Charts That Sell · Field notes from the pitch room

The seven edits after you double-click

Field note #3 · 5 min read

Every chart tool on earth exports the same thing: a correct chart that looks like nobody owns it. Default colors, every axis tick, a legend box, labels on every point. Correct, and completely generic. I've seen those slides on the client's desk. They belong to nobody, so they argue for nothing.

When ChartThat hands you a native PowerPoint chart, double-clicking it is the whole point — that's the claim from note #2 getting its finishing work. Seven edits, about thirty seconds each. I have run this exact list on a hundred decks.

The export is the starting line. The deck is the finish line.

1. Write the claim into the slide title

Not "Q3 revenue," but "The South region is carrying this company." Before you touch the chart, write the sentence. The other six edits are just making the chart obey it.

2. Recolor everything neutral, one element loud

Select all series and set them to the quiet family — gray, muted blue, whatever disappears in the panel. Then select the single bar, line, or slice that carries the claim and give it your accent color. One loud thing per page. This one edit does more selling than the other six combined.

3. Delete the legend if you can label directly

A legend is a matching game: color here, meaning over there, client doing the wiring in their head. Two or three series? Click the series and put its name on the line or next to the final bar. Delete the legend. The chart now reads without travel.

4. Strip the axis decoration; keep the unit

Faint gridlines: delete most of them, keep at most the two or three that help reading a value. Tick marks and the thick plot border: delete. The axis label itself — the unit, "Revenue, €m" or "Retention, %" — never. Decoration is noise; the unit is a fact. Know the difference.

5. Label the one number, not all of them

Twelve data labels on twelve bars is arithmetic homework, and the moment the client starts doing math in their head they have stepped out of your story. Put a label on the element that carries the claim — the biggest bar, the turning point. Let the gridline do its job for the rest.

6. Draw the rival line

Add the target, last year, the benchmark — whatever the claim is measured against. A number with no rival has no drama. "We hit 4.2%" is trivia; a bar at 4.2% with a target line at 5% is a problem the client can feel.

If the rival lives on a different scale — percent against absolute — the combo chart is the shape that carries both without lying about either.

7. Sort

Alphabetical is a filing cabinet, not an argument. Sort bars by value unless the axis is time. The eye should never have to hunt for the conclusion; ranking hands it over.

This is why the horizontal bar chart does so much of the note's work on its own: ranked top to bottom, long names reading left to right, no tilted labels, no hunt.

Why these seven and nothing else

Notice what's not on the list: 3D, shadows, gradients, fonts nobody can read, pictures pasted inside bars. None of those earn trust; all of them spend it. A client-facing chart should look like a surgeon's tray — three instruments, laid out cleanly, each with a job.

Run the list top to bottom. If your chart still needs decoration after edit seven, edit one is probably wrong: fix the claim, not the cosmetics.

— Written between pitches. Field note #3 of Charts That Sell. Next: colors that sell.