Free Recommendations List PowerPoint Template

The Art of the Recommendations Slide

The recommendations slide is often the most important page in a consulting deck. Everything else—the analysis, the frameworks, the data—leads to this moment. Yet it's also where many presentations fall flat, offering generic advice that could apply to any company in any industry.

Our recommendations list template provides two professional layouts for presenting strategic recommendations: a grid format with visual icons for thematic organization, and a numbered list for prioritized action items. Both designs follow the visual hierarchy consultants use to make recommendations scannable and memorable.

Grid vs. Numbered Layouts

The grid layout works best when your recommendations span different domains or themes. Each item gets an icon placeholder that helps executives quickly scan and categorize the content. Use this format when recommendations are relatively equal in priority or when visual organization by category matters more than sequential priority.

The numbered layout signals explicit prioritization. Numbers 1 through 8 create a natural reading order and make it easy to reference specific items during discussion. Use this format when you need stakeholders to focus on the top items first, or when your recommendations follow a logical sequence of implementation.

Choose your layout based on how you want executives to process the information, not based on aesthetic preference.

Writing Recommendations That Drive Action

The difference between weak and strong recommendations is specificity. Weak recommendations describe what should happen; strong recommendations describe what someone should do.

Weak recommendations:

• "Improve customer experience"
• "Invest in digital capabilities"
• "Optimize the supply chain"

Strong recommendations:

• "Redesign the checkout flow to reduce cart abandonment from 68% to 45% by Q3"
• "Deploy an AI-powered demand forecasting system to reduce inventory carrying costs by $4M annually"
• "Consolidate three regional distribution centers into one automated facility, targeting 18-month payback"

Strong recommendations answer the questions: What exactly should we do? Why does it matter? What's the expected result? If your recommendation could apply to any company in your industry, it's not specific enough.

The Pyramid Principle in Recommendations

Structure your recommendations using the Pyramid Principle, starting with the most important conclusion. Your slide title should state the overarching strategic direction, with individual recommendations supporting that direction.

For example, if your title is "Shift from product-led to platform-led growth through three strategic pivots," each recommendation should clearly connect to that platform strategy. Don't make executives work to understand how individual items relate to the big picture.

Group related recommendations together. If you have eight items, consider organizing them into 2-3 themes (e.g., "Customer-facing changes," "Operational improvements," "Capability investments"). This helps executives see the structure of your thinking, not just a list of disconnected actions.

Common Patterns in Consulting Recommendations

After reviewing thousands of consulting decks, certain recommendation patterns emerge repeatedly:

Quick wins + strategic bets: Pair near-term, low-risk actions with longer-term transformational moves. This shows you understand the need for both immediate progress and sustained change.

Revenue + cost + capability: Structure recommendations around these three levers. What will drive growth? What will improve efficiency? What foundational capabilities need to be built?

Pilot + scale + institutionalize: For major changes, recommend a phased approach—test with a pilot, expand based on results, then embed in standard operations.

Match your recommendation structure to the strategic situation. A turnaround requires different framing than a growth strategy.

From Recommendations to Roadmap

A recommendations slide often needs a companion slide showing implementation sequence. The strategic initiatives template helps you map recommendations to focus areas, while the impact-effort matrix helps you prioritize what to tackle first.

For complete strategy presentations, combine your recommendations slide with an executive summary at the front that previews your key conclusions. This creates the classic consulting structure: tell them what you'll tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.