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Enhance Presentations by Producing Effective Exhibits
By Jeff Davidson MBA, CMC
Producing effective exhibits that are designed to either stand alone or enhance proposals (as well as articles or other written material) increases your overall marketing effectiveness.
FREE-STANDING, SELF-EXPLANATORY
Design the exhibit graphs and charts you use so that they are free-standing and self-explanatory. Free-standing means that any reader can understand information or data presented without having to refer to any accompanying text.
The self-explanatory feature means that all row and column headings are free of confusing or ambiguous abbreviations. Also, any keys, legends, directions, equations, or footnotes in support of the information presented are contained within the exhibit or on the actual exhibit page so that the reader need not look elsewhere for this information.
Further, any computations or data presented must be consistent and follow a logical mathematical progression so that the reader can quickly ascertain how information was derived. For example, if the figures on "Column 5" are the product of figures in "Column 3" multiplied times "Column 4," then this should be clearly indicated.
LIST SOURCES OF INFORMATION
For charts and exhibits that contain information from secondary sources, those not directly based on your own research or findings, be sure to list the name of the source or publication, the publisher, the publisher's city and state, the page number, if possible, and the year in which the information was published or compiled.
For example, if you produce a chart with one column containing the population of counties in excess of three million people, the appropriate reference source might be stated as follows:
County Statistics, Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, pg. 68, 2000.
This reference source can be listed on the bottom left hand corner of the exhibit page and footnoted to the column in reference. In a similar manner, other reference sources can be listed under the first one cited and, again, serve as footnotes to the information contained in the chart above.
SERVE THE UNINFORMED BUT INTERESTED THIRD PARTY
Exhibits should be prepared so that an uninformed reader, someone who has no previous knowledge of your work or the topic area, can successfully and easily examine your exhibit. Technical jargon (the principles for effective action letters are in force here!), acronyms, and coding should be avoided if at all possible.
The form and layout of the exhibit should be pleasing to the eye -- comfortable margins, use of wide space, centering, and balance. If you find yourself cramming too much information into one exhibit, perhaps it would be best to create a second exhibit or to eliminate non-essential information.
An exhibit that can be understood by an uninformed, but interested third party, guarantees that your primary target audience will find the exhibit easy to examine and will appreciate your production efforts.
STATE ASSUMPTIONS WHEN NECESSARY
When presenting any type of numerical analysis based on incomplete or insufficient data, be sure to state your assumptions via footnotes so that the reader is not misled into thinking that the data and information provided is based upon established facts or substantiated primary data.
For example, a marketing analyst for a database management information consulting services firm had difficulty in pinpointing the mean age of a certain vendor's microcomputers, currently operating in the defined trade radius. She was able to overcome this problem by gathering information on the vendor's annual unit sales in the trade radius and then by making basic assumptions about the number of units still in force based on known factors of obsolescence and replacement. In preparing her exhibit, a footnote accompanying her data read as follows: "Assumes normal replacement rate of 3.5 years..."
LABEL AND DATE
Finally, make sure that the label or title to your exhibit is appropriate and adequately describes the information being presented. There's nothing worse than a carefully prepared exhibit headed by a misleading or awkwardly phrased label. Other supporting information should also be contained on the exhibit page including the date the exhibit was prepared, who it was prepared by (it can be an individual or organization), and any other point of reference material useful both to yourself and others using the exhibit in the future.