Presentation Tips

[‘Numbers’ that cannot be left out in presentaitons]

There is a ‘usual way’ of structuring presentations in general; start with a cover slide followed by ‘table of contents’ slide.
When you think of ‘table of contents’, there’s one thing that naturally being brought up – “numbers”. Large categories are listed and divided by 1,2,3, and detailed contents of 1 is listed as 1-1, 1-2, 1-3…
But, we are very used to numbering the contents on each slide by no.1, no.2, no.3. Numbers that cannot be left out in presentations – what would be the best effective way to use them?

[Too much numbering is a poison]

In presentation, roles of numbers can be divided in to three parts.
The first role is marking and identifying the location of the contents- this is usually used in table of contents.
Second role is to identify rankings- ranking # 1, 2, 3, and third role is to imply contents that are to follow from now on.
Then, let’s take a close look at roles of numbers.

01. Numbers that identifies the location of contents

As said before, this usually happens in table of contents. Most of people categorize large table of contents to 1,2,3 and add additional sub categories in the orders of (1), 1) and 1-1).
For table of contents, it’s good enough to include just right amount of contents to help audiences understand the big picture of the presentation. If it’s hard to mark with numbers, using alphabets-like A,B,C could be another good way to categorize.

02. Numbers that identifies rankings and level of importance

Let’s assume that you are in a situation where you have to deliver such information like ‘a product with the highest record of sales volume among 10 products’ to audiences.
The most important information to be delivered in this slide is ‘the top ranking product’. If so, let’s use numbers only for the top ranking product so it can attract the audiences’ attention. In addition, if you add a simple emphasizing effects like applying point colors or animations and etc., you should be able to deliver your messages more effectively.
How the numbers appear is more important than how often and how many times they appear.

03. Numbers that imply contents

Numbers that imply contents are usually helpful and effective to use when need to deliver various contents, such as issues, differentiation, strength and etc., to audiences.
If you need to cover various contents under one topic, ‘differentiation’, let’s organize the topic by using numbers like- ‘Three differentiation points of O O company.’ If you let your audiences know of the amount of information that will be presented by using numbers, it will help your audiences to pay better attention in overall because they can predict that they will be hearing three stories about the topic during this presentation.

Numbers are one of the elements that cannot be missed or left out in presentations.
A text-based document with 100 lines of sentences, ‘5 reasons you must do this business’ will be much easier to remember. If you remember the roles of numbers and use them appropriately in your various types of presentations, you should be able to make a good presentation.

Three roles of numbers in Presentations

01 Numbers that identifies the location of contents
02 Numbers that identifies rankings and level of importance
03 Numbers that imply contents