You're viewing a single thread.
I always feel obligated to reword so it doesn't seem like I'm reading off the slide. But then people are reading the slide and listening at the same time and I'm not sure it's better.
If the slide has all the information, then it's a poor slide deck.
The slides are supposed to be an outline. The rule of thumb is max seven lines and max seven words per line.
Here's a couple examples.
Good slide:
- Revenue: -10% vs Estimate
- Industry trends
- Low demand for new products
- Strong demand for XYZ
Also good slide, depending on who you're presenting to:
- Revenue: -10% vs Estimate
- Industry: -3%
- New products: -30%
- XYZ: +4%
Bad slide:
- Revenue is 10% below estimate
- Industry has seen a 3% drop in sales
- New products ABC and MNO have had a 30% lower demand than we expected
- Product XYZ has higher demand than anticipated with sales 4% higher than estimate
All the extra information on the bad slide can be delivered by the presenter. It's not necessary on the slide. The slide is for people to glance at to assist them during and after the presentation and to help them anchor themselves in the discussion.
I like your examples, you really capture how the definition of a "good" slide is context and audience dependent, and yet despite this, a "bad" slide is something that can be understood fairly objectively.
Just...don't then? If you have no further info than what's in the slide, why are you up there talking? Just send an email.
Each slide should have a max of 4 dot points, with each dot point roughly representing one spoken paragraph. Each dot point should have only the 3-4 most important words next to it. Speak the rest, but imagine that the dot point is what you want them to remember.
For example
Slide says:
- Sales up 15%
What you say:
Due to the added bump from Christmas sales, we moved an additional 2500 units this quarter, which is about 15% of our year to date revenue. This is bigger than our Christmas sales last year, by about 7%. We think the increase is due to our new SKUs.
[Click, next dot point appears]
It's better to have lots of slides with less info per slide.
If you have a small number of slides but they are too dense, the audience will read it in a couple of seconds then get bored, and will stop paying attention while waiting for you to finish reading.