They are easy and quick to create and when done well, can also bring your ideas across in an engaging form. However, these slides also have the power to make or break your business pitch. Small fonts, kaleidoscopic colours and text-heavy slides are some examples of a bad presentation. You want your presentation slides to be a visual aid, not a visual distraction.

A presentation to remember should include a combination of a clear structure, informative content and attractive visuals. Improve your presentation skills and nail your next pitch with these tips and tricks.

The 10/20/30 Rule
Many make the mistake of turning their presentation slides into an information dump where their entire pitch is pasted into a 30-slide deck. Especially when you’re hoping to influence your audience with your ideas, you want them to concentrate on you and not your slides. Your slides should be the complementary wingman to your presentation and should never take attention away from you. The 10/20/30 rule is a great way to keep your slides to the point and engaging.

No matter the purpose of the presentation, the idea is simple. A presentation should:
● be limited to 10 slides
● not exceed more than 20 minutes
● not contain a font size smaller than 30 points.

The 10/20/30 Rule, coined by marketing specialist, Guy Kawasaki, is a powerful tool to create excellent presentations. This formula helps find a perfect balance between designs and conceptual explanations to capture the attention of your audience and awe them with your sharp presentation skills. Let’s take a deeper dive into the 10/20/30 rule.

10 slides
According to Kawasaki, the average human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in one sitting. The key idea is to put aside the less important details and focus on the main elements of your business pitch. Limiting your slides to ten helps your audience grasp the necessary information. When creating your slides, remind yourself to reduce the number of texts per slide. Words and numbers should supplement rather than explain your ideas — that’s the presenter’s job!

20 minutes
No matter the amount of time you have for the presentation, stick to finishing it in 20 minutes. Completing your presentation in 20 minutes also leaves room for valuable discussions and Q&A.
By capping your pitch duration, you’ll be forced to make your presentation as concise as possible. You’ll skip on trivial details and get your ideas across quickly without losing the attention of your audience. Set aside some time for a Q&A session so your audience won’t leave with unanswered questions and doubts.

30-point font
Not only are small fonts difficult to read, they also take the attention away from the speaker. When an audience is presented with a chunk of tiny text on screen, their first reaction would be to read it themselves. Your audience’s attention should always be on you and your slides shouldn’t take away your limelight. Instead, use texts to emphasise your points by increasing the font size of specific data and numbers that you want to highlight. Make your slides a friend, not a foe.

Visualisation Strategies
Humans remember what they see better than what they hear, which makes it important to add engaging visuals to your slides. On the flip side, excessive and jarring visuals can completely take away the attention from your message. Bad visuals have the power to ruin your business pitch so tread carefully.
Creating your slides can be a fun process when there are tons of templates, colours and designs to choose from but visualisation is much more than picking the right template. When making a business case, you want your slides to reflect your professionalism while still looking attractive. Here are some simple tips and tricks to keep in mind when creating your slides deck.

Simplicity is key
When in doubt, remember that simplicity is the way to go. Excessive visuals can make your audience lose focus on the main content. For example, figures and numbers on a slide can confuse your audience. Instead, simplify your data into minimalistic bar or pie charts to keep your audience on the same page. You can further contextualise your message by replacing texts with images.

Minimise Animations and Transitions
A good presentation has minimum animations and transitions. Animations and transitions are necessary only when you need to highlight certain points of your business pitch or draw attention to an image. Too much of it can be distracting and unpleasant for the audience.

Pick out the right colour combinations
Improving your presentation skills also comes with having a creative eye. A cohesive colour palette tells a professional presentation apart from a sloppy slide deck. Branding is an important part of a company’s identity. Sticking to a colour template of just 3 colours can instantly make your slides look more put together. Imagine watching a presentation with different colours on every slide. As visual creatures, these changes in colour can also break the structure of your presentation as well as your thought process, leaving your audience feeling confused.

Format your slides accordingly
Since the pandemic, the corporate world has made changes to its traditional ways. Before, most presentations were done in-person but we’ve since found the convenience of having online collaborations.
When presenting on a virtual platform, you should customise your slide dimensions to match the platform used. The default format of most online meeting platforms is 16:9 but it can vary with different platforms. Be ready for any situation by creating slides with different dimensions.

