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There are three steps to
making an IBM presentation:
Plan It offers advice on organizing
your message, sharpening your focus on
what you want to say, and arranging it
in a manner that audiences can follow.
Prepare It is a
resource for constructing graphic support
materials in Freelance
Graphics
(PowerPoint is also supported). You will find
instructions on how to
include elements
such as text, charts and graphs in a style that
will be
consistent to all our audiences
- an
advertising and marketing
materials have a distinct appearance.
Present It
offers tips on how to deliver what you've prepared
effectively to an
audience.
Presentations are not about showing a series of
slides; they are about
you,
communicating a message, with visual elements in a
supporting role.
Where to
begin
Here's
what you do first: Stop. Take some time. As
Thomas Watson Sr. used to advise,
famously:
Think.
In her book
Secrets of Power
Presentations
, Micki
Holliday
suggests answering the
following
questions as a first start to
organizing
You are about to
mount an argument. What do you
your
presentation:
need? Don't
succumb to the temptation of
collecting every apparently relevant
item into a
jumble and then trying to
reshuffle them into a
coherent order. (
Lisa has some good market data, I'll
get those.
That's the flawed technique
behind many of the
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What does the audience need
to know?
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What does the audience want to know?
more overblown, leaden
presentations you've ever
?
What are the possible
benefits of a
dozed through. That's
working backwards. Instead,
successful
meeting for this audience?
start with
nothing... and work forward.
Ask yourself this: What is
my point? Every
presentation is an
attempt to communicate
something. It
may be a complex topic, with lots of
supporting data, but fundamentally
there will always be something simple you want to
say. It might be
requirements
(
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What questions might the audience
have?
Figure out
what you're trying to communicate, in its
simplest, clearest, most concise form.
Write it down, in one sentence. Does it
make sense? Does it really cut to the heart of
what
you need to convey? If not,
rewrite it.
If
you only could deliver this one sentence to your
audience, with no charts or any
supporting information, would this be
the one you'd choose?
Composing this basic sentence might
take two minutes, or it might take an hour. It
doesn't really matter which. Just get
it right. Without a clear point of view, you are
navigating without direction.
Get it wrong,
and you'll struggle the rest of the way.
Get it right,
and the pieces will begin falling naturally into
place behind it.
Build your
case
OK, you're clear about
the point you need to convey. But it's safe to
assume that your
audience is not
prepared to accept your message on faith. After
all, if everyone in the
room already
knew what you wanted to tell them, and agreed with
it, there would be no
point whatever to
your standing up and talking.
The purpose of your talk is
to move your audience to your point of view. So
you will have
to build your case. You
need to organize your argument.
Make a rough flow chart of
the information you are going to present. Just
sketch it out on
paper - this isn't
going to be a chart you'll show, and you'll
probably have to revise it a few
times
anyway.
The
organizing principle behind this is a pyramid:
each statement you make will have one,
or more likely several, supporting
pieces of information under it. As you build your
presentation in this outline form, a
pyramid will form, with your basic statement at
the top
and everything else arrayed
beneath it. Don't worry yet about the order in
which you'll
actually present each
item. Just get them all down on paper to look at.
The
Pyramid Principle
book
listed in our recommended reading list is devoted
to this
method of organization, and
it's a useful resource. But the basic idea is
really common
sense, merely a way of
laying out your information so you can arrange
and, later on,
present it logically.
Let's take a
look at a hypothetical presentation and how you
might organize its various
elements,
using this technique.
From
the top down
Let's assume
your basic point is: IBM's solution is your best
option, because its
combination of
products and services is integrated and flexible,
and because we
understand your business
challenges.
Now, put yourself in your audience's
position. They want to know why they should
believe
this. They expect proof.
You have, let's
assume, four reasons. First, IBM products work
together. Second, IBM
offers the
flexibility of open systems. Third, IBM services
tie everything together. Fourth,
IBM
has experience in the customer's industry.
