The Ultimate Guide To Hire Professional Presentation Designers
Hiring trained professional presentation designers have allowed many businesses to free employees’ time and increase productivity. Professional PowerPoint design is an incredibly powerful tool to save time and money and take your presentations to the next level. By letting professionals do what they do best, you make sure that your slides stand out from the crowd and convey your message in the best possible way.
However, choosing from a vast pool of professional presentation designers is no easy task. Here you’ll find how to make sure you’re picking a reliable, trustworthy design agency that will let you leave everything on their hands.
Why you should hire professional PowerPoint designers for your presentations
Working on PowerPoint presentations can be a tedious task. In the last years, PowerPoint presentations have gained a bad reputation, as many people argue that they are even distracting and counterproductive for the speaker. The ‘Death by PowerPoint Syndrome’ has become a common joke among all sorts of fields, and you’ve probably felt it too. Who hasn’t seen a 50+ PowerPoint slide and felt bored and frustrated before the presentation even started?
In reality, PowerPoint slides are a fantastic tool to complement your presentations. Many people make the mistake of putting all their information, word-by-word, in their Powerpoint slides. In reality, these are an excellent way to convey information in a visually engaging way. PowerPoint slides can play a huge role in helping your audience understand the message you’re trying to tell. They can help you showcase data trends through graphs and charts. You can use them to highlight your key points and to illustrate your points. PowerPoint can help you make your presentation more memorable and more digestible for your audience. It can even help you project an image of your brand and the values behind it. A good PowerPoint presentation can play a critical role in conveying professionalism, creativity, attention to detail, and much more!
But taking an all-white default slide to a PowerPoint presentation that can truly achieve all these things takes time and effort. Even more important, it takes experience and design knowledge to take a generic slide to one that can impact your presentation positively. And that’s precisely why so many people are choosing to outsource their slides to professional presentation designers.
Save time and money by hiring someone to create your Powerpoint presentations.
Outsourcing is a standard business practice that consists of hiring a third-party provider for specific business services. For example, you can outsource your company’s marketing aspect, accountancy, warehousing and distributions, and so on. Depending on what you outsource, it can lead to both increased savings and efficacy. Outsourcing means that you’ll no longer have to invest in the staff, equipment, and workspace needed for in-house employees.
Many businesses have turned to hire trained presentation designers to save time and increase efficiency within their teams. You might argue that you don’t really need a specialized staff of equipment for PowerPoint design, as anyone can work on their presentations. However, this is even worse! It means that all kinds of employees waste precious time continuously working on a routine task. Those employees have probably been hired thanks to their expertise in core tasks for the company or business. Loading them with the task of preparing presentations takes time away from their primary functions, which are the ones that contribute to the business’ production process.
According to our surveys, the average executive spends over 4 hours a week working on PowerPoint presentations. While this might not sound like much, it sums up to 188 hours a year! Considering an executive’s salary, this means paying around $8,500 a year to work on PowerPoint slides instead of their actual tasks.
Making good professional PowerPoint slides takes time and effort. Hiring someone outside the company to create PowerPoint presentations frees time for employees to focus and improve the business productivity. But it also allows access to an even better final product. Hiring a design agency means designers that have been trained specially for conveying business messages in the most effective way possible. It means having at your disposal the expertise of designers used to create engaging and appealing ways to showcase corporate information.
In short, hiring PowerPoint designers means letting professionals do what they do best: your employees and the designers will be more efficient in their designated tasks. And they will be able to create outstanding products to elevate the quality.
What about the risks of hiring PowerPoint designers?
As in any tasks you can outsource, there are pros and cons to hiring an external presentation designer. As with any third-party provider, it’s all about finding the right fit and working in the business partnership, so it integrates seamlessly into your main production process. Like many other B2B outsourcing services, the main risks concerning hiring professional presentation designers are all about reliability and trustworthiness.
Privacy and data security
One of the main concerns regarding outsourcing is how secure it is. As many presentations might contain sensitive information regarding the company, security is a must. Reliable design agencies should have clear security and confidentiality policies to reassure their clients.
That’s also one of the main reasons why freelancers are not the best option when choosing a professional presentation designer. While freelance sites might offer a wide range of designers, there’s very little you can do to guarantee your information’s security. On the other hand, trustworthy presentation design agencies have most likely prepared beforehand to deal with such issues. These companies should be able to guarantee their employees’ reliability. Plus, they will probably have previous B2B clients to support this.
