Читать книгу Presentation Skills in 7 simple steps - James Schofield - Страница 29

There is an important reason why you need to be careful about quantity – your audience’s capacity to absorb what you have to say. We find it hard to remember the content of a presentation if there are too many distinct points in it. This means that ideally you should limit what you say to three main points. This isn’t always possible, but it’s very hard for your audience to process and retain more than four points.

So what do you do if you look at the material you’ve collected and you feel that your presentation needs more than just three points to get the desired concept across? You have to cluster your information into three to four key headings. Look at this example.

Subject: New software

Key points: faster processing of information, handles larger quantities of data, support from external consultants necessary, high costs of new licences, hardware update necessary to handle new software, staff training necessary for new software, complex company-wide rollout, better data security

These eight key points can be clustered under three distinct headings. For example:

 New software advantages: faster processing of information, handles larger quantities of data, better data security

 New software disadvantages: high costs of new licences, staff training necessary for new software, complex company-wide rollout

 Recommendation: support from external consultants necessary, hardware update necessary

Your audience will remember the three headings from your presentation and if they want the details, they can check the handouts or a copy of the presentation that you can make available for them.