The Power of Numeric Graphics

Numbers play a key role in any business presentation. Revenues, units shipped, profits, and market share are the hits, runs, and errors of the business scorecard, and everyone in business understands their importance.

This is not to say that everyone in business feels equally at home when it comes to interpreting numbers. There are the green-eyeshade types who immediately recognize key trends and can quickly pick out the most important item in a column of figures. Then there are the rest of us, who need a little time and a lot of context to fully grasp the meaning of a profit and loss statement or balance sheet.

When you're in a persuasive situation, you want to win the agreement of both the number-savvy and the number-shy. Skillfully designed numeric graphics can help achieve that. They translate digits and decimals into visual images that make abstract relationships concrete and much easier to recognize.

Unfortunately, many of the numeric graphics used in presentations serve to obscure rather than clarify the facts. All too often, the graphics are sheer Data Dumps, loaded with needless information, poorly organized, and visually cluttered. Such numeric slides take a long time to explain and even longer for the audience to understand. Often, the audience members decide that such slides aren't worth the effort and give up. Many an important presentation gets derailed this way.

This needn't happen with your presentations. The same basic principles you learned in Chapter 6, Presenter Focus, Less Is More, and Minimize Eye Sweeps, apply to numeric graphics. Let them be your guidelines to creating clear and effective images that will drive your story home and reinforce your key ideas.

Presenter Focus, Less Is More, and Minimize Eye Sweeps