Visualization: It's Business.

There's this little program out there—you may have heard about it. It's cheap, it's pretty much universal, and it has turned the idea of the visual aid into a tool of khaki-loving middle managers. It's called PowerPoint, and it, single-handedly, has transported visualization into the land of business (Figure 20-5).

There's no denying it: visuals are compelling. Want someone to ignore your prose? Make sure to include a lot of pictures, or graphs if you took math in college. When making a presentation to a board of directors, a prospective client, or for a midterm grade in an MBA class, going without PowerPoint is seen as quaint at best and ill-prepared at worst (Figure 20-6). Why? Because visualization is an excellent tool of persuasion. And persuasion is just another word for sales.