For consultants before the readout
Consulting Deck Review Before the Client
Drop your deck or paste the slide text. Get a partner's read: weak titles, unproven slides, unsourced numbers, and the hardest questions the client will ask.
Free to start. No card needed.
Slide 6 · Market overview
The regional grocery market grew 14% a year from 2021 to 2025, driven by online orders.
Online orders are now 38% of the client's revenue.
- Topic, not a conclusionTry: "Online orders drove the market's 14% yearly growth."
- No source, and slide 9 disagrees"38% of revenue" has no source line. Slide 9 says 31%.
What you'll get
A partner's read of your deck before the client sees it
- Your slide titles read alone, and whether they tell the story in order
- Slide by slide: topic titles, unproven claims and numbers with no source
- The three hardest client questions, and the top five fixes in order
Before and after
Your deck in. A partner's notes back.
A 22-slide steering committee deck for a regional grocery chain, as a PowerPoint file: market context, customer research, three options, and a recommendation on slide 19.
Storyline test Titles 1 to 5 build the case for online growth. Titles 6 to 12 are topics ("Market overview", "Customer research"), so the story stalls, and the recommendation first appears on slide 19. Slide 6 · Market overview Topic, not a conclusion. Try: "Online orders drove the market's 14% yearly growth." "38% of revenue" has no source, and slide 9 says 31%. Hardest question: "What does option B cost in year one?" Slide 17 shows savings but no cost. Not answered in the deck. Fix first: settle the online share. Slides 6, 9 and 19 depend on it.
Every note names its slide and quotes your words, so you decide what changes.
Why it works
How do you review a deck before the client sees it?
A consulting deck review is the read a partner gives a deck before it goes to the client. River gives that read to your PowerPoint, PDF or pasted slide text. It first lists your slide titles on their own and checks whether they tell the story in order. Then it works slide by slide: is the title a conclusion, does the body prove it, which numbers have no source, and which figures disagree across slides. You get a review memo, and your deck stays exactly as you made it.
Titles carry the argument. Slideworks defines an action title as the most important point of the slide, formulated as a short, simple sentence. In a well-built deck, it adds, a reader of the titles alone understands the full argument. Slide builders don't supply that judgment. "None of the five tools tested produces a deck I would send to a client today," wrote Slideworks founder Mats Stigzelius after testing five AI presentation tools. So River reviews the deck you built, suggests rewrites from what each slide shows, and never adds data.
Use it before a steering committee, a final readout or a partner review, while there is still time to act on the notes. The memo ends with the three hardest questions the client is likely to ask, where the deck answers each one, and your top five fixes in order. If the titles don't hold together, the storyline builder rebuilds the outline from your findings. For the one-page answer on top of the deck, use the executive summary generator, or restructure by hand with the pyramid principle template.
What lands in your doc
What's in your deck review
- The storyline test: every slide title listed alone, with gaps, overlaps and where the story breaks
- Each title marked Conclusion or Topic, with a suggested rewrite drawn only from that slide
- Whether each slide's body proves its title, and what evidence is missing when it doesn't
- Numbers with no source, and figures that disagree across slides, each quoted with its slide
- Acronyms and shorthand a client executive would trip on, each with a plain alternative
- The three hardest client questions, where the deck answers them, and the top five fixes
How it works
From deck to review memo
Drop your deck
Drop the PowerPoint or a PDF export, or paste each slide's title and text in order.
River reads every slide
It reads the whole deck before writing, noting each title, every number and its source line.
Get your review memo
The memo lands in your doc: storyline test, notes slide by slide, hard questions and fixes.
Fix and follow up
Make the changes you agree with, then ask River to rewrite weak titles or draft speaker notes.
How to review a consulting deck by hand
Start with the titles alone. Copy every slide title into one list and read it top to bottom, as a busy client executive would. Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle says your thinking is easy to grasp when the ideas form a pyramid under a single point. So the opening titles should give the answer, and the rest should support it. Mark every title that names a topic. The Slideworks action title guide gives the contrast: "Historical development in revenue and costs" names a topic, while "8 potential high-impact cost reduction levers identified" states a finding.
Then read each slide against its own title. Every chart and bullet should support that one message, and anything that supports a different point belongs on another slide or in the appendix. Circle every number and check it has a source line and a date. Keep a running list of the big figures, such as market size, savings and headcount, and compare each new mention with the list. When one figure appears two ways, the client starts to doubt the others, so settle which is right before the meeting.
Last, read it as the client would. Underline acronyms, workstream names and team shorthand that a client executive outside the project would trip on. Write down the three questions you would least like to be asked, often about cost, risk, timing or who does the work. Then find the slide that answers each. If none does, add a backup slide or prepare the answer. Then rank your fixes: storyline breaks and conflicting figures first, wording last. The evening before a meeting, there is time for five good fixes, not twenty.
Questions consultants ask
Common questions
What is a consulting deck review?
A consulting deck review is a partner's read of a deck before the client sees it. It reads the slide titles alone to test the storyline. Then it checks each slide: is the title a conclusion, does the body prove it, does every number have a source, and do figures agree across slides? It ends with the hardest client questions and the fixes that matter most.
What is an action title?
An action title states the slide's main point as a sentence instead of naming its topic. Slideworks defines it as the most important point of the slide, formulated as a short, simple sentence, and suggests one or two lines, up to 15 words. "Market overview" is a topic. "Online orders drove the market's growth" (example) is an action title.
Will it rewrite my slides?
No. River writes a review memo in a new doc and leaves your deck as it is. Where a title only names a topic, the memo suggests a rewrite built from that slide's own content. A marked gap such as [growth rate] stands in wherever a fact is missing. It never adds numbers, sources or client facts that your deck doesn't already contain.
Can it read a PowerPoint file?
Yes. Drop the PowerPoint file itself or a PDF export, or paste each slide's title and text in order. You can drop up to ten files at once, such as a main deck and its appendix. River reads the speaker notes too. The memo opens with how many slides were read and names any slide that couldn't be read in full.
How is this different from asking ChatGPT for presentation feedback?
General feedback tells you a deck could be clearer. A review tells you which slide, which line and what to change. River reads every slide before writing, lists your titles alone to test the storyline, and ties every note to a slide number and your own words. It compares figures across slides, and it never fills a gap with a number of its own.
Is my client's deck private?
Your deck stays in your own River space unless you choose to share it. River's privacy policy says nothing you upload is used to train AI models, and River's AI providers are bound by their agreements with River not to train on it. If your client contract limits where its material can go, check that first.
Your next step
More for your project
Find the weak slide before your client does
Drop your deck or paste the slide text. Every note names its slide, so you can go straight to the fix.