Public Speaking Pet Peeve: Blowing the Close
Were you ever a fan of the TV show Lost?
I never got into it, but my husband loved that show. He was addicted and couldn’t wait to find out how it was going end. How were all the storylines going to weave in together?
After he watched the series finale, he was totally pissed. The ending was lame. He said to me “Well, there’s 6 years of my life I can’t get back.”
Have you noticed that no one ever talks about the pilots of TV shows, but everyone talks about the endings of shows? People are still obsessed with the fate of Tony Soprano. The final scenes of 6 Feet Under haunt me still. And Mad Men went from a WTF ending to a that’s amazing ending in the blink of an eye.
Endings matter on TV and they certainly matter in your speech.
But most speakers (and once again you, my friend, are not most speakers) utterly screw up a great speech in the final fleeting moments.
This leads to my third pet peeve:
Pet Peeve #3 – Blowing the close
Nothing makes Michelle sadder than seeing a great speech that is ruined by its ending.
The very last words of your speech are what the audience remembers MOST about your presentation (those smarty pants social psychologists call this the Recency Effect).
If you have ever ended your presentation with:
- “Anyone have questions for me?”
- “That’s all I have for you today.”
- “I’m out of time. Thank you.”
- *drops the mic* and flees
- “Run to the back of the room and buy!”
Then you’re blowing the close of your speech and losing a valuable opportunity for the audience to be able to clearly articulate and then spread your message.
The final words of your speech are some of the most precious real estate you have in any presentation. You’ve got to send the audience out with a battle cry, not a “whelp, I’m done” shrug of the shoulders.
When you nail your speech, your audience becomes your advocates and wants to spread and talk about your message. The last words you utter on that stage should enable them to do that with ease.
Don’t let the final thought of your speech be an afterthought. Instead, make sure that it’s a well-crafted, tweetable way to spread your message.
[Tweet “Don't blow the close: send your audience out with a well-crafted, tweetable battle cry.”]
If you want help discovering those crucial last words that have your audience spreading your message Grab your copy of the Audience Journey and never blow your close again.
Next week we will tackle pet peeve #4 which is all the rage in presentations right now, but just because it’s on trend doesn’t mean it’s creating an great experience for your audience. It’s actually making their heads explodes (slight exaggeration).
oh boy, this is such a problem for me…not only speaking but closing out blog posts too! More effort there is certainly needed. Thanks for the reminder Michelle!
You’re welcome! And you’re certainly not alone. Closings are hard – when writing a speech, you give it all you’ve got and then you peter out at the end. The ending is when you need to ramp it up into high gear.
I have always found ending the presentation with a relevant open-ended question is very effective. After that, you can ask does anyone have any questions for me? The likely question will be the answer to your last question posed in your presentation and this will present further discussion or curiosity depending on how you respond and how much time there is after the presentation to discuss.
I agree with asking “What questions do you have for me” rather than “Do you have questions?” Open ended questions trump close ended any day of the week.
However, you need a wrap-up after the Q&A. The speaker should be in control of the final words of their speech and the battle cry that sends the audience out into the world with your message. Do Q&A and then have a final wrap up. Because you never want to end your presentation on some strange question instead you want to end with what you want the audience to remember most from your speech.
Yup…which is why the relevance of the question is just as critical as the question being open ended.
I clicked on your link for “Grab the audience journey” and entered my name and email address, but didn’t receive the message in my inbox allowing me to confirm. I waited a while and filled out the info again and pushed submit, but still nothing.
Hi Corie! First, check your spam folder. Second, depending on your email provider it can take up to 24 hours for the email to arrive. When I tested it, it took 2 hours to show up in my gmail. Hope that helps!
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Hi Dr Mazur, Thank you for your thought-provoking blog. I would now like to apply your advice, but I’m left with one problem: When exactly -should- I ask for audience questions? I can’t omit this segment; I have to put them quite near the end…. but my experience is that once the audience has stopped asking questions, then they’re ready to go. They don’t want me to say “OK, if you ve no more questions, then I’ll summarize.” It feels like I’m constraining them against their will. What would you advise?
Thanks a lot, Julie.
What I do is to tell the audience that you’re about to wrap up, but before you do you’ll take some questions and after their questions, you want to leave them with a final thought (or tell a story). That sets the expectation that there will be Q&A followed by a brief closing. Hope this helps Julie!
Yes, I can visualize that. Thank you. Julie
[…] Public Speaking Pet Peeves: Blowing the Close. You nail your speech, the audience is hanging on your every word, so why drop the ball at the last minute? My public speaking pet peeve: blowing the close! […]