5 years ago I was introduced to the 10/20/30 technique. It was created by a man called Guy Kawasaki who is ‘an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist.’ – according to Wikipedia. Most notably, he worked alongside Steve Jobs at Apple. This technique or set of rules seems simple – but often the most powerful ideas are.
10/20/30 – rule for presentations
According to the 10/20/30 rule;
A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.
Guy Kawasaki
How many times have you sat in the room while someone drones through a 60-70 slide deck? Reading the title off of the screen and bombarding you with facts and figures? His strategy was to keep his audiences attention by delivering his message with less content, but with more impact.
10 slides
Guy Kawasaki pointed out that it is extremely difficult for us to absorb more than 10 concepts, and so he would limit himself to 10 slides to explain the main points. The 10/20/30 rule also suggests that you use the ten slides to tackle all the topics important to your audience. For a venture capitalist, these topics are the following:
- Problem
- Your solution
- Business model
- Underlying magic/technology
- Marketing and sales
- Competition
- Team
- Projections and milestones
- Status and timeline
- Summary and call to action
What 10 points are most important to your business?
20 minutes
Guy would book in a meeting of 1 hour. But deliver his message in 20 minutes. Ask yourself how much more convinced have you been if someone has an additional 40 minutes to talk to you about a product or sales data or concepts. Instead, he would devote 40 minutes to answer questions and involve his audience. The key to this is having enough faith in what you are selling. If you have a passion for what you are presenting, there is a good chance your clients will also.
30-pt Font Size
Guy pointed out – quite rightly, that the only reason that clients use a font type 12 (or below in some cases) is their insecurities of what they are selling or presenting, resulted in them over-explaining. Don’t make this mistake – your audience may perceive that you are not familiar with your material and you are using PowerPoint as a teleprompter.
The 10/20/30 rule forces you to use a larger font, so you can cut back on unnecessary details. Remember: you’re the one who has to do the talking, not your PowerPoint presentation.
Imagine traveling to a presentation without a clear unmuddied vision of what you are to talk about. Knowing that you will hit the key issues hard and focused way. Then you will have 40 minutes to really talk to your clients and pull from them their questions. A presentation always has a goal – don’t waste the opportunity by losing your audience and over complicating the simple – this is ultimately the rule to success and key to serving your clients in the best possible manner.
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