Let’s look at the designing the closes. Notice this is plural, not singular. There are two closes required when we are speaking. Usually there will be Q&A at the end and we have to account for that. We design our first close to wrap up our talk. We open for Q&A and then we have lost control of proceedings. Make no mistake. Question time can become a street fight with no rules. Anyone can ask anything they like, no matter how tangential, irrelevant and obtuse it may be. We cannot control it, so we just have to deal with it.
The problem is the final question may concern something absolutely unrelated to what we talked about. The result is the audience walk out of the room with that information forefront in their minds, rather than our carefully crafted, especially tailored key message. We cannot allow that to happen. We need to design a second close so that our message dominates the final impression of our speech. The audience must walk out of that presentation with our key message ringing in their minds or we will have failed in our fundamental task. We can give slightly different versions of the same information for each close. The key is to prepare two closes at the very start
In the delivery of our talk, we need to end on a crescendo in this last close. Many speakers let their voice trail off and then just peter out to nothing. This is a very consistent problem and speakers do not seem to be aware they are allowing this to happen. We know that final impression is key and the point is we determine what that will be. Let’s have a rousing message at the end and let’s hit that message hard. Here are some closes we can use:
To Convince or Impress
We repeat the major benefit. We will have a number of take aways for our audience and a good plan is to select only the most memorable and most powerful and repeat that benefit to the audience. Always focus on the highest priority messages, rather than diluting the key message with a host of other lesser messages, all competing for the listener’s attention. Use a quotation. We may be very smart and have lots of great things to say. That is just using ourselves though as the reference point. Sometimes we will employ the credibility of an established expert or powerful influencer and draw on a quotation from their words. These are usually very famous phrasings so the audience will recognise the quote immediately. We can curate pithy sayings and have them ready to go when we need them. We all run across these at different times so the trick is to keep track of some which we can use in our presentations and have them handy to draw upon.To Inform
Repeat your key point. In the inform talk we will have been passing along a lot of information, much of it very detailed. It can be confusing for an audience to know which information to focus on. We select the one piece of information we believe will be the most important and we repeat it again. We don’t want to make the audience work hard to follow what we are sayings. By determining the key points, we do the work for them so all they have to do is absorb what we are saying, rather than having to analyse it for themselves. Recap the steps of a process or plan. In the inform talk we are often providing so much information that we have to group it into brackets for the audience to understand. We may outline “the nine steps” or “the four key data points” etc. This numbered packaging up of information makes it much easier for the audience to navigate through our talk and keep up with what we are saying. At the end, we select one of the key information pieces and then remind the audience about it.To Persuade
Present the action and benefit. We won’t be keen to take a recommended action unless we think there is something in it for ourselves. By combining the action needed with the benefit, it is clear to the audience the value of taking our advice. Final Recommendation. We select the key course of action we have been talking about. We restate it at the very end and this makes it very clear what we hope the audience will do from now.
The final impression is in our hands, to mould and shape in the way we want it. We must dominate the final message and jettison any distractions which may have arisen during the question time. The key is to design the close very carefully and deliver it with power and conviction. If we do that, then our messages will resonate with our audiences and that is why we are doing this in the first place, isn’t it.
