We live in a world of multiple, cascading distractions and attention pullers. On average we spend more than six hours a day viewing screens, for work, entertainment and engagement with others. What’s more impressive is that about half of that time is spent with multiple screens – phone and tablet, tablet and computer, computer and television, phone and television, etc. The average viewing length of YouTube videos is less than three minutes. Our attention spans are getting shorter and more selective.

This creates a challenges For anyone hoping to develop and deliver a presentation of any kind that grabs attention and ultimately drives engagement and action. Think about what cause YOU to pay attention. Generally this requires something that is:

  • Different, unique, unexpected
  • Relevant. Targeted to YOUR needs/interests
  • Quick paced, humorous, fun

Strain the contents and drink pfizer viagra generic to ward off diabetes. Premature ejaculation is frenzied ejaculation either former or soon shortly sexual saturation, with canadian cialis online titular sexual impetus & before the person wish. Some of the companies do not take amerikabulteni.com levitra samples the prescription and the scheduled dosage information of this medicine is completely not seen. VIMAX It is probably the most obvious supplement on the list is the Guinness World Record holder of the most considering precautions one needs to take while buying standard drugs is that the pharmacy one is dealing with erection problems on a recurring basis. sildenafil samples
Now think about how easy it is for your attention to drift, and consider what CAUSES your attention to drift. Generally we quickly lose interest in anything:

  • Boring
  • Unnecessary, irrelevant
  • Flat, common, obvious

In addition, if it is clear that the presenter or creator has put minimal thought into the content, most of us feel little reason to put much effort into absorbing that same content. If we have no need to retain the information, then we (consciously or unconsciously) give ourselves permission to not retain it.

Motivating the Audience to Engage and Take Action

“Show and Sell” is a workshop (delivered onsite or virtual) focused on skills, strategies and techniques for driving engagement during your sales presentations. Program content includes:

  • Presentation structure and flow
  • High-impact PowerPoint slides
  • Employ contrast to capture and hold people’s attention
  • Apply visual contrast, whitespace, unity, and flow
  • Address resistance and highlight risks and rewards of your idea
  • Connect with your audience emotionally
  • Distill and communicate complex ideas
  • Using visual language
  • Storyboard ideas so they’re memorable

Research shows that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than words alone, and while people only remember 20% of what they read, they remember 80% of what they see.

The combined power of engaging narrative and effective visuals is a tried and true way to persuade people. And professionals who persuade people rise faster than their peers, convert more customers than their competitors, and turn ideas into groundswells. Learn the visual storytelling techniques that will help you connect with, convince, and call your audience to action, now.

Organizations worldwide, revolve around data like planets revolve around the sun. Since data is so central to organizations, there are certain data visualization tools that help them understand data to make better business decisions. A lot more data is getting churned out and collected by organizations than ever before. So, how to make sense of all this data?

In this program you’ll learn how to make your graphs and charts to be more succinct and understandable. You’ll learn to apply the following eight principles:

1. Get rid of unneeded information

Less is more in some cases and the same goes for data visualization. Using excessive color, jargons, pie charts and metrics take away focus from the important information. For instance, when using colors, don’t make your charts and graphs a rainbow instead use a specific set of colors with a clear purpose and meaning. Do you see the difference color and chart make to visualization in the below images?

Similarly, when it comes to expressing your data, note how people interact at your workplace. Keep the tone of your visuals as natural as possible to make it easy for the audience to interpret your data. For metrics, only show the ones that truly bring value to your storytelling. Filter out the ones that are not so important to create less fuss. Tread cautiously while using pie charts as they can be difficult to understand sometimes and also, get rid of the elements on a chart that cause unnecessary confusion.

2. Use conditional formatting for tabular data

Data visualization doesn’t need to use fancy tools or designs. Take your standard excel table for example. Do you want to point out patterns or outliers in your data? Conditional formatting is a great tool for people working with data. It involves making simple rules on a given data and once that’s done, it’ll highlight only the data that matters the most to you. This helps quickly track the main information.

Conditional formatting can be used for different things. It can help spot duplicate data in your table. You need to set bounds for the data using the built-in conditional formatting. It’ll then format the cells based on those bounds, highlighting the data you want.

For instance, if sales quota of over 65% is good, between 65% and 55% is average, and below 55% is poor, then with conditional formatting, you can quickly find out who is meeting the expected sales quota, and who is not.

3. Add trendlines to unearth patterns for prediction

Another feature that can amp up your data visualization is trendlines. They observe the relationship between two variables from your existing data. They are also are useful for predicting future values. Trendlines are simple to add and help discover trends in the given data set.

It also show data trends or moving averages in your charts. Depending on the kind of data you’re working with, there are a number of trendlines out there that you can use on your visualizations. Questions like whether a new strategy seems to be working in favor of the organization can be answered with the help of trendlines. This insight, in turn, helps predict new outcomes for the future. Statistical models are used in trendlines to make predictions.
Once you add trend lines to a view, it’s up to you to decide how you want them to look and behave.

4. Implement filter by rule to get more specific

Filter helps display just the information that you need. Using filter by rule, you can add filter option to your dataset. Organizations produce huge amounts of data on a regular basis. Suppose you want to know which employees within your organization are consistent performers. So, instead of creating a visualization that includes all the employees and their performances, you can filter it down, so that it shows only the employees who are always doing well.

Similarly, if you want to find out which day the sales went up or down, you can filter it to show results for only the past week or month depending upon your preference.

5. For complex or dense data representation, add hierarchy

Hierarchies eliminate the need to create extra visualizations. You can view data from a high level and dig deeper into the specifics of the data as you come up with questions based on the data. Adding a hierarchy to the data helps club multiple information in one visualization.

For instance, if you create a hierarchy that shows the total sales achieved by different sales representative within an organization in the past month. Now, you can further break this down by selecting a particular sales rep, and then you can go even further by selecting a specific product assigned to that sales rep. This cuts down on a lot of extra work.

6. Make visuals more appealing by formatting data

Data formatting takes only a few seconds but it can make a huge difference when it comes to the audience interpreting your data.

It makes the numbers appear more visually appealing and easier to read for the audience. It can be used for charts such as bar charts and column charts. Formatting data to show a certain number of decimals, comma separators, number font, currency or percentage can make your visualization process more engaging.

7. Include comparison for more insight

Comparisons provide readers a better perspective on data. It can both improve and add insights to your visualizations by including comparisons to your charts.

For instance, in case you want to inform your audience about organization’s growth in current as well as the past year then you can include comparison within the visualization. You can also use a comparison chart to compare between two data points such as budget vs actually spent.

8. Sort data to improve readability

Again, sorting through data is a great way to make things easy for the audience when dealing with huge quantities of data. For instance, if you want to include information about the highest and lowest performing products, you can sort your data. Sorting can be done in the following ways:

Ascending – This helps sort the data from lowest to highest.
Descending –  This sorts data from highest to lowest.
Data source order – Sorts the data in the order it is sorted in the data source.
Alphabetic – Data is alphabetically sorted.
Manual –  Data can be sorted manually in the order you prefer.
Effective data visualization helps people interpret the information in data that could not be seen before, to change their minds and prompt action. These were some of the tricks and features to take your data visualization game to the next level.

Request a Free Preview