【正文】 ve just seen, the United States holds tremendous potential for . Ltd. 2. Hold the eye contact as you make the transition to the next slide. But will . be able to enter the . market? In fact, there are no insurmountable barriers to entry. 3. Be quiet stop talking as you replace the old visual with the new one. 4. Make eye contact once more as you begin to tell the story of the new visual. Here are the barriers you39。ve pared all the nonessentials from your visuals so that only the most important elements are displayed, and they truly support your presentation instead of bee your presentation, then it probably isn39。re intended to municate. 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 threedimensional effects, and restrained in their use of color. If your information is relevant to your audience, it shouldn39。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 you39。t have much available and you39。t worry: it isn39。s assume your basic point is: IBM39。ve ever dozed through. That39。s working backwards. Instead, start with nothing... and work forward. Ask yourself this: What is my point? Every presentation is an attempt to municate something. It may be a plex topic, with lots of supporting data, but fundamentally there will always be something simple you want to say. It might be IBM understands your business, or This technology is the best for our requirements or We need more time to do this job right. Figure out what you39。s solution is your best option, because its bination of products and services is integrated and flexible, and because we understand your business challenges. Now, put yourself in your audience39。t. By the time you have a presentation ready to show, the underlying anization 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, let39。ve just turned some of it into a small reading assignment. Don39。d prepared your information carefully, according to the pyramid structure described in the 39。t be obscured by this sort of distraction. If your information isn39。t going to be able to stand on its own when you it off to whoknowswhat environment and audience. If you have to a presentation you won39。re familiar with, and the remendations for overing them. Change your own slides. While not always possible, depending on the presentation environment, you should generally be prepared to change your own slides. Sometimes, though, you have to have someone else running your slides, or perhaps the audience is stepping through the slides themselves while you speak to them over the phone or in a Webcast. You39。s an example of the effective way to transition between slides, given by Gene Zelazny in Say It With Presentations: 1. Continue eye contact with the audience as you finish discussing the previous slide. As we39。re probably forcing your inperson audience to read too much. And if you39。 graphs Charts and graphs can be very effective tools. They can also be annoyingly clumsy, obscuring the very information they39。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 priceperformance edge, and cite some benchmark studies as evidence. You have more to say about management capabilities, too. It simply won39。s worth your time, since you don39。t even created your first slide, the most critical (and often botched) work in creating your presentation is plete. If this all seems too plodding, too restrictive and structured, don39。s take a look at a hypothetical presentation and how you might anize its various elements, using this technique. From the top down Let39。s the flawed technique behind many of the more overblown, leaden presentations 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。s position. They want to know why they should believe this. They expect proof. You have, let39。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。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。Plan It39。t relevant, it shouldn39。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 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 finished this tran