This is the
heart and framework of your pitch. Lay it out
graphically.
You now see that you're
going to open by stating your main point, and
you're going to
proceed through your
presentation by offering facts and data in these
four areas. Don't
worry yet about which
will come first.
Take each of your supporting arguments
and do the same again. Build another pyramid
under each of the four. Under
each of the elements in the solution:
servers, middleware, storage. You might want to
talk
about inter-divisional efforts in
IBM to integrate technologies across our product
lines. It
would look something like
this:
For this
example, we don't need to bother creating
all the pyramids that build downward,
but you will
want to do this for your
entire presentation.
include. You will
then have a pyramid that
encompasses
everything you need to convey.
Now, play with it. Look at
the big picture. See
what's most
important. Take out things that, while
you might think they're important, just
won't
resonate with or be understood by
your audience.
Move things around. Add
or delete, but keep the
organizing
structure intact.
Once you have a pyramid that seems to
represent
your theme and the various
points you need to get
across, you're
ready to start creating the materials
you will actually show people: bullet
points, charts,
graphs. Instead of
organizing on-the-fly, you've
organized
first. Congratulations: you now have a
Fallen Pyramids
Some people find it helpful
to use a
pyramid on its side, with the
topic in the
left-most box, and
building the pyramid
Organize all the
information that you might want to
out to the right, instead
of below it. If you
use this method,
you'll notice that the
pyramid more
closely resembles a classic
outline
structure. Unlike an outline,
however,
the relative equality of the boxes
make
it much easier to restructure and
re-
order your presentation and establish
new relationships to item without
altering
the entire organization, as
often occurs
when creating an outline.
clear picture - literally -
of what information is
relevant to your
presentation, what points it supports, and where
it should go.
Unfortunately, many
people don't bother to begin with this formal,
structured approach.
Although you haven't even created your
first slide, the most critical (and often botched)
work in creating your presentation is
complete.
If
this all seems too plodding, too restrictive and
structured, don't worry: it isn't. By the
time you have a presentation ready to
show, the underlying organization will fade from
view, leaving behind merely a framework
that helps your audience focus more easily on
your message, and enhances your own
mastery of the material, since you understand
thoroughly how it all fits together.
Now, let's take
your graphical, pyramid outline and prepare a
presentation.
Where to begin
Visual elements such as
graphs, charts, and text can
enhance your ability to
communicate, helping your
audience follow your
message
and quickly
understand various types of
information.
Used thoughtfully, they can
be valuable tools.
Used indiscriminately, or
constructed poorly, however, they can actually
detract
from your message. They can
clutter your presentation and confuse your
audience.
This template
will facilitate the preparation of your
presentation and will help to
continue
establishing you as one of the best expressions of
the IBM brand.
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It reflects IBM's corporate design
style, which also influences our advertising
and marketing materials. It is
straightforward, clean, and simple.
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It's flexible
enough to accommodate a variety of uses. Some may
use it with
little or no graphic
elements, while others might need to convey far
more
complicated data.
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It's simple to
use. Although communications specialists and
graphic
designers have
worked to create this template, anyone in IBM
should be able
to use it without any
special skills or software beyond what is already
available.
Don't
automatically assume you need to use presentation
software to make your
presentation!
Some of the most effective
sales jobs are done just by speaking directly,
sincerely
and informatively about the
subject, without hiding behind charts. In Say It
With
Presentations, noted presentation
designer Gene Zelazny gives three basic types of
media you should consider if you need
visuals to help convey your message:
Lap visuals, so called because each
member of the audience receives his or her own
copy of the materials at the start of
the meeting, if not before. Best for small groups,
their use can open up discussion and
help everyone participate as equal partners.
The downside is that they may read
ahead and start asking questions you would
prefer to deal with later in the
discussion. And you can also miss opportunities
for
eye contact if everyone is looking
down reading.
Easels or
white boards. Great for increasing interactivity
among 15 or fewer people,
since you're
recording the audience's ideas as they come up.
