What is a quotes slide?
A quotes slide is a PowerPoint slide that highlights one or more customer quotes. It is generally used to communicate one or more customer’s opinions word-for-word.
When should you use a quotes slide?
In most cases, consulting slide decks use quantitative data (i.e. numbers) to make their arguments. However, there are some situations where using qualitative data (such as quotes) is more powerful.
Quotes slides should be used when you want to communicate things like opinions, attitudes, beliefs, or preferences. They are a powerful way to communicate a message directly “from the horses mouth” with no analysis or synthesis to cloud the message.
They are particularly useful when communicating the results of customer research or highlighting customer testimonials. Because of this, they are often paired with one-on-one interviews, focus groups, observational studies, and other forms of qualitative research.
Best practices and key characteristics
Although you have quite a bit of flexibility when designing quotes slides, there are some best practices you should follow to ensure they are clear and compelling:
- Highlight key parts of quotes: When quoting verbatim, your customer might not be as concise as you’d like. So you should highlight the key insights within the quotes with a different text color or background color.
- Shorten quotes sensibly: It is fine to shorten quotes and remove redundant phrases, but you should follow proper stylistic guidelines (e.g. using ellipses or “…” correctly) and maintain your customer’s key message.
- Reference all of your quotes: Every quote should reference the customer name (or anonymous identifier) and any other key characteristic, such as their business name, occupation, or another important grouping.
- Group similar quotes together: If you’re communicating multiple customer opinions together on one slide, you should group quotes with similar opinions together.
- Use the minimum number of quotes possible: Don’t be tempted to throw as many quotes as possible on your slide, you should identify the most powerful quotes and use the minimum number to make your point — otherwise your slide gets messy and confuses its message.
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Example quotes slides
Let’s take a look at a range of example quotes slides from both consulting firms and other sources.
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