…always leave yourself a useful exit.
Introduction
When your presentation concludes, how do you want the audience to remember you?
In my occupation, I see a large number of presentations — some are bad, many are mediocre, and very few are fantastic. But what really sets the fantastic presentations apart from the others? The ending.
At the outset, each presentation is somewhat equal: each slide deck has a beginning, middle, and end, and we all have access to many of the same images and templates. So what makes one presentation stellar and another presentation forgetful? The difference is how you present the material — a poorly delivered presentation can render the most beautiful layout useless.
Similar to how a musical composition can be ruined with a single misplaced note, a presenter can accidentally ruin a presentation with a single sentence — a “make or break” statement — that either makes the presentation impactful or a statement that betrays everything the speaker was trying to achieve.
One example
As an example, let’s look at a recent presentation I attended. In the presentation, a member of one company (let’s call him Bill) wanted to pitch a future collaboration effort to another company (let’s call it Widget Corp.).
To pitch his ideas, Bill booked a one-hour time slot with Widget Corp…so far, so good. Bill even began his speech on time, illustrating his respect for Widget Co.’s time. In his introduction, Bill uses his first eight seconds to say that he wants the presentation to be conversational rather than a one-sided speech. But, over the next hour, Bill talked for 47 minutes non-stop. During that time, he read through 12 slides — word for word — detailing the collaboration effort and the future impact of his work with Widget Corp. After finishing his final slide, Bill concluded with, “Sorry my slides were not more complete… I hope they were still informative!” I was in awe.
Regardless of the outcome, could Bill’s presentation have been better? What could he have done to make a bigger impact? Let’s look beyond some of the more obvious answers and concentrate on his final statement — the one sentence he chose to conclude his presentation.
The first half of Bill’s conclusion is an apology. Not only does this illustrate a lack of personal confidence, but it also emphasizes the incompleteness and unpreparedness of his slides. If he gives this little attention to a presentation, how little attention will he give to his work with Widget Co.?
His second statement is just as cringe-worthy. By verbalizing his hope that the slides were useful, Bill further conveys a lack of confidence in his slides, in the material he covered and, to some degree, his lack of confidence in his own preparation. After using 47 minutes of Widget Corp.’s time, Bill effectively chose to end his opportunity by saying, “I am not confident in my presentation nor my slides, but I hope to collaborate nonetheless.”
This is what I call a “dead end.” Bill’s conclusion does not invite further discussion, it cannot act as a strong jump-off point to a related topic, and it does not give Widget Co. the feeling that they are presented with a great opportunity! Much like the dead end of a road, the final statement of Bill’s presentation forces the conversation to either backtrack or take a dramatic turn to another (hopefully related) topic.
Conclusion
Unlike Bill’s presentation, we want our presentations to act as the jump-off point to an interesting, active conversation. Although you may think your presentation is isolated, this is rarely the case. There are always high-caliber curious minds in your audience waiting for the chance to collaborate and shake things up — it’s your job to find them. And you can only do that if you do not dead end your presentation.
Finally, let’s return to Bill’s situation. Under these circumstances, would you want to collaborate with Bill if you were Widget Corp.? If you were Bill, what would you have done differently? Drop a line and let me know in the comments! I’m excited to hear what you have to suggest.
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Present clearly. Present concisely. Present Proper.