Always close with ADDED VALUE
This is an AI generated transcript so please forgive any errors and spelling mistakes.
Hi I’m Shola public speaking coach based in London. I’m also a professional public speaker and a professional singer.
Today, I want to start with a little question and also relate that to the world of music. Because back in the day, when I was a kid, a lot of the pop tunes would end with a fade out. And I’m sure you all know what failure is the course is going on. Keep beating and repeat until the song is over. So it’s just faded out. Today, however, a lot of the songs end quite abruptly. So you might just get one chorus at the end and boom, it’s over. But typically, there’s there’s an end, there’s a specific end to the song, not all songs, but quite a few of them now are very least more than what were the case when I was a kid.
Public speaking – plan how you will close your presentation
When we are doing our public speaking, I want you to think carefully about how you close your presentation. The reason I’m raising this topic now is because I’ve mentioned in a couple of my other blogs and podcasts but a few months ago, I was lucky enough to watch 24 speeches back to back as the judge of a public speaking contest. And it was interesting to see how different people closed their presentations. And it was clear where somebody put some time and thought and energy into how they were going to end vs. Oh, I don’t know how I’m going to finish this, I’ll just make my last point and then effectively kind of dropped the mic and walk off. And there were a handful of people that did that is just very abrupt.
Now what can happen is when we’re listening to a presentation, often we go off, you know, most people are dreaming here in there. Or maybe they’ve got their phone in their hand. And they’re just kind of doing this secret kind of looking at the phone and flipping through Instagram or texting or whatever. As a result of that, it’s really important to when you finish your presentation, you want to give people a bit of an indication that it’s coming to an end. And then you want to add some value to the close to the presentation the conclusion by at least summing up summarising your key points. So that if you did have somebody who was at snoozing away, well, you in the body of your presentation, typically when they when you say something like and to close, and to summarise and then they wake up, right?
Public speaking – let the audience know you’re wrapping up
So you want to help your audience to get the maximum they can get from your presentation. Hopefully, there’s no one snoring that loudly when you’re speaking – could be a bit a little bit distracting. Anyway, you want to have some language around, it’s time to finish, I’m nearly done. so that people can put the phone away, snap back to attention, whatever it is, they are aware that these things, these are the last few minutes with you last few moments with you. And it’s time to pay attention properly again, because you will hopefully sum up your key points.
So once you’ve made this, this sort of we made noises as to the fact that you’re going to finish quite soon, and you’ve got people’s attention. But it’s time to add that extra value by summarising by letting them know what the key things were that you discussed, so that they even if they were rude enough to not be listening, they can at least take something away and just get those kernels of goodness from you that they perhaps didn’t catch in the middle of your presentation. So you don’t want to end abruptly make your last point and then just go. Right, that’s not how you close. So in the same way, if I will go back to the analogy of the songs and the fade out versus the abrupt ending. To my mind, the abrupt end is this is the same as just finishing without any kind of summary and then just walking up the stage.
Public speaking – end it with a bang
And again, at this contest, we were probably more more than a handful of people that did that. And it was really abrupt, you felt slightly robbed. Okay, as a as a listener, as a judge, I felt like I’ve been cheated a little bit. So you don’t want to do that. Likewise, you don’t go, you don’t want to just do the fade out where you kind of make a few points. And then Okay, well, thank you. I think you don’t want to do that either. So you really want that sort of, you want to end with a bang, but it’s a controlled explosion, right. So the everybody knows, the explosion is coming. It’s coming to an end. It’s all over very soon. However, this is just a quick recap of what I spoke about. And now, thank you very much it’s finished, as opposed to what happened. And you go, right. So hope that makes sense. Just a quick one today.
Don’t fade out, don’t have the abrupt ending that you want something that’s kind of midway between the two where people know it’s coming to an end, there’s that little bit of a change in energy. But then there’s the summary. Before you finally finished, say your final words, and you will have stayed.
Hope that helps. If it did help, why don’t you join me on my next live event, you can find out more, it’s online by going to SholaKaye.com/live-event. If there isn’t a live one planned, most likely the page will redirect to my ondemand master class. So you can sit with me for an hour or so. And you’ll get your computer I’ll be mine. And I’ll share with you a few tips and tricks, in particular meant for business owners who want to grow their businesses speaking or share a message with speaking. But there’ll be some tips there that you can take away and use wherever you are and whoever it is that you speak to. In your public speaking journey. I hope that helps remember no fade out there abrupt closes, but add value and some up. Take care and I’ll speak to you soon.
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