STRATEGY
CONSULTANTS’ TOOLKIT
SELLING YOUR IDEAS WITH POWERFUL CHARTS
Introduction
• In order to communicate complex business ideas and
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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
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How To Use the Toolkit
• A Strategy Consultant’s 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
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Dividing up the Market
80% of revenue comes from the 5
largest verticals.
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Many business presentations start with a
review of the current “status quo”
So it is common to ask: How do I divide
the client’s 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
“MECE”—Mutually 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 the key message, like
the one to the left.
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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 5-7 categories.
• Drilling down allows you to explode a specific category one
more level.
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Drilling Down—Exploding 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.
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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
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Adding More Measures or Dimensions
• So far we’ve 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.
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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 highlights a potentially profitable sector.
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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.
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Adding a 3rd Dimension—Price,
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.
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Moving On To Trends
• We’ve 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 re-imagined as a
chart that is far clearer than mere numbers.
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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 ½ 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.
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Summarizing Findings in a Table
US Medals
Skiing
Swimming
Gymnastics
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
Membership,
‘000s
Revenue per
member, $pp
$24M
$30M
$12M
$5M
71K
20K
$163
$262
353K
40K
$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.
Source: http://media.ussa.org/Public/Communications/2013/McKinseyStudy.pdf
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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 review points.
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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
presentation’s success
• Luckily, the same great software used by
leading management consultant’s and Fortune
100 strategy experts is available to you too
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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
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