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Strategy Consultants Presentation Toolkit

This document provides a toolkit of charts and visuals that strategy consultants use to clearly communicate complex business ideas and recommendations. It begins by explaining how consultants tell data-driven stories through presentations. It then demonstrates various chart types like stacked bars, drilldown charts, charts with multiple measures or dimensions, charts showing trends over time, and tables. These visuals can be used to analyze markets, revenues, costs, customer feedback, and project plans. The document recommends getting Mekko Graphics software for creating professional-quality charts.

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100% found this document useful (3 votes)
1K views23 pages

Strategy Consultants Presentation Toolkit

This document provides a toolkit of charts and visuals that strategy consultants use to clearly communicate complex business ideas and recommendations. It begins by explaining how consultants tell data-driven stories through presentations. It then demonstrates various chart types like stacked bars, drilldown charts, charts with multiple measures or dimensions, charts showing trends over time, and tables. These visuals can be used to analyze markets, revenues, costs, customer feedback, and project plans. The document recommends getting Mekko Graphics software for creating professional-quality charts.

Uploaded by

Tom
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 23

STRATEGY

CONSULTANTS TOOLKIT
SELLING YOUR IDEAS WITH POWERFUL CHARTS

Introduction
In order to communicate complex business ideas

and recommendations, a presentation needs to be


clear, concise, and easily understood
Strategy consultants do that by telling a story,
most commonly through presentations
These presentations are normally data-driven and
chart-centric
But making data easy to understand is HARD
This slide deck (presentation) will highlight the
charts and visuals that top consulting firms and
corporate strategists use to make their strategic
insights clear and understood
2

How To Use the Toolkit


A Strategy Consultants insights normally address two key

questions clients care about most:


How do I increase revenue?
How do I reduce costs?

In all likelihood, that will be the focus of your presentation

as well
The slides in this toolkit will provide charting and data
presentation ideas you can adopt for your own work
They are all data-driven (not drawn manually) using Mekko

Graphics; and you can copy, edit, and reuse them in your own
presentations
Plus, we will point you to other public domain examples you can
borrow from as well

How to get the required software, including a free trial, is

outlined on the last page


3

Dividing up the Market


80% of revenue comes from the 5
largest verticals.

Many business presentations


start with a review of the current
status quo
So it is common to ask: How do I
divide the clients market or how
to I categorize my client's
revenues or costs?
A simple single 100% stacked bar
is a good way to categorize
markets, revenues or costs.
Make sure the categories are
MECEMutually Exclusive
and Collectively Exhaustive.
If there are more than 10
categories, group some
together or group the smaller
ones in Other.
In all slides with charts,
include a tag line to present
4
the key message, like the one

Drilling Down
Once you have an overall sense of the market, you

will often want to drill down into the details for a


specific market, competitor or expense category.
Charts are easiest to understand when you have 57 categories.
Drilling down allows you to explode a specific
category one more level.

Drilling DownExploding a Category

If there are more than 10 categories that are important or there is one key
category that you want to subdivide, use a second bar to explode a
category from the first bar. Use color to further highlight a key category.
6

Drilling Down with Multiple Charts


FY 2012 National Expenditures

FY 2012 Eastern Regional Expenditures


USAA Alpine
staff and race
support 264

General liability
and participant
accident insurance
premiums 354

Other
USSA-provided
services 148

1,186

Coaches'
education
administration
126

Regional staff
operations
and
development
187

Ski
Racing
Magazine
77

US Ski
Team
pipeline
dev.
costs 81

General
USSA
admin
136

Coaches education 42

Other services 35
434

Championships,
NDS, and race
supplies 126

Payments to FIS
on behalf of regions 44

Use multiple charts on one slide to divide a measure along a key dimension. In this case, we have
expenses by region on the left. The horizontal stacked bars on the right provide the detail for the
measure. In this case, we have expenses broken out in the largest region.
Source: http://media.ussa.org/Public/Communications/2013/McKinseyStudy.pdf

Adding More Measures or Dimensions


So far weve looked at one key measure along a

single dimension
For example, revenue by vertical market or expenses by

region.

Add a second measure to examine both number of

customers and total customer revenue by region


or vertical market
Add a second dimension to examine revenue by
region and vertical market in the same chart.
You can even add a third dimension to examine
sales compared to both price and performance.

Dividing the Market with Two Measures

One measure is often not enough. You can use two bars for related
measures. In this example, the financial services vertical has high
revenue relative to the number of customers and the chart
9
highlights a potentially profitable sector.

