How much should I budget to invest in a professional slide deck?
It’s a question, of course, that I get asked all the time. How much will it cost for you to produce my slides? It’s at this point that I whip out my metaphorical piece of string. How long is it? I don’t know!
But it is a fair question isn’t it? If you want me to design your slides, you’re going to want to know what's the investment and, of course, I’ll always be happy to produce a quote once I’ve asked a few questions and seen your existing slides, if you’re not starting from scratch.
A professionally designed presentation is an investment that can pay dividends. Not only does it make you and your company look far more professional than your competitors but it will make you feel much more confident and comfortable when presenting and, most importantly, will be far more likely to achieve your goals and get your audience to take the actions you want them to take.
But it got me thinking. How much do I actually charge for slides? And so I did a bit of research. I went through all the presentations I’ve created over the last 18 months or so and I worked out the average cost of a slide.
And now ladies and gents I can exclusively reveal that if you get me to design and produce your slides, the average cost will be…
…between £9.07 and £399.67 per slide
Happy with that? No, I didn’t think so. Let’s make it a bit more sensible and take an interquartile range, disregarding the cheapest and most expensive 25%. Now that makes a bit of a difference and reveals that the average cost is…
…between £27.63 and £51.30 per slide
So, the majority of the work I do falls between that range. It gives you a much better idea of the sort of investment you'll need to make.
What influences the price you’ll pay?
There are a number of factors that will influence the price you pay and determine whether you’ll be at the top or bottom of that range (or indeed in those extreme quarters).
The number of slides. There is always an amount of preparation work to be done when producing a presentation. Working on the design, selecting fonts, designing a colour palette and maybe producing a template. If you’ve only got 3 or 4 slides then this prep work is going to be a larger proportion of the cost than if you have 50 slides, pushing up the average price.
The complexity of the slides. Inevitably, the more complex the slides, the higher the price will be. I am always pushing for simplicity in slides and this should help to keep the price down, although not always. There is often a lot of time and art spent in working out how to simplify a complex message or process.
Starting from scratch. For the vast majority of presentations I produce, the client will already have produced a slide deck as a starting point. This usually makes things easier (although not always!). If you are starting from scratch and I’m helping you produce a presentation all the way from script to screen, this is going to be more expensive.
The state of your slides. Sometimes I’ll receive a slide deck that is pretty good and means I have to do less work to knock it into shape. If your slides are already quite decent then expect to pay less. If your slides suck, then… well you know the answer to that.
The number of alterations will affect the price. I always build in a small amount in the quote to cover inevitable tweaks but sometimes there are wholesale changes and this is going to push up the quoted price. In the vast majority of cases, the client will pay what I originally quoted.
My involvement. The prices I have quoted above are just for projects on which I have produced the slides. If I am involved in other aspects of your presentation then this can have a significant effect on the price. (But it will also mean that you are far more likely to deliver an effective presentation and one which will wow your audience. This involvement might include producing the script (as mentioned above), coaching for delivery, helping with rehearsals, and being on-site to help when you deliver your presentation.
How I work
The way that I work when producing slides is as follows:
If you have an existing presentation, I’ll ask you to send it over.
We’ll arrange an initial chat, usually on Zoom, so that I can ask various questions about the presentation. This is free.
I’ll then go through the presentation slide by slide to ensure that I am able to understand what you are trying to say with each slide. I’ll make a note of any questions. It’s at this point that I start charging.
We can then arrange another Zoom if necessary to go through these questions.
I’ll then produce a quote and send it over.
If you’re happy with the quote, we go ahead. If not, then there is no charge for any work done so far.
I then work on the presentation and send it back to you.
You say, “Wow that’s fantastic” and give me a lovely recommendation on LinkedIn.
You may well have been directed to this blog post after asking me the title question. Either way, I hope that it has been helpful. All presentations will start off as a piece of string of indeterminate length but it doesn’t take too long to work out exactly how long that piece of string is.