Deadline commitment
Another significant risk to take into consideration when hiring trained professional designers is their reliability concerning deadlines. Even if it has the most amazing design ever, it is of no use if the slides are not ready for the presentation day. This lack of reliability is one of the main risks concerning hiring a professional presentation design service. The only way to tackle this issue is by investing time in research. Looking and reading reviews for the trained presentation designers you’re considering is the best possible way to assure that it is a reliable service. Check for red flags reviews: if they don’t answer questions/feedback, lousy customer support, and so on.
Quality standardization
Another important aspect of reliability to take into account is concerning consistency and quality. You must be able to trust that your hired presentation trained will deliver good quality slides that you can depend on. It is especially important if you’re planning this to be not just a one-time service but rather a constant flow of PowerPoint presentations for your team and company. In this case, keeping the same style and a good quality standard is essential.
Like the last point, the best way to examine if this is true is to look at previous clients’ reviews. How satisfied they are about the quality of the designs can show how reliable the design agency is. Another great way to overcome this reliability issue is to work with companies that don’t need payments in advance. It is a way to guarantee that your satisfaction and quality will always come first. You’ll only have to pay once you’re completely satisfied with the final result.
While hiring a professional presentation design might have its complications, the benefits it offers are by far more. You can easily tackle all these reliability and security issues by taking the effort to research the design agencies and choosing accordingly. At the end of the day, hiring a PowerPoint designer is as secure and efficient as the company you pick.
What you should look for when hiring professional presentation designers
While each case might vary depending on what you’re looking for, these common aspects can help you guide your hiring process. These four points will help you define if your choice of professional presentation design service is worth investing in.
1. Reliability and trustworthiness.
As said before, reliability is the one issue that must be considered when looking at presentation design services. You must be able to trust your designers with your presentation’s information. They should be reliable concerning due dates. And that with all the requirements agreed upon beforehand are covered.
2. Good customer support.
Communication can play a huge role in how effective is an outsourced service. Good customer service will help the process run smoothly and make it able to embed seamlessly into your own business processes. It will help make sure that all your requirements and concerns are crystal clear and taken into consideration.
3. Design versatility.
Unless you find a design agency with a style that perfectly fits your brand, design versatility is usually a useful attribute. Look through the different examples they offer to see what different design styles they work with and how they tackle requests. Versatility is an excellent sign that a design agency is genuinely professional and used to work with businesses in all sorts of fields.
4. Customizable options.
To create custom designs and tackle your specific needs in the best way possible, it’s always good to offer a wide array of options. Things like turnaround dates, slide treatment, working with different programs… These all play into how personalized the design agency’s attention is towards their clients. For example, deciding how much effort you want to be put into your slides and paying accordingly — or asking for Prezi presentations instead of PowerPoint slides.
As always, research is the best tool available to make a sound, informed decision. Depending on your specific needs, you might not necessarily need to cover all of these aspects. However, they’re still a great starting point to decide if a design company is reliable and worth working with. Even if it’s not a rigid rule, it’s not recommendable to hire a professional presentation designer that can not comply with these points.
How to choose the perfect professional presentation designer for you
There are many professional PowerPoint design agencies out there, and figuring out which one is better can be a tricky task. I would suggest not only considering which one is the overall best but which one fits YOUR needs better. It will more likely make for a satisfying and effective business partnership.
In order to make the best pick possible, you can ask yourself these questions to guide your presentation designer hiring process:
a) How soon do you need your presentation?
Just this question will help you weed out some of the options. Some design agencies require briefing calls to evaluate the project, give a budget, and send drafts. In some cases, this means up to 4 weeks. So if you’re in a hurry, that’s definitely not a viable option for you! Even if it’s a last-minute project, you can still find great design agencies that will work in your presentation. For example, 24Slides offers full quality 24-hour turnarounds.
b) What are you looking for in your presentation?
Asking yourself what you’re looking for will help you make a better choice in the long run. Do you need personalized illustrations? Graphs and charts? Animations? You can use the list of your requirements to weed out those agencies that cannot fulfill them.
c) What is your budget?
Now that you know what you’re looking for in your presentations, you should ask yourself how much are you willing to pay for it. There’s a wide range in prices, so it’s all up to you! You can find prices that start at $9 per slide, all the way up to $4,500 for a presentation.
d) What kind of service are you looking for?
Is it for a one-time service, or are you looking for a long-term partnership? If you plan to outsource weekly presentations, or you want to get rid forever of the task, there are specific design agencies that can cater to those needs as well. For example, some design agencies offer dedicated teams or subscription packages for those who want a constant flow of presentations done. This way, you’ll have a team that is already familiarized with your brand and your preferences. Plus, you won’t have to worry about calls and budget requests for every single order.
e) How reliable are they?