Downsides: Avoid
spending all your time
with your back to the audience; perhaps deputize a
member
of the meeting to help write
down points so you can concentrate on their
comments
and reactions to you and each
other.
On-screen
presentations. While less personable than the
other two methods, this is
by far the
most polished and suitable for large audiences.
Since this is also the
medium with the
greatest pitfalls, this is the type of
presentation we'll be working
on in
this section.
Title screen
By
using a standard title chart and following the
style consistently, we will add a
professional touch not only to our
individual presentations but collectively to all
of
IBM's face-to-face communications.
The title slide
is a straightforward element, and generally
requires only that you
include your
name, IBM organization, and speaking topic in the
places provided.
However, the template
allows for other elements that might be required,
and it's
important to follow the
guidelines if you will be using these.
More text (if you
must)
The template also
provides a format for longer blocks of text. You
should use blocks
of text very
sparingly. Yes, once in a while there might be a
longer passage that is
relevant, and
valuable. For instance, you might have a quote
from an analyst or
customer that is
particularly striking:
If
you are going to
make your audience
read something,
make sure
it's worth
their time and effort.
More important,
make sure
it's worth
your time, since you
don't have much
available
and you've
just turned some of it
into a small reading
assignment.
Don't overdo it
Before you begin, keep in mind some key
points:
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Visuals are not your
presentation.
You are the presentation.
Your
audience has not gathered for the
purpose of reading your Freelance (or
PowerPoint) pages; they have come to
hear you communicate. Use visuals
to
support your message.
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Less is
more.
A graph that shows (for example)
levels of customer
spending on certain
technologies can reveal at a glance trends in the
market,
but it remains your task to
explain that data's relevance to your audience. A
single, well-constructed graphic,
supported by your thoughtful explanation,
is more effective than a series of
charts that the audience must decipher.
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Projected visuals have severe
limits.
They are constrained by the
resolution of a computer screen, which
is far lower than the printed page.
They are limited further by being
projected onto a screen that people must
read from a distance. For this reason,
we want to keep visuals simple and
bold. More complex graphics are better
suited for inclusion in printed
materials.
Let's
take a look at the main elements of the IBM
Presentation Template that you
might
need to include. More possibilities and variations
are available in the
presentation
templates themselves. But understanding which you
need, and when,
is the first step.
Bullet-point
text
Your audience is ready
to listen and to look, but they don't want to read
long
passages of text on a screen. And
you don't want them too, either
—
reading takes
their attention away from what you are
saying.
The
most effective way to use text is with short
phrases that can be read at a glance.
Presented this way, text can remind
people of your key points, or help them follow
the progress of your presentation.
Here's an example of text poorly used:
That isn't a bad-looking page, and it
isn't too difficult to read. But it can be
improved. This would be even better:
The first example tries to present your
message. The second example merely
provides cues to the messages you are
discussing. It engages the audience's time
only for a moment, and demands that
they listen to what you're saying as you
explain the points.
Of course, even when you
reduce your message to a bullet-point phrase, you
can
still defeat yourself by cramming
too many onto a single page. That's why you
should limit any page of text to no
more than five items (and even five is pushing
it).
You'll see that the template
reflects this limit.
This limit of five is not a matter of
how much text will fit onto a page while remaining
both legible and visually pleasing,
although these are important considerations.
Rather, it's a question of how much
information someone can easily retain at one
time, especially while listening to you
speak.
But what
if you have more than three or even five points to
make about IBM
servers? Perhaps you
want to talk about the technologies that give our
servers their
price-performance edge,
and cite some benchmark studies as evidence. You
have
more to say about management
capabilities, too. It simply won't fit into five
lines.
No
problem. If you examine your information, you are
likely to find that it will
arrange
itself into groups of details that support more
general points. (If you'd
prepared your
information carefully, according to the pyramid
structure described
in the 'Plan It'
module, this should already be clear.) The
solution is to create
another page
which focuses in greater detail on one of your
topics. In our current
example, you
might progress to this:
Here again, you
are giving your audience a limited, manageable
amount of
information at any one time.
