The key objective of any presentation is to communicate our ideas effectively. We want to ensure that in a single presentation session we get our ideas across faster, increase retention, harness greater acceptance, and ultimately improve closing rate.

How can we achieve this? How can we create messages and visuals that are Sticky to help us communicate our ideas effectively.

Using Power of Three is one of the ways we can achieve stickiness. We simplify our presentation into three key stories, sections, or points. We deliver our content in groups of three. Three is a number that most of us can remember. It is easier than four, five and six.

Remember how a child learn, how we used to teach little ones? It's always 1-2-3 or A-B-C. We always stop at three—the magic number. Applying this to our presentation design helps us communicate our ideas better. It creates stickiness in our presentation visuals and help us deliver a Sticky story.

Can you recall famous titles, names, or phrases that has connection with the number three? Let me name you a few. The Three Musketeers, The Three Blind Mice, Charlie's Angles, Ready-Set-Go, Three wishes.

During the iPhone introduction keynote presentation, Jobs of Apple said "Today, we are introducing 3 revolutionary new products. The first is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone, and the third is breakthrough Internet communicator device."

We can apply the Power of Three in various areas of our presentation design. In our presentation structure, in the story that we are delivering, in the visuals that complement our story, and in the conclusion of our presentation. The Power of Three helps us simplify and group information that we want to deliver in smaller chunks that is easier to understand.

It is always good to prepare our audience in advance for the content that we are going to deliver in the next couple of minutes. We do this by telling them the three things that we will be presenting. This can be done verbally or with visuals.

Instead of just showing one visual with everything, we use multiple visuals to present the same content. Again, breaking them down to smaller chunks, preferably in groups of three.

The example here discuss the factors motivating the adult learner. Moving away from the bullet points style, we present a visual showing the topic in discussion and later introduce the first 3 factors in the list and adding appropriate images to complement the brief text. The images guide our audience in understanding, and makes viewing less stressful. As the presenter starts to focus on individual factors, we display appropriate visuals to deliver content related to the discussion. This removes other information that might distract our audience from listening to us.

This technique works very well with almost all types of presentations. The Power of Three forces the presenter to rethink their presentation approach, simplifying the delivery of content and breaking information into smaller chunks to aid understanding.

There are no rules saying that we have to stick to a defined number of visuals in our presentations.  Use as many visual as required to deliver the messages.  But remember to always present messages in the simplest form. It is simplicity that makes our messages stick. So start using Power of Three to simplify your presentation design and transform your presentations to Amazing Sticky Presentations.