Page 111 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

102 DELIVERY

say (in a moment we’ll look at how to compensate for the loss of
word slides).
How to create a roll-in? The roll-in essentially creates itself
because it is always a brief summary of the business message, or the

“takeaway,” in the next slide, which itself amplifies and advances the
central theme. So for example, if your theme is the need to go global,
and the next slide shows domestic market share down compared to
the same time last year, then your roll-in might be: “We got another
reason to speed our global efforts just two months ago with the news
that our market share is down more than 2 percent from last year.”
Then click to the next slide. Pause for a beat to let everybody
check the slide and get oriented. Then maybe draw their attention
to last year’s spike and this year’s low, and point out that the projec-
tions, also depicted on the same slide, do not support further domes-
tic efforts.
Let’s say your next slide after that shows that sales and market
share are both up in a Brazilian test market. So your roll-in to the
next slide (while the current slide is still on the screen) might be, “By
contrast, market share in Brazil is up almost double since we
launched our first product just two months ago, as you can see
here . . .” Then click. They now see exactly what you told them they
would see. Both slides support the theme, as do the roll-ins.
At this point, many of you who have depended for years on word
slides to provide guidance and help cut down on preparation time
must be wondering how you can do without word slides and still
pull off a good performance.
Actually, it’s easy. You simply prepare a one-page “crib” sheet to
serve as your private notes. Some people prefer to run little pictures
of their slides down the left side of a standard 8-by-10 sheet of white
paper. On the right, they might jot down their roll-ins to each one—
just in case they forget. They typically keep this sheet nearby—on
top of a stool, say, on an open stage, or at the podium, or in front of
them in the conference room, so they can glance down and grab