SlideMagic Blog

Many clients come to me with fact-packed presentations full of dense bullet point slides, I recommend to break up each slide into multiple visuals that carry just one message. The result: slide count can go five fold, but the time to present them stays the same.

Some clients come to me with stories (much more effective than dry business content), but again, they are written out in bullet points. Here, I advise to do the opposite: cut the number of slides. Put up a picture of the person, situation, place, you are taking about, and give the story verbally. We can read a fiction book without a single illustration and build a rich visualisation of the story right in your head.

If you need to send this presentation full of stories without you having the ability to explain, you might consider adding a small point 12 text box at the bottom of your image with the slide narrative in full sentences.

I usually start a presentation design project by digesting all the available information, listen to a verbal version of the pitch, Google for market and competitor information, create a slide template based on a straightforward slide (the profit and loss account for example), and let the whole thing cook in my mind for a while.

I know when I leave the “cooking” phase when I am able to draw up the key idea of the presentation in one slide. That one takes a long time to design, but when it is done, all other slides follow really quickly.

When buying a new product, nobody reads the manual from beginning to end. People are curious, they try things, go back to a specific page in the manual, and then try again.

Many subject experts want to write the definitive, descriptive manual of their idea. Instead, considering the audience wanting to skip it. How would they go about understanding your idea in a probing dialogue? Anticipate that thought flow and make it the structure of your next presentation.

A VC complained a about a Prezi presentation today: a combination of motion sickness and impatience (using 30 slides to make a totally obvious point that could be made in 1).

There is nothing wrong with Prezi if it is used right:

• Use zooming effects to support your story: zoom in on a technical diagram for example, hop in and out of a time sequence, focus on parts of your product, highlight different areas of a map. Zooming for the sake of zooming is not helping anyone.
• If you are in a small meeting, leverage the non-linear navigation to have a good interactive discussion. Random story sequence shifts for a big audience makes everyone miss the plot.

Everyone knows that 30 slides with 1 message is better than 1 slide with 30 bullet points. However, obvious points can still be made in 1 slide. I see a lot of presentations on Slideshare that use one spectacular photograph after another to [click] make [click] a [click] totally [click] obvious point (especially social media and/or mobile cliches).

After you told a story, try to avoid downplaying it: “Well, maybe I romanticised things a bit”, it is like a cold bucket of water for the audience. Decide the level of romanticising beforehand, and then stick to your choice without apologising and/or blushing.

A series of screenshots is a better way to give a product demo than a live demonstration of your product. You can control the flow better, skip the boring bits (logging in, etc.), and eliminate technology risk.

Many demos are a list of features: the user can do this, the user can do this, the user can do this. That is pretty boring. A better way to give a demo is to invent a story, or use a real life case example.

Set up the context, with some images. Put up the questions/issues the user has, and show how your product can solve them. Throughout the demo, stick to the same use case, use the same consistent data set.

Demos can be stories to.

Many tech presentations contain have the feature laundry list table in them: 15-20 great things your application can do. Here is how to make them better:

• For reading: reduce the font and add more text to make the feature and its benefit explicit: from “historical overview” to “Compare usage levels over the last 30 days and spot unusual drops in demand”
• For presenting: Option 1: if you only want to show that you have lots of features, keep the text short and put 20 boxes in a nice 4x5 grid on the slide, do not even bother to go into the specifics. Option 2: if you want to go into the specifics, create 20 slides addressing one feature/benefit each, make sure you can present each slide in 10 seconds while at the same time being specific enough so people can understand things beyond a vague description.

Option 1: lots and lots of benefits, but each one is described in just one, really short bullet point (i.e.: “A flexible solution”) Option 2: Only 3 benefits, but each is described with rich and elaborate stories

The same amount of words, but guess which option will be remembered best. Too many benefits equals no benefits.

In projects, I typically help out with 2 things:

1. Making things look pretty
2. Lifting the story, making it bigger

I rarely do major surgery in fixing the flow of a story (this is where all time was spent when writing McKinsey documents). In a short 20 minute pitch the sequence of the messages is usually more or less right. What I see often though is that people do not pitch their story big enough, they take out the big picture of how their solution can really change things in a fundamental way. For you, the expert, it is obvious, for the outsider it is not.

This is a pretty informative deck about pitching investors for seed money by **Steve Schlafman**a VC at RRE.

Raising Seed Capital from Steve Schlafman

Thank you Paola Bonomo.