3 Rules for Creating Compelling Slide Decks!

How to connect on a human level with your audience and win more trust, deals, and attention with your decks!

Whether you're making a deck for your CFO to present, giving a TED talk, or pitching a $250,000 managed service offering...you can't just slap another boring deck together.

1. Boring decks lose DEALS.
2. Boring decks lose ATTENTION.
3. Boring decks lose TRUST.
4. BORING DECKS AREN'T HUMAN!

Here are three rules every winning slide deck should follow!

1. Stick to ONE idea per slide

Every time someone reads a paragraph of text on a slide deck out loud, a small hamster falls off its wheel. Stop hurting hamsters. Try this: Stick to one idea, headline or image PER SLIDE. Then, put all the other text in the speaker notes if you must HAVE it to reference. If you want to lull your readers to sleep, read walls and walls of text to them during a presentation (which could have been an email).

2. Tell a compelling story

Sounds complex, but it's not. Start with a big problem your viewer has and touch on what it's costing them both emotionally, and monetarily. Then, introduce your team as the guide who can empathize with them, and your product or offering as the plan they should follow. End the whole deck with two slides: One that shows them the transformation you're going to create for them, and one that shows them what's at stake if they don't change.

3. Keep it short (Try and keep it under 20 slides!)

Look, I know this is hard in B2B tech. All the business units, reports, offerings, stakeholders, and spinning plates make it feel like you need to build a 100 page presentation...but for the love of humanity, think about your viewers. If you can't get your deck into 20 slides, it probably needs to be sent via long form document instead. Your goal with a great presentation is to captivate and clarify. When you go beyond 20 slides both of those things are hard to do.

When you stick to these three rules you'll see viewers sit on the edge of their seats instead of going off camera. You'll also win more deals, more trust, and more attention with everyone around you.

There are lots of other things you should do, but these three are some of the most impactful. Also, I don't want to bore you with tons of text.

Send this to someone on your team who's making a deck RIGHT now! Then thank me later.

-For the love of humanity,

BT