B2B PowerPoint Design vs. In-House Slides: Which Delivers Better ROI?

When B2B teams spend time creating slide decks in-house, they might not realize how much value they’re leaving on the table. However, taking your design strategies seriously could be the missing piece you need to stand out in the market. 

Recent research in McKinsey report found that companies integrating design into their strategy saw up to 32% higher revenue and 56% more total return to shareholders compared to those that did not.

Consumers have grown increasingly concerned with the amount of time they spend and the quality of the content they receive. As a result, businesses have made the decision to improve their communication efficiency and effectiveness.

Professional PowerPoint design services are one of the most effective tools in the modern business world. It’s an umbrella term for a variety of services. However, its primary goal is to help brands connect with the right audience and effectively communicate their message.

Read on to learn how choosing between hiring external “PowerPoint design agencies B2B” and using internal teams can impact ROI.

Overview of B2B PowerPoint Design Agencies vs In-House Slides

In B2B contexts, business slides serve multiple purposes. They might be used for sales pitches, investor meetings, internal strategy reviews, or client updates. Choosing whether to use internal teams or external service providers for those decks can significantly impact outcomes.

What Does the In-House Team Mean 

When your team makes the slides, we call that “in-house.” You already pay your team, so using their time for a presentation is the most cost-effective and efficient way to get things done. 

Recent data from a Gartner report on IT trends highlights that 60% of infrastructure and operations leaders will face cost overruns. This principle applies directly to the operational overhead of internal teams. 

The Hidden Cost of an In-House Team

Recruitment and onboarding: It takes a significant amount of time and resources to find, interview, and train a qualified designer.

Salaries, Benefits, and Taxes: A designer’s salary typically accounts for 60-70% of their total compensation.

Training and Development: To stay current, your in-house team requires ongoing training on new tools, techniques, and trends, which incurs course fees and time away from projects.

Team Struggle for Operational Inefficiency

• Idle Time: During downtime, you pay a full-time salary to underutilized talent. This downtime is a direct, irrecoverable cost.

• Lack of Specialization: An in-house designer is typically a generalist. They may excel at general graphic design, but they lack the specialized skills in narrative, data visualization, and persuasive structuring required for a high-impact C-level presentation.

Role of B2B PowerPoint Design Agency 

Source: Graphic River

Engaging the services of a PowerPoint design agency for B2B shifts the focus from “cost” to “investment.” Rather than paying for a person, you are investing in a specific result.

This model has been designed to maximize value and minimize the various hidden costs and inefficiencies of the in-house approach. An agency provides a scalable, on-demand solution that aligns costs with business needs.

• Recruitment and onboarding: It is a time-consuming process that requires a lot of resources to recruit, interview, and train a qualified designer.

• Salaries, Benefits, and Taxes: The salary of a designer is usually 60-70 percent of his total compensation.

• Training and Development: To keep up with the times, your internal team needs to be continuously trained on new tools, techniques, and trends, which costs course fees and project downtime.

Team Struggle of Operational Inefficiency

• Idle Time: When you are not working, you are paying a full-time salary to talent that is not fully utilized. This downtime is an irrecoverable direct cost.

• Absence of Specialization: A designer within the company is usually a generalist. They can be good at general graphic design, but they do not have the specialized skills in narrative, data visualization, and persuasive structuring needed to make a high-impact C-level presentation.

The True Cost of Presentation Design: A 4-Point ROI Analysis

When deciding between building slides in-house and hiring PowerPoint design agencies B2B businesses rely on, you must look beyond the initial invoice. Your framework reveals that the internal “savings” often disappear when hidden costs and lost opportunities are considered.

1. Direct Cost Analysis (Total Cost of Ownership)

Source: Investopedia

Cost comparison necessitates an all-encompassing viewpoint. It’s easy to think that an agency’s project fee is high, but your calculations show that an in-house designer’s actual cost is far greater than their salary.

2. Opportunity Cost of Internal Resources 

For every hour your high-value employees, the sales leaders, product managers, or marketing strategists, spend formatting a slide deck, that is an hour taken away from making money. It’s what’s called opportunity cost.

This means that by outsourcing design work, you free your experts to focus on their core, revenue-generating functions. This indirect ROI from increased internal productivity often outweighs the design fee itself.

3. Speed-to-Market and Agility 

Timing is everything in the B2B world. The ability of an agency to quickly provide a slick, high-quality presentation is a direct business differentiator.

Investor Pitches: If a funding window is short, an agency can provide the perfect deck in days, not weeks, thereby potentially securing millions in investment earlier.

Product Launches: Being in the market two weeks before your competitor with a great sales deck is a critical market advantage.

4. Quality, Brand Impact, and Conversion Rate 

While harder to put on a spreadsheet, the quality of your presentation is the single biggest factor in the ROI of design.

A professionally designed deck elevates your brand and signals credibility, attention to detail, and trustworthiness to high-value clients. If a design improvement raises your sales presentation conversion rate by just 2%, that small change can generate huge returns.

Making the Final Call: Your Presentation Design Decision Map

The choice between making your presentations in-house or outsourcing to an agency depends on just two simple variables: How often do you need slides (volume), and how much does the presentation matter for your business (strategic importance)?

Plotting your typical needs on this map instantly shows the most cost-effective and highest-impact model for your business.

The Verdict: A Hybrid Strategy is the Smartest Move

It’s not hard to see that when it comes to those really important B2B moments, like major sales pitches, investor meetings, or essential webinars, the agency is often a smarter investment due to the higher cost. They’ll drive a higher close rate, which quickly pays back the fee.

But your in-house team is still great for everyday, lower-stakes presentations.

The Final Thoughts

The choice of in-house slides or hiring PowerPoint design agencies B2B will depend on your objectives, the size of your team, and the impact of your presentations on revenue. Where design has a direct impact on sales, funding, or brand reputation, professional agencies tend to produce a higher ROI with more precise visuals, quicker delivery, and clearer messages.

In case you need to take your business presentations to the next level with designs that convey a story and create quantifiable outcomes, Tangence can help. Their B2B design team is a combination of strategy, creativity and brand alignment to produce decks that are distinctive and effective.

Allow Tangence to make your slides a potent business tool. Connect our team now to find out how better design can increase your ROI.