Mastering the question-and-answer portion of any public-speaking appearance or presentation is critical to ensuring your audience walks away confident in your expertise, convinced of your main point and willing to accept your call to action. That is why we have spent so much time on discussing how to handle questions in posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Now let’s discuss the best way to end the Q&A to reinforce your main point and lead audience members to take whatever action you want.
If it is in your control, always end after a positive question that allowed you reinforce your message. You do not want to end on a hostile question or something that is so off-topic that it is distracting. Even if the moderator or host on the sidelines is indicating you should wrap it up, you should ask the audience for one more quick question. Consider it a palate cleanser so the hostile or poor question is forgotten while the audience focuses on the new one.
Of course, you may not have this option in a company meeting where your supervisor or another high executive is indicating it is time to move on. If that is the case, skip right into the next step.
Thank You. Here’s My Details
After the last question, here is the best way to wrap things up.
First, thank the audience for their attention. Then tell them how they can get in touch with you if they have any further questions or want to discuss anything from the presentation. If possible, put a slide up with your contact details—email, phone number, etc. You may skip this step if it is a company presentation where everyone knows you. But include your details if there are people present from other departments. It can’t hurt. If this is a public appearance, you can include your company or personal logo along with your details.
You can suggest that people take a photo of your details with their cell phone. Pause for a moment so people can note down your details before you continue.
If you are able to stick around after your public appearance is over, now is the time to tell the audience that you will be available later for one-on-one discussions. (Some people prefer the moderator tell the audience they will be available, but I think it is more personal when you do it yourself).
Reinforce Your Point
Finally, you should always end your appearance by restating the main point of your presentation and repeat your call of action. You don’t want your message to have gotten lost during a long Q&A session. Audiences sometimes have very short memories.
You can vary your language, but reinforce your point and call to action one last time to make sure the audience knows what you want.
This is something that many speakers pass up, and it’s a huge mistake. This is your last chance to impress upon your audience what you want from them. Reminding of what you want them to do is vital to your success.
Even if you are being pushed off the stage you need to push one last time for what you want. Whatever your main point or call to action is—“Don’t forget to vote for me” or “I hope you will approve the project”— or anything else, you want it to be the last thing people hear from you.
That’s because of a psychological phenomenon called the “recency effect.” First described by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, the effect indicates that people are more likely to recall the most recent information they receive because it remains in the short-term memory. In other words, the last thing you say will stick in the audience’s minds longer.
So make sure you end on your main point or call to action.
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