Your Career: Would Your Presentations Benefit From the ‘Pitch Deck’?

How to adapt a popular business tool to improve your pitches and talks. ADVERTISEMENT [Your Career Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. You can now read The Chronicle on [Apple News]( [Flipboard]( and [Google News](. How to adapt a popular business tool to improve your pitches and talks. Pitching is a surprisingly underdeveloped skill in higher education, considering how much time professors, staff members, and administrators spend giving and watching presentations. Too often, presenters get lost in their own archives, delivering overly detailed talks with a ton of slides and giant blocks of barely readable text. If you’re looking for a better way to make your case — whether for an idea, a book contract, a raise, a grant — consider using a potentially handy strategy called the “pitch deck.” The phrase originated among entrepreneurs. A pitch deck is a concise presentation, delivered with a small number of slides, to help investors or clients quickly understand a business, a product, or a proposal. The magic numbers for a pitch deck are 10/20/30: 10 slides, 20 minutes of talking, and 30-point font (and no smaller). For a typical breakdown of the 10 slides in a pitch deck, continue reading: "[Can the ‘Pitch Deck’ Help Academics?]( by Rachel Toor Share your suggestions for the newsletter with Denise Magner, an editor at The Chronicle, at denise.magner@chronicle.com. If you’d like to opt out, you can log in to our website and [manage your newsletter preferences here](. ADVERTISEMENT UPCOMING PROGRAM [The Chronicle's Next Steps for Faculty Success: A Program for Mid-Career Faculty Development] [Join us on a Saturday in April]( for a virtual professional development program which will provide the space, time, and tools to help mid-career faculty reignite the passion that brought them to higher ed. 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