This morning, Seth Godin, one of my heroes in marketing thought-leadership, blasted out a e-newsletter with a simple and powerful idea: contain yourself to only putting ONE WORD or one image per PowerPoint slide.

Imagine the impact that would have on your audience? They might just pay more attention to you, the presenter, rather than focusing their attention on all those words you crowded onto your busy PowerPoint slides – all 200 of them!

It’s a revolutionary idea and one whose time has come.

When giving presentations, Less is the new more!

Below is a copy of the email that Seth Godin sent out today on this important matter.

The 200 slide solution

From Seth Godin, author of The Purple Cow

The next time you find yourself on the hook for a 40 minute presentation (with slides!) consider, at least for a moment, a radical idea:

A slide every 12 seconds. 200 slides in all.

You’re used to putting three or four bullet points on a slide. That’s at least four distinct ideas, but more often, each of those ideas has three or four sub ideas to it. In other words, you’re cramming 32 ideas on a slide, and you’re sitting on that slide as you drone on and on. Perhaps you spice it up with some reveals or animated bullets, but it’s still 32 ideas going stale before our eyes.

What if you blew it up? Just one word on a slide. Or, perhaps just one image (no cheesy stock please). Maybe you write, “Cheaper” on one slide and, “More durable” on the next…

Slides create action. When did you decide that the appropriate amount of action was six or twelve times every half hour?

How would your pace change if you had 200 slides? How much better would the integration of slides and talk be?

I don’t honestly expect you to do your presentation with 200 slides. I’m hoping this exercise will help you realize that you might not need any slides. Or that 50 or 100 slides will pick up your energy and make your argument more coherent.

But please, don’t do that presentation you did last time.

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To follow Seth Godin, do what I do and subscribe to Seth’s blog (it’s very very good!)

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Recommended Books:  another great resource on getting your PowerPoint under control – buy the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. It’s like the “safe sex guide for PowerPoint”. Again – very very good.

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Training Workshops. Lastly, if you are motivated to improve your presentation skills and confidence and want to learn how to reduce your dependency on PowerPoint and other technical crutches, CALL ME at (860) 408-0033.  I teach a high engagement presentation training program called The Motivated Presenter™.

You will learn the tips and tricks of going “PowerPoint-FREE!” and how to strengthen your communication and persuasion when giving presentations.

The presentation training program is available as a corporate on-site group workshop in an accelerated 1-day or intensive 2-day format. It is also available to individuals using a 1:1 executive coaching format.

Here’s what one client just sent me last week following his participation in the Level 1: Essential Fundamentals of High Engagement Presentations:

“I just wanted to thank you for the 2 days that you spent with us.  I can honestly say that I gained much more from your seminar than you can even imagine.  Not only did I gain some invaluable insight on how to gather my thoughts and create a powerful and strongly communicated message, but I also was able to rethink how I look to present material based on the audience that I am presenting to.  I came out of those two days with some vigor, ready to take on a whole slew of new challenges.”-Scott Decoteau, Lead Art Director / New Media, LEGO Systems Inc

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