Here is a sneak preview of some of the content of my 3-day workshop, “Create an Outstanding Presentation.” It comes from Day 1: Content.
Your ending is even more important than your beginning. You want it to be strong and clear. It’s sad but true—your audience may not remember anything else! You need to summarize your points and end on an up note.
A nice technique is to refer back to something you said at the beginning, and finish it. It could be a story that you left incomplete or a situation. For example, you could talk about another customer’s problem at the beginning, but not say what happened. Then, at the end, you could provide the happy ending to that story. Or, if you start with a shocking statistic, you could state how your solution will make that statistic less shocking. Let’s say you start by saying, “It costs six times more to sell a product or service to a prospect than to an existing customer.” You could end by saying, “With our software, you’ll sell more at less cost by maximizing your existing relationships.”
One problem dealing with is questions and answers. The question and answer period dilutes your ending and can even spoil it. Therefore, when it’s over, you should repeat your ending, in a slightly different version, along with your request for action.
What suggestions do you have for ending a presentation?
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Hi Ellen
My suggestion is to have the Q&A session before you end your presentation. You can say something like this: “Before I conclude my presentation, what questions do you have?”. Then you can conclude strongly – in some of the ways that you’ve suggested.
Also I don’t think that there’s any problem with repeating key phrases in your presentation. In fact, it’s effective – your audience will be more likely to remember a phrase that’s been repeated – just think of common advertising slogans.
Go well with your workshop Ellen
Olivia
Olivia, yes, that’s a good idea and keeps people from leaving if they don’t have any questions! In a sense, that’s what I was suggesting; by repeating the conclusion after the Q&A, you include the Q&A inside your presentation.