Demonstrating value: how to present your portfolio to executives

2022-10

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how some of the most successful project managers get promoted and others don't? It's not necessarily who has more experience or better skills. In many cases, it's the ability to convince executives that they have a valuable contribution to make. Demonstrating value is one of the most important skills in project management, so I wanted to share with you some tips on how to present your portfolio and why this is important for any PM.

The value of a portfolio is best demonstrated by providing a range of possible solutions, not just one.

When you present your portfolio to executives, you should be prepared to discuss a range of possible solutions. The best way to demonstrate this is by providing a selection of solutions that are not only different in nature, but also have different benefits and risks associated with them.

For example, one solution could use predictive modeling for individualized recommendations; another could use A/B testing on landing pages; yet another could involve a combination of both models together with manual curation from an expert team.

The amount of space each topic gets should reflect the perceived (or real) risk associated with it.

The amount of space each topic gets should reflect the perceived (or real) risk associated with it. For example, if you're describing a new feature you want to build, that's a high-risk item. You need to spend more time talking about why it's important and how you'll measure success, because executives will be asking "what if" questions like "what if this doesn't work?"

If we have less risky items in our portfolio—like an existing feature that needs some tweaks—then these topics should get less time and attention at the executive meeting because there's no reason for executives to worry about them.

When making presentations to executives, keep them simple and use language they understand.

When you're making presentations to executives, keep them simple and use language they understand. Don't use jargon or buzzwords that only a few people in the meeting will understand. The point of your presentation is to show how your work will help the company, so use business terms (e.g., "sales," "market share") instead of technical vocabulary ("bundle," "customer"). If a word doesn't make sense to someone outside of your industry, don't use it!

To create business alignment, describe the benefits in business terms, such as increased revenue or decreased costs.

To create business alignment, describe the benefits in business terms, such as increased revenue or decreased costs.

To do this, break down the value of each portfolio item into three components:

• Benefits—The solution's benefits to the company (for example: saving time and money)
• Risks—Potential downsides (such as higher costs or lower sales)
• Applicability—How relevant it is to your audience's situation (for example: how much will they save by using this approach?)

Address the riskiest topics first, particularly how you are mitigating them and how you will know when you've succeeded.

When you're preparing to present your portfolio, address the riskiest topics first. Then, as you move through your presentation, demonstrate how you've mitigated those risks and are tracking success against them.

This is particularly important for technical or marketing positions that are heavily involved with technology. When presenting a portfolio to executives at a startup or other company where technology is central to the business model, one of the biggest concerns they'll have is that the technology will fail—and potentially leave them holding millions in debt and with no product to sell.

To mitigate this risk before it starts, emphasize that there has been extensive testing throughout development and implementation; talk about how each feature was designed using best practices from previous projects or case studies; and provide evidence that there were no problems during beta testing phases or initial rollout phases (even if there were some bugs here or there). Also make sure that during these presentations you emphasize any lessons learned along the way—these lessons will help guide future development efforts so they don't end up repeating past mistakes!

Highlight what worked well in the past to build confidence that your proposed solution is on the right track.

To build confidence that your proposed solution is on the right track, you should use past successes to highlight the value of your services. A few examples:

• You developed a new TPS report that optimized sales data analysis, which led directly to an 8% increase in revenue over six months.
• You created a new email marketing campaign for one of your clients, and it had such high open rates that other clients requested something similar for their accounts as well.
• Your team designed a new web page for one of your clients' products, which boosted traffic by 32%, resulting in increased sales and higher profit margins for the company overall.

Be clear about what outcomes you will achieve, how you will achieve them and how you will measure success.

The first step in demonstrating value is to clearly define the problem you plan to solve. Before you start, it's important to understand how much progress has been made towards solving your organization's challenges and goals. If you find yourself tackling a problem without knowing what success looks like or even if there was a problem at all, it can be difficult for executives to gauge whether or not their investment was worthwhile.

For example: A sales team member wants their executive sponsor's approval for creating an onboarding program for new employees. However, when asked about what existing onboarding programs look like and why they don't work well enough already (or at all), this employee struggles with articulating their reasoning as well as providing examples of why this one will work better than others have in the past.

The first step would be defining what success looks like: Are new hires expected to hit certain metrics within their first few months? Do they need training on specific tools before being able to perform at maximum effectiveness? Does anyone know who these people are supposed to be helping once they're hired? With these questions answered by both parties involved in the conversation—the person presenting and those listening—success becomes easier defined and measured because everyone shares similar expectations around how things should turn out when going into this project together.

Conclusion

We hope this article has given you some ideas for how to present your portfolio, and that it helps clarify what executives are looking for when they ask you to show them the value of your work. Remember: the best portfolios are ones that demonstrate a range of possible solutions and use language that executives understand.