Simplify bulleted points further
We use bulleted points to contextualise multiple ideas but did you know that bulleted points can be simplified even further? There’s a rule that says there should be no more than 6 bulleted points on a slide with 6 words for each point. When creating your slides, you want to ensure that your audience isn’t fixated on reading them but instead focuses their attention on you. To keep the limelight on you, change each bullet point into an animated graphic that appears only once you’ve mentioned it. Alternatively, do away with texts altogether and use an image to depict your message. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember.” - Confucius

Structuring your presentation
Having visually attractive slides is just the first step. Knowing how to structure your slides and presentation is just as important and helps direct the thought flow of your audience. A clear structure can help your audience understand your message better while a messy one may make them distracted. Presentation structures are not one-size-fits-all. Your structure will depend on a couple of factors:
● Your presentation aim
● Who your audience is
● The main points you want your audience to remember

Choosing the best structure for your presentation can increase your overall influence and persuasion. Here are some presentation structures to follow for different situations you may find yourself in.

The Basic Presentation
When you first learn presentation skills, you’ll be introduced to the standard structure that many use. The standard presentation has an introduction, the main body, a conclusion and a question and answer segment. In the introduction, you would state the main topic and the issues that you’ll be discussing. At this point, you can also mention your purpose and your expected outcome. The main body will contain your points with evidence. Before moving on to the next point, summarise the previous one for better clarity. In the conclusion, remind your audience of your topic and purpose. Give a final summary as well as the audience’s takeaway from your presentation. End it off by encouraging questions from the audience to clear any doubts.

Demonstration
More advanced presentation skills will require you to move away from the standard presentation structure. The demonstration structure works best for presentations that aim to promote the usefulness and benefits of a product. Begin the presentation by stating the reasons the product is valuable and necessary to the audience. Give more vivid examples by crafting situations where the product can solve the audience’s problems. You want to convince your audience, not coerce! At the end of the presentation, give a live demonstration of how the product works to back up the benefits you’ve claimed.

Problem-Solution
This structure makes for a great persuasion technique if you’re trying to get your audience on board on your business pitch. First, lay out the issues and explain why it’s a problem using facts and empathy to create an emotional response. Once the audience is aware of the challenges, share your solutions to the problem and how they’ll benefit the audience themselves. End it off with a bang by stating the next steps to take towards the solution.

INSIDER INFO: Pitch to Win™ covers persuasion techniques by tapping into your emotional intelligence to build commonality with your audience.

Storytelling
Stories are used in everyday conversations and can also be used to improve your presentation skills. Storytelling in business is a technique that effectively engages an audience and shares a message using narratives. It especially works well for motivational speeches that have a clear story and character arch. There are several narrative structures but the most common ones are the Hero’s Journey and the media ras.
A story presented using the Hero’s Journey starts off with the hero taking on a challenge and moving from a familiar environment to the unknown. The hero has to face obstacles before succeeding and returning home with new experiences and wisdom.

The media ras begins the story with the climatic present and then moves on to explain the events leading up to the climax. Starting at the high point of the story pulls in the audience and creates curiosity about the preceding events.

Remaining method
Some presentations can be controversial especially when the topic you’re discussing has split sides. This structure helps convince and influence your audience to favour your idea over another’s. First state the issue at hand and explain why it’s a problem using facts and emotional intelligence. Before rebutting alternative solutions, discuss the upsides to the opponent’s solutions and then move on to the downsides. This psychologically sets you up as a neutral and objective party. When you end off with your solution, this then trumps any other resolutions.

A powerful presentation comes with planning attractive visual aids and sharpening your persuasive public speaking skills for the final delivery. On top of that, we have to prepare ourselves for questions that may be asked during a Q&A session. Always note possible questions your audience may have so you don’t fumble and seem unconfident.

PROTIP: Never be tongue-tied again when presented with challenging questions with our Think on Your Feet® training!

A lot of the time, we only get one chance to present our ideas in front of important clients or stakeholders, so put your best foot forward and make a great first impression with these tips and tricks!

References:
1. https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-pitch/
2. https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/bezos-banned-powerpoint-presentations
3. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tianteck_slidedesign-onlinepresentation-onlineworkshop-activity-6687054122207838208-8oEh
4. https://blog.presentationload.com/structuring-powerpoint-presentation/
5. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tianteck_slidedesign-onlinepresentation-onlineworkshop-activity-6687054122207838208-8oEh
6. https://www.free-power-point-templates.com/articles/duartes-five-rules-presentation-template-for-powerpoint/
7. http://www.prezotraining.com/one-click-trick-slick-pictures-powerpoint/
8. https://virtualspeech.com/blog/how-to-structure-your-presentation#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20not%20only%20is,and%20avoid%20any%20awkward%20silences
9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slq8qcqvPUM&feature=youtu.be
10. https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/may-2019-10-tips-to-improve-your-presentation-slides/
11. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels