Presentation glossary

A

Action title

An action title is a slide headline written as a full sentence that states the slide's conclusion, such as “Revenue grew in every region”, instead of only naming its topic.

Appendix

The appendix is the section after the closing slide that holds backup material, such as detailed data, methods and extra analyses, which you show only when someone asks.

ARR

ARR (annual recurring revenue) is the yearly value of the subscription revenue a company has under contract at a given moment, calculated as monthly recurring revenue times twelve.

Aspect ratio

The aspect ratio of a slide is the proportion of its width to its height, written as width:height. The standard for presentations today is 16:9 (widescreen), while older decks and some projectors use 4:3.

B

Bullet point

A bullet point is a short item in a list, marked by a symbol such as a dot, used to set out points of equal rank in short, parallel entries. On slides it is the standard way to list items.

Burn rate

Burn rate is the speed at which a company uses up its cash, usually stated per month. Gross burn is all cash spent; net burn is cash spent minus cash received.

C

CAC

CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the average cost of winning one new customer: all sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the number of new customers won in that period.

Chartjunk

Chartjunk is decoration in a chart that adds nothing to the reader's understanding, such as 3D effects, heavy grids, shadows or background pictures. Edward Tufte coined the term in 1983.

Corporate design

Corporate design is the consistent visual appearance of an organization: its logo, colors, typefaces, imagery and layout rules, applied to every document and slide so that they are recognizably from the same source.

D

Data-ink ratio

The data-ink ratio is the share of a chart's ink that presents data, a measure introduced by Edward Tufte in 1983. The idea is to erase ink that carries no information.

Driver tree

A driver tree breaks a business metric into the measurable drivers that produce it, linked by arithmetic so each number can be recalculated from the ones below it.

E

Elevator pitch

An elevator pitch is a short, spoken summary of an idea, product, project or person, persuasive enough to start a conversation and brief enough for an elevator ride, typically 30 seconds to two minutes.

G

Gantt chart

A Gantt chart is a bar chart that plots a project's tasks against a time axis: each task is a horizontal bar whose start, length and end show when it runs, and milestones appear as markers.

Ghost deck

A ghost deck is a draft presentation made of slide titles and rough sketches of the charts, built before the analysis is done, to agree on the story and to show which data is still needed.

H

Handout

A handout is a document the audience takes away from a talk or meeting, such as a short summary, the key slides or reference material, so people can review the content afterwards.

Harvey balls

Harvey balls are round pictograms that show, in five steps from empty to full, how far a criterion is met or a task is done. They let a table compare options at a glance without numbers.

I

Issue tree

An issue tree breaks one central question into sub-questions, level by level, until each branch can be answered with a fact, an analysis or a decision.

K

Key message

A key message is the single idea you want your audience to remember and act on after a presentation, a section or a slide, stated in one sentence.

KPI

A KPI (key performance indicator) is a measurable value that shows how well a company, team or project is progressing toward one specific goal.

L

LTV

LTV (customer lifetime value) is the total gross profit you expect one customer to generate between the first purchase and the last, usually estimated from yearly revenue, gross margin and churn.

M

MECE

MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) is a rule for splitting a topic into parts that do not overlap and that together cover the whole.

N

NPS

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer-loyalty metric: customers rate on a scale of 0 to 10 how likely they are to recommend a company, and the score is the percentage of promoters (9 to 10) minus the percentage of detractors (0 to 6).

O

OKR

OKRs (objectives and key results) are a goal-setting method that pairs one ambitious, qualitative objective with a few measurable key results that show whether it was reached.

One-pager

A one-pager is a single-page document that summarizes a topic, such as a proposal, product, project or decision, so the reader gets the point and the next step without reading anything else.

P

Placeholder

A placeholder is a pre-formatted container on a slide layout that reserves a spot for one kind of content, such as a title, text, a picture or a chart, and fixes its position, size and formatting.

Pre-read

A pre-read is a document that attendees read before a meeting, so that the meeting time goes to questions and decisions instead of to presenting the background.

R

RAG status

RAG status is a traffic-light rating that reports a project, task or metric as red, amber or green: green means on track, amber means at risk and needs attention, and red means off track and needs a decision or help.

Runway

Runway is the number of months a company can keep operating before its cash runs out, calculated as the cash balance divided by the monthly net burn.

S

SCQA

SCQA (Situation, Complication, Question, Answer) is a four-part opening for a presentation or memo: it recalls what the audience knows, names what changed, asks the question that follows and gives your answer.

Slide deck

A slide deck is a set of slides built around one purpose and meant to be presented or read in order. In business, the word also names the file itself, usually a PowerPoint document.

Slide layout

A slide layout is a template that fixes how content is arranged on a slide: which placeholders it contains, where they sit and how they are formatted, such as Title and Content or Two Content.

So what

The so what is the implication of a fact or finding: why it matters to the audience and what they should think or do because of it. A slide without one reports a fact but makes no point.

Speaker notes

Speaker notes are text attached to a slide that the audience does not see. They hold what the presenter wants to say, the key numbers and the transition to the next slide.

Storyline

A storyline is the logical sequence of messages that takes an audience from the opening of a presentation to its conclusion; read in order, the slide titles should tell it without the slides.

T

TAM, SAM, SOM

TAM, SAM and SOM are three nested estimates of market size: the total demand for a product (TAM), the part your offer and channels can reach (SAM) and the share you can realistically win (SOM).

Two-by-two matrix

A two-by-two matrix, or 2x2 matrix, is a chart that sorts items into four quadrants using two criteria, each split into low and high, so that every item gets a position and every quadrant points to a different action.

U

Unit economics

Unit economics measure the revenue and costs of a single unit of the business, usually one customer, to show whether each additional unit makes or loses money.

V

Visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is the arrangement of elements on a slide so that the eye reads them in order of importance, using size, contrast, color, weight, position and space.

W

Waterfall chart

A waterfall chart, also called a bridge chart, shows how a start value turns into an end value through a series of positive and negative steps, each drawn as a floating bar that begins where the previous one ended.

White space

White space, also called negative space, is the empty area around and between the elements on a slide. It groups related items, separates unrelated ones and directs the eye to what matters.