Outline Your Presentation

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Research your audience.
  
• Create an executive summary.
  

Introduction

You wrapped up your project and are ready to share your presentation with the executive team. But before that happens, you need to create an outline for the presentation to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Research Your Audience

The first step in creating a great outline is to research the executives you are presenting to. What projects are they working on? How does it relate to your project? Try to understand what the executives know and what they believe about the project. This will help you determine what they value, the criteria they typically use when making decisions, and the pain points they want to alleviate. All of these things will help you know what they’re looking for and will help you tailor your presentation to them. 

Executive Summary

Next is the executive summary. An executive summary is a brief summary of your project plan. Make sure to include the most important and relevant details of your project plan. Reserve the data analysis and more involved details and charts to the project plan itself. Instead, focus on a summary of the project plan. It should look something like the following:

• Includes a one- to two-sentence descriptive summary of the overall plan.
  
• Identifies the problem.
  
• Explains your solution.
  
• Identifies who needs to act and what they need to do.
  

Next up, creating your outline.  

Resources

• External Website: 15 Ways to Boost Confidence Before a Big Presentation
• External Website: How to Write a Compelling Executive Summary