This weekend, I was attempting to get lean and mean with my Duct Tape Marketing Story and pulled out a book of mine called “The Seven Slide Solution” by Paul Kelly. I had used this book to put together several presentations and had not re-visited it recently, MY MISTAKE. It is a practical approach to building presentations around how people think about information. The following day, I received information about applying to give a presentation to the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce as part of their Slingshot presentation. The application is actually a slideshow based on very similar principles. You talk about Karma!
My point to all of this is that you should review the Slingshot presentation and see if you get your company story on 7 slides. If not, maybe you should buy the book. A basic principle of Duct Tape Marketing is telling your story in a compelling manner. But if it takes too long, how many people will listen?
I am finishing my 7-step slide show for you to review. It is amazing how tough it is to get your story on 7 slides. Too much BS, (Basic Information).
Michael in Los Angels, a finance expert who arranges structured finance transactions for real estate developers, sent me the link to this Slideshare below that was created seven months ago. "It's very simplistic but it does a good job of giving a pretty good flavor for what went down," wrote Michael in a recent email. "Everyone knew this was going to eventually fold, although I don’t believe anyone really knew that the credit markets would get to this point." Michael even used one of the slides in a recent presentation and he said the entire auditorium got it. "It was amazing how powerful just showing one slide was." A few finance professionals have sent me the Slideshare link this week; it's a good followup to the whiteboard presentation in the previous post. Visually this Slideshare is simplified to the point of being quite crude, and yet as a sort of tongue-in-cheek overview of at least part of the financial crisis this works. The downside of this Slideshare is that you'll have to view it at "Full Screen" to read the text. Warning: some of the language may be too crude for some (you've been warned), but given what took place in the market this week, I heard much worse in the Tokyo pubs.)
