Sadly for a lot of presentations sometimes the only thing that an audience remembers about your presentation is the conclusion.
To ensure that the audience remembers your message you need to take the following three steps:
- Guide your audience gently into the end of the talk, let them know the end of the talk is near because there’s nothing that wakes an audience up more than the phrases “in conclusion” or “to summarize”. Once they’ve woken up they’re in the perfect state to receive your information
- Revise what you’ve said. There’s nothing like repetition to lodge a message in an audience’s memory and this is the perfect time to refresh the information that you have given to your audience.
- Make an impact. Give them something to remember. You can use a story or a quotation that can re-emphasise your points and make them more tangible or if you want to motivate or inspire your audience to change then the most powerful tool you have is the “Call to Action”.
You didn’t stand up and talk just so that people will do nothing with your information, you want them:
- to take your information and use it,
- to take your message and spread it,
- to listen to your words and allow them to change their lives.
A call to action is a challenge to your audience to do something.
For instance, tonight when you go home I challenge each one of you to look at an old presentation you made and write a call to action for the ending and see how much it improves the presentation.