【正文】 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, it39。ve finished with your information about priceperformance, return to your list and the second point. Your next page might list the key points about IBM servers39。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 amp。ve got your presentation prepared, however, 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 remended reading list. For an even deeper examination of visual munication, Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte is excellent, though not as directly relevant to business presentations. you39。t possible. While this can be a great costsaver in terms of travel and time, realize that if your charts are plete enough to stand all on their own without your thoughtful arguments and explications, then you39。t meant to replace them, so if you39。s finished this transition. At best, it will seem as if you need to see your own slides to remember what to tell people. Transition verbally to the next slide first. Here39。s probably safe to assume that your audience will be pleased if you finish on time or even early. And if you somehow leave them wanting more, then ironically you will have exceeded their expectations. If you will be taking questions, allow a realistic amount of time for that. If you don39。ll show a great deal of familiarity with your own presentation and manage to control the situation better if you make it clear when to advance the slide each time: Please go to slide six. After the first few instances of this, the audience will barely notice your saying it. Just as when you39。s mind questions that you answer even before they are asked. For slides that present data (in graphs, charts, etc) ask yourself: What does this information mean? Or, more critically: What do I want it to mean to this audience? For example, if you have a chart that shows an IBM product outperforming its petitors in a benchmark, it39。t be delivering via phone concurrently to it being viewed, consider recording your ments (Freelance and PowerPoint both have this option, you need only to get a plugin microphone for your puter if one isn39。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 wellanized, 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 blackandwhite, and printed enough to hand out to your audience. You39。t relevant, it shouldn39。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 it39。Plan It39。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 audience39。t overdo it Before you begin, keep in mind some key points: ? Visuals are not your presentation. You are the presentation. Your audience has not gathered for the purpose of reading your Freelance (or PowerPoint) pages。 perhaps deputize a member of the meeting to help write down points so you can concentrate on their ments and reactions to you and each other. Onscreen 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 we39。s take your graphical, pyramid outline and prepare a presentation. Fallen Pyramids Some people find it helpful to use a pyramid on its side, with the topic in the leftmost box, and building the pyramid out to the right, instead of below it. If you use this method, you39。re important, just won39。s position. They want to know why they should believe this. They expect proof. You have, let39。ll show, and you39。re trying to municate, 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 you39。ve prepared effectively to an audience. Presentations are not about showing a series of slides。s the flawed technique behind many of the more overblown, leaden presentations you39。re clear about the point you need to convey. But it39。s take a look at a hypothetical presentation and how you might anize its various elements, using this technique. From the top down Let39。t worry yet about which will e first. Take each of your supporting arguments and do the same again. Build another pyramid under each of the four. Under products work together you might have information about each of the elements in the solution: servers, middleware, storage. You might want to talk about interdivisional efforts in IBM to integrate technologies across our product lines. It would look something like this: For this example, we don39。t even created your f