Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak!

The best presentations leave the audience wanting more. Usually more does not entail more bullets or more charts. “More” entails engagement and discussion because what was offered appears to be interesting to the audience, to have struck a chord.

So if brevity rules the day…go ahead and ask your audience how they feel about brevity…how long is too long and how short is too short?

Before one can plan on a slide count to regulate your presentation, we must understand that the delivery time spent per slide on average is the largest contributing factor. In other words, would you rather listen to a presentation that was 35 slides, but took 8 minutes or a 25 slide presentation that took 40 minutes? To deliver 35 slides in 8 minutes take a certain level of presentation skill moxie to be quick on the fly. If you don’t fit in to this category of presentation skill, consider this rule of thumb, for most investor and sales presentations you should be able to get your message across in 15 slides or less. You should be spending no more than between forty-five to sixty seconds per slide.

Furthermore, if you are presenting to a C-Level executive, you can probably reduce your presentation to 6 slides. In other words, your audience has a higher priority on time and let’s face it, they already absorb things quicker than most.

Brevity rules the day for the best presentation ever!