Before giving a sales presentation, you no doubt dress carefully. You think about what you’re going to wear, what image you want to project – and if you’re smart, you take one final look in the mirror before heading in to the conference room to ensure you still look neat and clean. You do all this because you know how important your appearance is to convincing prospects you are a professional who pays attention to details. Rhonda Abrams, author of Winning Presentation in a Day (Planning Shop, 2005), says you need to put the same kind of thought and planning into the appearance of your PowerPoint slides, and for the same reasons. Clean, clear, uncluttered slides tell a far more convincing story than slides crammed with bullets and animations. To achieve a clean, uncluttered slide every time, print out these four rules of slide design, post them at your desk and refer to them every time you create a PowerPoint presentation:

Rule #1: The Two M’s. The two most important things to remember when designing a PowerPoint presentation are: Message and Moderation. Your message is about what you have to say, not what you put on your PowerPoint slides. It is the most important part of your presentation, says Abrams, so "make certain you have thought through your core message and the supporting information that will effectively persuade your audience" before you create a single slide.

The second "M" is moderation, meaning don’t go overboard with your PowerPoint slides, either in terms of the number of slides, the amount of information on them or your use of special features. "Use as few slides as possible to support the verbal part of your presentation, and make them simple," says Abrams. Her recommendation: Show a maximum of two slides per minute. Still, some experts recommend far fewer – three or four slides for a 20-minute presentation. When in doubt, remember that you can’t go wrong with fewer slides but you may go drastically wrong trying to fit in more.

Rule #2: Four-by-Four. Limit the content of each of your slides to no more than four bullet points containing no more than four words each. Think: cut, cut, cut. Write out what you want to say, then cut it down to four or fewer words. For instance, say you’re a ComputerEase sales rep doing a presentation to a company called Sequoia and your first draft slide reads like this:

• ComputerEase costs only a fraction of what Sequoia spent on outside tech support last year
• Sequoia spent $520,000 on skilled outside IT consultants in 2005
• ComputerEase offers a special year-round employee training package for $95,000

Too wordy, right? By following the four-by-four rule and cutting these bullets down to their essentials, you’d get something like this:

• Outside IT: $520,000
• ComputerEase: $95,000

"Audience members can’t absorb dense lines of text and listen to you at the same time," Abrams points out. They should get the impact, or core message, of your slide at a glance, and then turn their full attention to you.

Rule #3: Make Titles Meaningful. Slide titles should summarize not just the content of the slide, but also the purpose of the slide. "This is particularly important when showing charts and other representations of numerical data," says Abrams. "In the best case, the title conveys to the audience what you want them to think." For instance, say you have a slide that shows the effectiveness of your company’s training program based on the results of a third-party study. Rather than titling your slide, "Training Program Study," use something meaningful and persuasive, such as: "We Boost Efficiency by 50 Percent."

Rule #4: Make Fonts Clean and Large. Abrams recommends using the largest type size that fits the amount of text you have on a slide, with considerations made for background and room size. As a general rule of thumb, follow these guidelines:

• Opening presentation titles – 54- to 80-point
• Slide titles – 44- to 66-point
• Bulleted material – 28- to 40-point

When choosing which font to use, look for a clean, uncluttered, sans serif typeface such as Arial, Franklin Gothic or Verdana. And stick to one font for all your slides. If you do need to emphasize a word, use italics or bold instead of typing it in a wild font.