When you’re in the process of creating a presentation for investors, keeping in mind that it’s a balancing act. As a CT Investor Relations Firm, we’ve developed our fair share of IR presentations. There are bits of information that investors are keen to see, and if you don’t provide that information, they’ll quickly begin wondering if you’re hiding something. On the flip side, investors see dozens of presentations each month. To have a lasting impact, you’ll need to stand out.

1. Simplify your slide templates: While having a professionally designed slide deck is intrinsic to investor confidence, you want to keep things as simple as possible. The worst thing you can do as a presenter is having your audience talk about how great the design is without mentioning a single detail about the information presented!
2. Don’t rely on lists: Instead of relying on bullet points without any additional information, break your list up into slides. It’ll help keep the audience interested, attentive, and informed.
3. Assert and illustrate: Instead of having a broken sentence or platitude as the title of your slides, try using a complete sentence. Research has shown that your audience is much more likely to remember this information. For example, instead of “Dominating the market”, say “How we’re dominating the market”. While it’s a small change, this can go a long way.
4. Design your data: Research by Harvard and MIT shows that designed data is much more likely to be retained by the audience. While you don’t want to do this for everything, use this technique for any information you really want your audience to remember.