission and vision.

Follow it up with trends, strategies and timelines that you’re planning to boost the business. Remember to mention the company services, your strengths, what makes you unique in the market, comparisons and why your clients should choose you. Throw in the financial data and statistics to make your points more comprehensible and finish with a strong closing slide.

3. A cover or splash slide

The first slide that your clients are going to see is your title slide or splash slide. Imbibe this with an eye-catching title, focused headlines, name of the business and a slogan. The splash slide should convey your brand’s hallmarks to your clients. Put minimalist images that complement your title.

The goal of your splash page is to draw your viewer’s attention. Pique the audience’s interest in your proposal from the start of your presentation. A tip here is to form a splash slide that takes less than five seconds to read. Integrate it with key phrases, quotes and questions to make it more interactive.

4. Background matters

A vibrant background goes a long way to enhance the power of your slide content, so choose one that’s compatible with your presentation topic. And use colors that are in contrast with your text on the slide.

Be mindful of the text legibility when choosing an image for the background. Your imagery should have just the right colors for it to be effective without interfering with your text. Set a black overlay on your text with 50% transparency, which will cast a shadow on it, making it much easier to read.

5. Compelling visuals

Lengthy paragraphs and too much text will make your slides look mundane and dull. To break down your proposal into digestible ideas, accompany your slides with compelling images.

Adopt pixel-perfect graphics that are of superior quality and high resolution. Striking and persuasive images will deliver your message faster with a visual charm. Abundant illustrations are overkill as they distract the audience. Employ enticing and meaningful images to facilitate your ideas indelibly.

6. Check color contrast

Visual contrast plays a pivotal role in the success of your presentation and makes the element distinguishable, and helps your audience focus on slides better. You can also use ready to use PowerPoint templates as they offer a constant contrast appeal throughout the slides.

People often make the mistake of using multiple contrasting color schemes in a single presentation. This may cause a phenomenon called 'Death by PowerPoint’. It’s nothing but your audience losing interest in your slides. The general rule with contrast is that no more than 10% of the presentation should be highlighted.

7. Typography proficiency

Typographical mastery is a must to design a stunning pitch deck. Choose befitting fonts and adjust its size to elevate your slide’s quality. Employ functional fonts to capture the essence of your textual information.

Sans Serif fonts like Arial fit aptly for headings and Serif fonts like Times New Roman for the content. To keep your slides visually consistent, apply only 2-3 fonts throughout the presentation. Set the font size appropriately for good text readability. Nothing distracts an audience other than the poor font size.

8. Color palette selection

A colorful slide deck instantly divulges about your brand and grabs the attention of your clients. When forming a business proposal presentation, consider blending your slides with your brand colors. Create a color palette of at least three colors that complement your brand and is consistent across the presentation.

Explore the right color combinations according to your background, graphics and text. But remember to keep enough white space to ensure that your slides look less cluttered.

9. Use animations sparingly

There’s no denying that a presentation is incomplete without attractive animations. However, it’s important not to overcrowd your slideshow with them. A good practice is to put basic animations between slide transition and at areas where you want the attention of your viewers.

Without explicitly referring to the portion of the slide, a presenter can draw the attention of stakeholders, investors to numbers, graphs and charts. Throughout a presentation, it’s imperative to keep the crux highlighted. It’s only then your audience will remember your presentation and take key points with them.

10. Leverage chart, diagrams and videos

Simplify statistical figures, facts and data with the construction of powerful charts, diagrams, shapes and timelines. Use business intelligence tools like Power BI to formulate salient charts and visuals. Compare and contrast numbers, present the profits, pricing and costs with captivating charts.

Timeline charts, vertical and horizontal bars, pie diagrams, chronological timelines reinforce your quantitative data in a less complex manner. Color-code the visuals for a more dramatic impact. Shoot small videos elucidating your goals and vision and embed them in slides.

11. SWOT analysis

A SWOT explanation in one of your slides will add just the right flavor to your proposal presentation. Briefly demonstrate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business or service, then lucidly elaborate on each question below:

• What is your USP?
• What solutions have you devised to cover your weaknesses?
• What will you contribute to your clients?

Instead of simple bullets, utilize SWOT templates from sites like SlideModel, Visme, Prezi, etc., to make it more attractive. 3D models will imprint a ‘wow’ factor on your audience. Know your products, sell your vision, and give your clients a reason to believe in you.

12. Be short and precise

When forming your presentation, keep it compact, crisp, and precise by following the golden rule of 10-20-30. Build ten slides, which don’t exceed 20 minutes, and adopt a font size of 30 points or more. The more you feed to the audience, the less they retain.

A lengthy presentation is tedious to follow and will compel your audience to doze off into a slumber. To avoid this, weave a story about your journey and tell it in the form of a narrative. The goal is to keep your story simple yet elegant. It’s only your audience that’ll resonate with your thoughts and take a call to action.