If you have benchmark data (in this example) that
simply demands a graphic treatment,
don't cram it onto this page unless it's a very
simple graphic. Make another page,
devoted to that.
When you've finished with your
information about price-performance, return to
your list and the second point. Your
next page might list the key points about IBM
servers' advanced management
capabilities, followed by one with more detail on
Linux and open standards.
If those other topics don't
have as much supporting detail, you might simply
show
your first page about IBM servers
again, perhaps with your next point highlighted:
You would then proceed to discuss the
advanced management features. Your
audience has a clear and quick visual
cue that you're moving on to the second point,
along with a reminder that a third one
will follow.
It's perfectly okay to repeat pages in
this manner. Repeating pages can help your
audience follow the presentation,
without requiring a lot of their attention to do
so.
While it's true that
general) so long as your pages are
brief and direct, repeating pages in order to
highlight the progress of your
presentation is an effective use of supporting
visuals.
In this instance, more can be
more. Just don't get carried away: you don't need
a
line on the screen to summarize every
single thing you're going to say.
(If you are preparing a
printed version of your pitch to distribute to
your audience,
you will probably
include a page only once, and remove any
highlighted and
repeated pages.)
Charts & graphs
Charts and graphs can be very effective
tools. They can also be annoyingly
clumsy,
obscuring the very information
they're
intended to communicate. Like
other tools,
they must be used when the
task requires
them, and with care.
Our template
calls for charts stripped clean of
extraneous clutter, free from such
visual
gimmickry as three-dimensional
effects, and
restrained in their use of
color. If your
information is relevant
to your audience, it
shouldn't be
obscured by this sort of
distraction.
If your information isn't relevant,
it
shouldn't be on the screen at all.
Chartware
If your
presentations require greater use
of a
wider variety of charts, you can find a
more detailed exploration of the topic
in
Say it With Charts
, by
Gene Zelazny, one
of the books in our
recommended reading
list. For an even
deeper examination of
visual
communication,
Envisioning
Information
by Edward Tufte
is excellent,
though not as directly
relevant to business
presentations.
This introduction to the
simplest, most
common and effective
types of charts used in presentations should help
you
develop the basic skills you need
to decide when to use a graph, how to select the
type most appropriate to your data, and
how to create it using the software you
already have available, in a style that
will blend harmoniously into the IBM
template.
Before you even begin creating charts,
there are a few points to keep in mind.
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Charts must be read. They don't convey
information, but rather present it in
a
visual way that makes understanding it easy.
Still, your audience is going
to have
to extract the message of a chart by looking at
it, by
possibly with your assistance in
pointing out its key aspects.
The simpler a chart is, the
more clear and direct its message will be.
Complex charts of simple information
are failures. Simple charts of complex
information are achievements.
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When data demands complex charts, they
are nearly always better
presented on a
printed handout. We will work around these limits
as best we
can, but you must be aware
of them and strive for simplicity.
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In the hands of
skilled people trained in presenting information
visually,
there are software tools
capable of transforming complex data into elegant
and effective charts. But these often
require specialized skills.
You'll find all sorts of examples of
charts and graphs in the
presentation
templates
. Once you've got your
presentation prepared, however,
you're
ready to
—
which just
happens to be the subject of the third and
final section of the IBM Presentation
Methodology.
The
template
The IBM
Presentation Template (someone reading this has
already mentally
shortened it to
Inside of the blue bands (the
background with white text or a white
background with black text. You can have
background imagery on the title slide
inside the letterbox or in the blue bands.
A few things
you shouldn't change however:
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The color or
size of the blue bands, except between the two
variations given
as options in the
template and for the style of the bands in the
printable
black-and-white version.
