2 Personalized Template Files You Should Develop as a Student or Small Business
At some point every business student and every small business needs to present themselves to the world. Whether it be in the form of a written report or presentation, it is essential to be prepared to put your best foot forward for the world to see. For this reason, we at Scale Financial Education believe that students and small businesses alike should prepare and maintain at least one version of each of the following templates:
Microsoft Word - Formal Report / Proposal Template
Microsoft Word documents are one of the most common ways that students and businesses interact in a formal way within their environment. These commonly take the form of a business proposal, research paper, or online e-book style publications. While some clients and schools may require a specific format for these documents, we strongly recommend having a custom template ready for when you can use creative license, because a well-presented document can make you stand out above the rest. We believe that your standard word document report template should include the following:
Formal Title / Cover Page - This will include the topic (either a client report or your school assignments), the University logo or your business logo, and the class or customer name.
Table of Contents - As necessary, create a table of contents using the “references” tab in Microsoft Word and use the headings feature to automate how the sections are presented.
Numbered Pages - Page numbers in a document can be tricky once you add in title pages and other non-report pages. Build the right numbers into your template so you can hop right in to every project without worry about the page numbers each time!
Branded Page Headers / Footers - Many businesses choose to add their logo alongside the page numbers in a formal report to ensure constant and consistent branding across the entire report.
References (Students) - Formal reports for students may require some type of references section with certain requirements. If possible, build this into your template so a portion of the work is done before you begin.
Contact Information (Businesses) - A report or a proposal from a small business may not only be a deliverable for the client, but also a chance to win new business beyond the original scope of the engagement. It is a good practice to keep a short blurb about your business and contact information at the end of your documents so the client can reach out with any further questions or opportunities.
Microsoft PowerPoint - Branded Presentation Template
Whether you are making a presentation for your class, a business proposal, or an online video, it is critical to have a good template to keep yourself organized and maintain a consistent professional image in every presentation that you make. While different circumstances might call for different types of presentations, it's always a good idea to keep a good template on hand with the baseline components of your presentation.
Title Slide - In many cases, the title slide of your presentation will be getting the most exposure due to idle time before the presentation and introduction time. We recommend branding this slide with the School’s logo or your business logo and providing other key information such as the presenter’s name and the presentation topic as well. Here is a quick example of what our basic opening slide looks like:
Presentation Objectives - While more common in academic and training environments, having a slide to preview the presentation for the audience and outline the objectives will allow you and the audience to ease into the presentation with some knowledge of what is to come.
Content Slides - General content slides can vary widely across presentations due to each presentation having a difference purpose and audience. We recommend that you take some time to format a few slides with different components such as stock photos, common charts, or other general formatting so your template has a range of basic slides to choose from when building a presentation.
Conclusions - Every presentation has to come to an end at some point. While each may end differently, it is good to have some general slides prepared to help finish any presentation you could make with your template. We recommend having general slides for questions, key takeaways, and thanking the audience for their time.
Contact Information (Businesses) - As stated above it is very important to have some information towards the end of the presentation that provides the audience with a way to contact you after they have heard what you have to say.
Keeping the slides as a component of a template deck not only saves time when creating professional looking presentations down the road, but also allows you to keep and reuse some of your most important slides. When making my own presentations, I can forget to put in a question or thank you slide towards the end of the presentation, but having these slides in my template helps me remember to fit them in where it’s appropriate, even when I forget about them from time to time. Over time, you will refine and redevelop your templates as you determine what styles work, and what components become more common in your reports and presentations.