Do they have a data privacy policy? Are they willing to sign an NDA? These are vital questions to ask yourself, especially if your presentation includes confidential information. But even if it doesn’t, reliability is still a critical factor to look for. You can look for reviews and opinions on sites like Trustpilot or even Facebook and Google ratings. Reading past clients’ opinions will help you get a better idea of how rigorous they are with deadlines and customer requests.
f) What are your style preferences?
Hopefully, these previous questions will help you to reduce the list of possibilities. Once you know all the design agencies that fulfill your requirements and needs, it’s all about preferences! Look into the remaining presentation design agencies’ examples and previous works. This will give you a better idea of what they can do and what styles they work with. Picking a versatile design service (or one that fits your style preferences) will most likely make for a better experience.
Many times outsourcing a specific service is all about trial and error. The more you work with them, the more efficient the process will become. Hopefully, these questions will help you when choosing a professional presentation design service. It might seem tiresome to do all the research, but it’s definitely worth it! It’s the only way to make sure that the service you are picking is the best fit for yourself and guarantee a good partnership.
Step-by-step guide: How to hire your first professional PowerPoint designer
Hiring a trained presentation designer can be a daunting task, especially if it’s your first time outsourcing a service like this. Of course, every company’s process is different. However, here you’ll find a general overview of how professional presentation design services work and how to hire one.
Step 1: Choose a professional Powerpoint design service.
As said above, you must pick the best possible service according to your needs. Ensure that your chosen company’s trained presentation designers are trustworthy, fulfill the deadlines, and fit your style preferences.
Step 2: Get your content ready.
Trained presentation design services are experts on the visual aspect, but that’s it. This means that in most cases, your slides’ content is on you. Make sure to have your presentation information ready to be sent so they can start working on the design right away. If you have style guides or brand colors that you need to follow, also have them ready! Any image, icons, and graph of any kind that you wish to be included is also a great idea to have. In short, prepare any file that will help designers make your presentation exactly as you want it to be.
Step 3: Get in contact.
How to get in contact depends highly on the specific design agency you’re choosing. Some will have online forms you can fill, upload your presentation and brief, and submit your order straight away. Others will give you a contact form so you can request a consultation. In this case, make sure that you add all necessary information concerning your presentation, like how many slides you’re thinking of and what your deadline is.
Step 4: Wait for a callback.
Whether you’ve sent a form or requested a confirmation, the presentation design agency will soon get in contact with you. In the case of forms, it will most likely be an email to make sure everything is in order, clarify details from the brief and give you a budget. In the case of calls and requests, you’ll probably get a back and forth until you both agree on what the service will consist of and the budget.
Step 5: Confirm your order.
Don’t forget to confirm your order! You must give the designers the green light so they can start working on your project straight away. Once you feel satisfied with the brief details and the budget, confirm your order with your customer manager so you can leave everything in the designer’s hands and relax.
Step 6: Get your first draft and give feedback.
In most cases, after you’ve approved the project, you’ll then receive a first draft. You’ll be able to give feedback and ask for corrections. Be as specific as possible, as this will help them make the best presentation design for you. Feedback will probably go back and forth until your slides look just right.
Step 7: Download and present!
And that’s all! After you have no more feedback and you’re satisfied with the final product, all you need to do is download it. You’ll get outstanding slides that will help you make your presentation memorable for your audience. Don’t forget to review the service to let others know about good presentation design agencies and help them avoid untrustworthy ones.
As you can see, the process of hiring a trained presentation design is very straightforward and simple. It varies from agency to agency, but in essence, all of them follow more or less the same structure. Hopefully, this step-by-step guide will help you better understand how hiring a professional PowerPoint design service works and what to expect from the process!
If you need something more specific, check out this in-depth 24Slides process overview. It’ll give you a complete look at how to make an order, choosing your design style and due dates, and how the online feedback platform works.
Start hiring professional presentation designers right here
Hiring a trained presentation designer is all about finding the right service that will integrate seamlessly into your own production process. Hopefully, this guide will help you when choosing between the many design agency options. Research might be a tiresome task, but it is necessary for making a sound decision. It is in your best interest to invest time and effort making sure that the service you choose is worth the money!
If you’re still uncertain about the hiring professional presentation designers process, you can always try 24Slides services for just $1. 24Slides is a Denmark-based presentation design agency that works with some of the biggest companies worldwide. Our designers are committed to transforming your slides into the best possible version you can think of. You can try your service and get a complete look at how the outsourcing process works and how it can be easily integrated into your business. Plus, you’ll get to see how to go from a plain slide to a unique, outstanding one!
