5-minute presentation training

You Can Present Your Work.
Just Follow a Formula.

(hopefully they're charts)

The Five-Step Formula

Every chart on this page uses the same delivery sequence. Memorize these five steps and you won't worry about what to say next. The formula applies to most visuals an analyst would create and present.

  1. Explain the horizontal axis.
  2. Explain the vertical axis.
  3. Walk through the legend or groups.
  4. Put one number into a sentence.
  5. Share the takeaway.

Before the case · Why the formula matters

Bad example

You can't present every chart. If a chart is too busy the creator didn't spend enough time on it.

Zoom — Everything We Could Possibly Measure

Too many metrics · too many scales · no single number · no clear takeaway

$5B $4B $3B $2B $1B $0 +400% +300% +200% +100% 0% −100% Lockdowns hit Stock peaks Reopening Growth stalls Revenue Enterprise Online Growth % Churn $100k custs Net expansion demand pulled forward? surge online or enterprise? is this churn? or expansion? FY20 FY21 Q2 FY21 Q4 FY22 Q2 FY23 Q1 FY23 Q4 Legend: revenue, enterprise revenue, online revenue, growth rate, monthly churn, $100k customers, net expansion, stock, events, and management actions

This chart resembles the same Zoom story, but it is not ready to present. Total revenue, enterprise revenue, online revenue, churn, customer counts, and net expansion are all crammed onto two axes with competing annotations, and there is no single number the audience can hold onto.

Do not judge your presentation ability by a slide like this. No one can present it clearly because the slide does not give the presenter a path. We are going to tell the same story in a simpler manner: one chart, one number, one takeaway at a time.

Practice Case · Zoom 2020–2022

The story we will use for practice

To practice the formula, we need a story with real charts and a clear narrative. We will use Zoom from 2020 to 2022. One note before we start: Zoom's fiscal year ends January 31, so its fiscal 2021 is mostly calendar 2020 — the first pandemic year.

When lockdowns hit, Zoom became a verb. Revenue rose 326% in a single year, the stock ran from about $70 to nearly $570, and the company was suddenly worth more than airlines and carmakers. Management and investors treated that surge as the new normal and planned around it. On paper, that looked reasonable. The whole world had just learned to use the product.

Here is the part that was not obvious at the time. The demand was not one thing. Zoom sells to two kinds of customers: Enterprise, on signed annual contracts, and Online, the self-serve users who sign up with a credit card and can cancel any month. The pandemic pulled forward years of demand, but most of the rush landed in the Online cohort — the customers who were easiest to win and easiest to lose. When offices reopened, the contracted customers stayed and the self-serve customers walked.

Growth fell from 326% to 7% in two years, and the stock gave back nearly everything. The four charts below give us enough story to practice with. The chart type changes. The delivery method does not.

Chart 1 of 4 · Bar chart

Slide takeaway

Zoom's revenue jumped 326% in a single year — from $623 million to $2.65 billion.

Zoom — Total Annual Revenue

Fiscal year · USD billions · FY2020–FY2023

$5B $4B $3B $2B $1B $0 $0.62B FY2020 $2.65B FY2021 +326% in one year $4.10B FY2022 $4.39B FY2023 +7%

Source: Zoom 8-K earnings releases and 10-K filings. Dark bar = the pre-pandemic baseline. Red bars = the pandemic year and the two years after.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years, from 2020 through 2023. One thing to flag: Zoom's fiscal year ends January 31, so fiscal 2021 covers almost all of calendar 2020 — the first pandemic year."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have total annual revenue, in billions of dollars."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each bar is one fiscal year. The dark bar is the last year before the pandemic. The red bars are the pandemic year and the two years after it."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In fiscal 2021, revenue was $2.65 billion, up from $623 million the year before — a 326% jump in one year."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the pandemic pulled years of demand into a single year. By fiscal 2023, growth had already fallen to 7%."

Notice the order

The presenter does not start with the whole business story. They follow the same five-part order every time: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. And if the number matters, put it on the slide so the audience does not have to do the math.

Chart 2 of 4 · Stacked bar chart

Slide takeaway

The boom stacked onto the self-serve cohort — the customers who could leave with one click.