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The
font, which is Arial. (Arial is one of the sans-
serif fonts, which are
generally
considered easier to read projected on a monitor
or screen, or
when printed on dark
backgrounds. Serif fonts, such as Times New Roman
and Bodoni, are generally considered
easier to read in print on white or
light-colored paper.)
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The size, position, or other attributes
of the IBM logo in the upper right.
The color palette.
The minimum
The
position of such elements as
presentation, the page numbering if you
use it.
When you use the
template, you'll see more guidelines in the non-
displaying
margins of its slides, and
more detailed explanations are available from the
template download menu. For now, we'll
concern ourselves with some of the most
basic kinds of pages and how to use
them most effectively.
Where to
begin
Congratulations: You
have a well-organized, concise, targeted
presentation. You
know the material
well enough to improvise if needed, and respond to
questions.
Your supporting visual
materials look sharp - and more important, they
convey
information to support your
messages, nothing more or less. You have created
an
edited version of your slides,
reformatted for black-and-white, and printed
enough
to hand out to your audience.
You're thoroughly prepared.
Say It,
Don't Just Play It
It's become an
accepted part of the culture at IBM (and
elsewhere) to e-mail a presentation to
someone, in lieu of presenting it in
person or when an in-person presentation isn't
possible. While
this can be a great
cost-saver in terms of travel and time, realize
that if your charts are complete
enough
to stand all on their own without your thoughtful
arguments and explications, then you're
probably forcing your in-person
audience to read too much. And if you've pared all
the
non-essentials from your visuals so
that only the most important elements are
displayed, and they
truly support your
presentation instead of become your presentation,
then it probably isn't going to
be able
to stand on its own when you e-mail it off to who-
knows-what environment and audience.
If you have to e-mail a
presentation you won't be delivering via phone
concurrently to it being
viewed,
consider recording your comments (Freelance and
PowerPoint both have this option, you
need only to get a plug-in microphone
for your computer if one isn't already included.)
If you can't
record it, or that adds
too much to the file size for e-mailing, create a
second, similar presentation
and use
the speaker notes function. Then you can encourage
your audience to print out the
presentation with your speaker's notes
or create an Adobe Acrobat file of such a print-
out, which is
what you can then e-mail
to them.
Speaking tips
There
are
many
books,
articles
and
seminars
devoted
to
the
skill of speaking to an audience. This
isn't meant to
replace
them,
so
if
you're
new
to
public
speaking,
you
might
want to browse the
list of recommended reading provided
elsewhere. However, here are a few
general pointers that
apply to novice
and experienced presenters alike.
You Talking to
Me?
Before you
present, try to answer the following for yourself
about the people you see in the room,
based on what you know about them or,
if you have nothing else to go on, their
expressions and the
way others respond
when they speak.
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?
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Who are the
critical decision makers of the audience, whose
yes or no may be all that matters
ultimately? What are their needs and
priorities?
Who are the
influencers in the audience, who seem to command a
sense of authority and may
be expected
to make recommendations to the critical decision
makers?
Who are your
allies? Not just friends or colleagues you may
recognize in the audience, but the
20
percent who appear most receptive to the points
you are making and are probably
generally supportive to most people
presenting to them.
While
it may seem counterintuitive, present mostly to
the people you see in the audience who
obviously want you to succeed, while
being aware of the decision makers and
influencers. Micki
Holliday
(
Secrets of Power
Presentations
) says:
the
negative personality types. They try to convince,
cajole, persuade that one person, often to the
detriment of the rest of the audience.
It is usually a hopeless task.
Do
not
read
your
slides.
Assuming
the
text
(if
any)
on
your
slide
is
legible
(as
it
should
be),
your
audience
can
read
it faster than you can
speak it. Few things are more
annoying
than watching someone merely read or closely
paraphrase page after page of text.
People will either
assume that you
don't know the topic very well and have
nothing
to
add,
or
else
that
you're
a
novice
presenter
and
too
nervous.
Explain your
slides.
Good supporting materials, on
their
own, will prompt questions in the
audience's mind -