Dividing the Market Along Two Dimensions

If you need to look at two dimensions in depth, the Marimekko chart lets
you turn multiple charts into a single graphic. Keep the number of
categories for each dimension under 10 and make sure they are MECE.
Again, use color to highlight opportunities.
10

Adding a 3rd DimensionPrice, Performance and


Sales

Use a bubble chart to compare your products to each other or to competitor products with respect to
price and a key performance dimension. Price is on the Y axis. A key product characteristic (e.g.,
horsepower, size, efficiency) is on the X axis. The bubble size captures sales in units or dollars. The
chart can help identify opportunities for new products or pricing changes.

11

Moving On To Trends
Weve looked at one dimension and multiple

dimensions, but our first few charts still only


provided a snapshot of a single point in time,
which as noted is where you will often start your
story.
However your story might next move on to
illustrate trends over time and this gets harder to
illustrate in most chart types, particularly when
you have multiple dimensions.

12

Tracking Trends Over Time

One solution is the multiple stacked bar chart, which shows growth in each
category. Note we have also included a CAGR column to the right to show
annual growth in each category plus total growth in year 1 to 4 across the
top.

13

Showing Mix Change Over Time

The 100% stacked bar we used before for two related measures, can also
be used as it is shown above to show product or revenue mix changes over
time. The comparison lines highlight individual changes. Include start and
end year or all years in the chart. Use highlight colors to focus on large 14

And Projections?
Projections are a variation of trends.
However, it can be useful to use slightly different

charts to keep your presentation livelier and hence


more compelling.

15

Projected Growth Versus Market Size

Similar to the Marimekko, the Bar-Mekko shows two dimensions, for example
market growth and market size. The bar widths are proportional to the value in
the data row.
16

Estimate the Impact of Proposed Changes

Or you can show the impact of proposed changes in a Cascade chart. Start
with current state, add a bar for each change and use multiple total bars to
show changes over multiple years.

17

And Non-Numeric Data?


Some data you will want to use to communicate

your story may not lend itself to being expressed


in numbers as easily.
But with some creativity, data can often be reimagined as a chart that is far clearer than mere
numbers.

18

Displaying Customer Feedback


Q: What is your overall satisfaction with the company?
(1-10; 10 = very satisfied)

Commentary

If I don't see a lot of returns here in purchasing, if there are no


headaches, and if teachers keep going back to the supplier, it's a
10 as far as I'm concerned.

I give them a 10 because we have an excellent contact, Shirley.


She is there anytime we need something. She helps us stay in our
price range and accomplish what we set out to do. You don't get
that kind of service anymore. It makes people want to go back and
spend more money. She makes us feel like we're #1.

They have excellent customer service. When we were just starting


up, they helped us select equipment, cleared up some delivery
issues, and even came over and helped us open boxes. That was
invaluable to us.

Well, they are definitely cheaper than other suppliers, but that's
both in price and product quality. It doesn't do us any good to have
to return half of what we purchased.

For example, use a page horizontal stacked bar to show customer feedback. You
can show the distribution of answers for a specific question or the answers on several
questions and then use the right half of the slide to display key quotes.
19

Summarizing Findings in a Table


US Medals

Skiing

Swimmin
g

Gymnasti
cs

Figure
Skating

Cycling

Fencing

21 of 120
(18%)

31 of 102
(30%)

6 of 42 (14%)

2 of 12 (17%)

4 of 55 (7%)

1 of 30 (3%)

$18M

$13M

125K

173K

$144

$76

Multi-sport
Club sport
NCAA
sport
Total
Revenue,
$M

$24M

Membershi
p, 000s
Revenue
per
member,
$pp

$30M

353K
40K

$12M

$5M

71K

20K

$163

$262

$604
$85

Tables are great for comparing business units along a set of dimensions. Use check boxes
or Harvey Balls (stoplights) to show whether the dimension (e.g., NCAA sport) applies to
the business (e.g., skiing). Add simple bar charts to mix qualitative and quantitative data
in the same table.
20
Source: http://media.ussa.org/Public/Communications/2013/McKinseyStudy.pdf

Plan Your Engagement with a Gantt Chart


Task

Month1

Month2

Month3

Month4

W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W6 W7 W8 W9 W10 W11W12 W13W14W15 W16

Design
Meet with users
Write document
Build
Code
Integrate
QA
Internal Test
User Test
Reviews
Use a simple one slide Gantt chart to communicate your project plan to your clients.
Multiple level tasks allow you to show project details. Add milestones for key meetings or
21
review points.

Learn More
A great presentation tells a story clearly
and succinctly
But it has to be supported by compelling data,
presented in a clean and understandable way

Great charts will help ensure your


presentations success
Luckily, the same great software used by
leading management consultants and
Fortune 100 strategy experts is available
to you too
22

Get Mekko Graphics Today!


Mekko Graphics is available via the
web, including as a FREE 30-day trial
It is the perfect opportunity to try before
you buy
You can license for a single person or
your entire organization

Visit the Mekko Graphics website


today at http://
www.mekkographics.com
23

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