We have seen them all: a slide that describes four market segments. 4 boxes with a couple of bullet points next to each box: some detail about growth, size, remarks about a competitor, some new product development that happens in one market, in short: stuff.
This slide is the end product of an analysis, you did your homework, all the facts are in, and most people put it straight in the presentation deck. They are skipping an important step: create the slide that tells the story.
How to extract and visualise it?
- Put your busy slide aside
- Write down in "broken" short-hand bullets what is actually going on. "There are 4 markets, 2 big slow growing, and 2 small high growth, and it is in one of these where we have a unique opportunity"
- Now decide on the visual composition. Eye balling the story above, it looks like it is some sort of 2x2 showing the 2 types of markets alongside axes of size and growth, with a call out coming out of the market with the opportunity showing why.
- Create your slide and double check against your busy starter slide whether you forgot anything absolutely essential.
- Now, make your busy slide even more busy, adding all the facts and figures and store it as a backup in the appendix.
Now you have 3 levels of story:
- There are 4 markets, and we should go for market number 3.
- The reasons why number 3 is so attractive (requires a bit more reading/listening)
- The full detail of all the markets (requires a lot more reading).
Does your new market summary slide explain what you want to do? Yes
Does your new market summary slide summarises everything there is to know about these markets? No.
Cover image by David Kovalenko on Unsplash