Zoom — Revenue by Customer Cohort

Enterprise vs. Online · USD billions · FY2021–FY2023

Enterprise (annual contracts) Online (self-serve, monthly)
$5B $4B $3B $2B $1B $0 $1.34B $1.31B $2.65B FY2021 $1.94B $2.16B $4.10B FY2022 $2.41B $1.98B $4.39B FY2023

Source: Zoom FY2023 8-K (Enterprise revenue reported). Illustrative split — the Enterprise and Online breakdown for FY2021 and FY2022 is modeled to the reported yearly totals and the reported FY2023 Enterprise figure; not separately disclosed for those years. Each bar's full height is the reported total.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years, 2021 through 2023."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have revenue in billions of dollars. The full height of each bar is total revenue that year."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each bar is split into two pieces. The navy piece on the bottom is Enterprise — customers on signed annual contracts, sold through a sales team. The red piece on top is Online — self-serve users who sign up with a credit card and can cancel any month. Stack the two together and you get the total."
  4. Put one number in sentence "By fiscal 2023, the Online piece had slipped from its $2.16 billion peak down to $1.98 billion, while Enterprise kept climbing to $2.41 billion."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that most of the boom landed in the part of the business that was easiest to lose. The demand was borrowed, and it was borrowed mostly from self-serve."

Chart 3 of 4 · Scatter chart

Slide takeaway

The cohort that grew fastest was also the one most likely to walk.

Zoom — Cohorts by Churn and Growth

Monthly churn vs. boom-era growth · by customer cohort

+400% +300% +200% +100% 0% 0% 1% 2% 3% 4% Monthly churn → Enterprise stays · expands 130% Online grew fast · churns ~3%/mo fast growth you can't keep

Source: Zoom 8-K earnings releases (Online monthly churn and Enterprise net dollar expansion reported). Illustrative positions — Enterprise monthly churn is modeled as low single-digit, consistent with the reported 130% net dollar expansion rate; it is not company-disclosed. Dot positions are calibrated to reported anchors.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "This chart is different — neither axis is time. On the horizontal axis, we have monthly churn. Churn is the share of customers who cancel each month — if a hundred start the month and three leave, that is three percent churn. Further right means customers leave faster."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have how fast that cohort grew during the boom. Higher up means faster growth."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each dot is one customer cohort. The red dot in the upper right is Online — it grew fastest and churns fastest. The navy dot in the lower left is Enterprise — steadier growth, and it almost never leaves. The upper-right corner is the dangerous place to be: fast growth you can't keep."
  4. Put one number in sentence "The Online cohort churned about 3% of its customers every month — roughly a third of the base every year — while Enterprise spent 130% of what it had the year before, meaning the existing customers grew instead of leaving."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that you could see the hangover coming. The fastest-growing customers were the ones with one foot out the door the whole time."

Chart 4 of 4 · Grouped bar chart

Slide takeaway

In the same year, Enterprise grew 24% and Online shrank 8%. Same company, opposite stories.

Zoom — Revenue Growth by Cohort

Year-over-year % change · Enterprise vs. Online · FY2022–FY2023

Enterprise Online
+80% +60% +40% +20% 0% −20% +37% +71% FY2022 +24% −8% FY2023

Source: Zoom FY2023 8-K (full-year Enterprise revenue +24%, full-year Online revenue −8% reported; Online fell 10% in the fourth quarter). FY2022 growth rates are directional, derived from the modeled cohort splits against reported totals. Zero line marked; above is growth, below is decline.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have two fiscal years, 2022 and 2023."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have year-over-year revenue growth as a percent. The line across the middle is zero — above it is growth, below it is decline."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "There are two bars per year, grouped together. The navy bars are Enterprise. The red bars are Online. Same years, side by side, so you can compare the two cohorts directly."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In fiscal 2023, Enterprise revenue grew 24% for the full year, while Online revenue fell 8%."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that this was not a video-conferencing problem. People were still buying — Enterprise kept growing. One cohort left, and it was the one the boom had been built on."

What you just practiced

The chart type changed. The approach to presenting them didn't.

The lesson: do not make the audience decode the chart alone. A bar chart, a stacked bar, a scatter, and a grouped bar all read the same way: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. The chart type tells you what to draw. The formula tells you what to say.