What do you remember most about a great dinner you had at your friend’s home the last time? Most of you would answer the appetizer and dessert. Undoubtedly, your friend has painstakingly prepared a delectable meal for you; you would remember the delicacies served at the starting and end of the dinner. Everything in between is a scrumptious blur. Similarly, the beginning and closing of the speech are remembered longer by the audience than any other part of the presentation.
If you have devoted your valuable time outlining, researching, and designing the presentation just to trigger spontaneous applause and leave a lasting impression on the audience, but have you paid heed to the conclusion, your well-prepared presentation will fall flat. An uninspired closing statement will perplex the audience, and they will forget your message within a few hours after they walk out of the auditorium. So, if you want to end up with a bang, refrain from concluding with a mundane and superficial verbal “Thank You.” Instead, motivate your audience to take some action with a stirring and powerful wrap-up.
In this blog post, we have shared some smart ways to end your presentation effectively and make a difference in the overall impact of your speech.
1. A Motivational Tale that Reflects Your Key Message
Compelling stories are a great way to trigger human emotions, etched the information in the minds of the listeners, and forge personal bonds. You can convey the important takeaway of your speech as the moral of your story. Think creatively about how you can turn your case studies and customer experiences into meaningful stories and make them relatable to the points covered throughout the presentation to ensure the audience receives them well.
2. Propel the Audience into Action with a Powerful Quote
You can sum up the central message of your speech into a catchy and appealing quote. A quote acts as a concise soundbite to end your presentation. Be thoughtful and wise while choosing the quote and include the one that goes perfect with your presentation theme and better resonates with your audience. You can add a twist to the quote to communicate your thoughts.
3. A Surprise Fact or Statistic
As you reach the end of the speech, the attention of your audience fades away. You can re-engage them through a different conclusion that they have not anticipated. Stun them and activate their brains with a surprising fact or statistic relevant to your presentation.
4. A Rhetorical Question
Questions stimulate the neocortex of the audience. You can regain the lost attention of the listeners by winding up your presentation with a rhetorical or provocative question that will rattle around their minds until they find the answer.
5. Inspire with a Powerful Visual
As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” You can better engage with the audience and convey the essence and take-home message convincingly to the audience through a riveting visual relevant to your presentation. A persuasive visual has a great recall value that helps the audience retain your information for a longer time.
6. A Running Clock
If you want to deliver a time-sensitive message and prompt your audience to take quick actions, you can use a slide with a countdown timer. You can complement it with a strong statement, such as “stop thinking, begin acting” or “time to stop overthinking and start acting right away,” etc.
7. Wind Up with a Summary
You can summarize the key points of your gripping talk at the end. Instead of making the summary direct and straightforward, make it enticing by adding a captivating anecdote, humor, or rhyme relevant to the context.
8. Finish It With a Call to Action (CTA)
Encourage your audience to take instant action by ending your presentation with a strong and powerful CTA. Keep your CTA simple yet specific and persuasive. Moreover, instead of verbalizing your call to action, write it on a slide to illustrate it visually.
9. A Memorable Animation or Cartoon
An animation or cartoon combines a brilliant metaphor, humor, and visual to give a perfect finish to your speech and conclude it in style. Further, an animated slide with motion effects will help you enhance the visual impact and reinforce the key takeaways.
10. Conclusion or Closing Slides
You can use a visually impressive conclusion or closing slide in the background while wrapping up your speech. You can also end up by providing your contact details and asking your audience to stay in touch with you. For this, you can use elegantly-designed contact information slides.
Some Quick Tips
- Do not make a half-baked and lame ending.
- Don’t end with a Q&A session; add some closing remark.
- Avoid making an abrupt wrap-up with no conclusion. Your closing remark must clearly state that the presentation is over.
- Avoid fidgeting or shuffling papers right after the speech is over. Keep standing on the stage for a few minutes.
- Keep it short; don’t keep talking once you have announced the winding up of your presentation.
Spend a little time on making your ending flawless to leave your audience fascinated and wanting more. Whichever way you choose to conclude your uplifting talk, be sure to reflect the same level of energy, enthusiasm, and passion with which you began the speech.
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