Watch this! [Hides Ball] We're going to talk about openings and closings for your

presentations. This is the first thing that you do and the last thing that

people remember. So it's really important to get them right. And if you

do it right, they're directly connected. And at the end of this video as a little

bonus, I'll show you how I did that little trick. Coming up.

Hello there friends. I'm Alex Lyon and Communication Coach is here to help you increase your

impact and lead your teams with higher levels of excellence. Presentation skills

are a key way to distinguish your leadership. And the intro and conclusion

are obviously key parts of this. A lot of times we don't get to the intro in the

conclusion in terms of fine tuning until after everything's done. And so it's

really important that you work just a little extra on your opening and your

closing to make sure you start and finish the way you want to. So I'm going

to give you a little bit of philosophy and then some really concrete tips on

the intro and then we'll go to the conclusion. So first of all in terms of

philosophy your introduction needs to do a few things. It needs to gain your

audience's attention, pique their curiosity, and essentially make them want

to listen to the rest of it. And if you do it right, you can do this very

effectively. So I'm going to take what I describe as the "funnel approach" where we

go from general to specific and by the end of the introduction it's going to go

right into the body points of your presentation really well. So it's gonna

have five parts where you grab the audience's attention, you give the

relevance that the topic has to the audience, you establish your personal

credibility, your a thesis statement, and then a brief preview. So let's unpack

each of these in a little more detail.

The first step is to grab your

audience's attention. In fact, I'm working on a whole separate

series that's connected to this video and I'll put the links below in time as

I develop them on attention grabbers and the different nuances of of sharing

those. So I'm gonna give a few samples here to get you started. But feel free to

dig in deeper into each of those. So the first

way to grab the audience's attention is to do it with rhetorical questions. these

are questions that might involve the audience a little bit but essentially

don't need to be answered on the spot. But it'll pique everybody's curiosity. So

you might say for example by a show of hands how many of you have ever had a

great boss? What is it that makes leaders great? And those are two questions put

together that will pique our interest. Rhetorical questions are a great way and

a very easy way really if you work at it you can make them good and effective but

they're not a complicated way to get people interested in your topic. Another

relatively easy way is to get a good quotation to start off your presentation

that draws people in. Now a good quotation to me goes to the heart of

what your message is going to be in the body of your presentation. But it

essentially you're picking someone who said it just a little better than you

knew how to say it. For example, I'll give you a couple of examples.

Muhammad Ali once said those who are not courageous enough to take risks will

never accomplish anything in life. You get a great quote from Muhammad Ali and

that quote can go toward, for example, playing sports, naturally, or taking risks

or trying new things or trying to achieve success. A good quote will really nail it.

Another example of a quote is from a famous comedian, stand-up comic named

George Burns. He did comedy until almost he was a hundred years old. He

was booked into his deep 90s doing stand-up comedy, if you can imagine. And

he had a lot of jokes about aging and getting old and about retirement, not

wanting to retire. Anyway as George Burns once said, retiring at age 65 is

ridiculous. When I was 65, I still had pimples. So he's saying it so well. Maybe

your talk is about not necessarily wanting to retire but continuing to be

productive later in life and that's a great way to start it. So quotations are

an excellent way if you find the right one and you set it up right. A great way

to start a presentation another way is through some kind of visual illustration

anything visual to communicate your message and grab people's attention and

draw them in. I saw a recent Speaker effect as a

student speaker, I teach college, in addition doing consulting, but this

was a student speaker and she started off with something very visual. She had

like a huge gift bag and in the bag for her attention grabber she brought out

one item at a time and described it a little bit put it down and one item at a

time described a little bit. It was very visual. Each item said a little bit,

something about her just in that first 30 seconds of her presentation and it

made us really lean in and want to hear what she was going to say next. You could

also use as an easy way to do this a visual slide of some sort like on

PowerPoint. Maybe an image of funny or cute image, whatever it is it helps get to the

heart of what you're trying to express. Another way to do this the grab people's

attention is through a startling fact or statistic. Again, this is all in the

opening just in the first twenty or thirty seconds of your presentation. In

fact I was looking into retirement planning recently and here's a nice

statistic I came across that might work well for a presentation on retirement

planning. By age 65, most people only have $100,000 saved for retirement. Now if

that sounds like a lot, that will last you less than three years of expenses

into your retirement. So there's a statistic that's relatively shocking.

Most people only have $100,000 again that does sound like a lot but you tease

out the statistic is a little bit and it makes people want to hear where you're

going to say. If you're gonna do something on retirement planning, for

example, well now I am very interested in hearing what comes next. Another way to

do this is through a brief story. A lot of times stories can get too long-winded

but if you can tell a thirty-second story that really captures the essence

of what you're going to share later then it can be a wonderful way to start.

Everybody loves stories. I was watching a speaker once to talk about donating to

food pantries and then he started off with about a 30-second story describing

a family's journey to America they immigrated here and they got by in part

on the help from food pantries in their local area for the first couple of years

while they got on their feet. And it really personalized the message he was

sharing and made me want to listen. Another student that I, another student

speaker I saw was talking about cleanliness around the house and how you

don't need big expensive products to do effective

cleaning. And she started with a story about a guy named Thomas Crapper. If the

name sounds familiar he made some key improvements to the

flushable toilet back in the day. And that was a really engaging story you had

a little humor to it so these are some ways that you can have that first step

in the overall funnel from general to specific is that attention grabber and

that can be somewhat general even though it's going to the heart of the message.

the next step to get a little more specific is talk about the specific

benefits that this particular audience is going to get by listening to your

message. And you this is not easy actually you have to work this out get

to put your self in the minds of your listeners think why would they want to

care. And in two to three sentences you want to spell out exactly what they get

out of this at the end. How they personally benefit. Maybe they walk away

with a concrete retirement plan that they can use and put into practice.

that's a good benefit. Maybe they walk away with really specific

strategies for cleaning around the house on a budget. That's great. so the next

step is to establish your personal credibility. In some situations when

you're introduced by other people they'll do this for you and you won't

have to. However, if you haven't been introduced or have them introduced

adequately, you want to in about two to three sentences, really concise, talk

about your personal experience in connection with the topic as well as any

research above and beyond that that you have done. And I've seen this done very

effectively in just two to three sentences. You share why you are the one

speaking on it why not someone else why is it you and you answer that question

for people. the fourth step is your thesis statement some people call this

the central idea other people call it the main idea of your presentation. And

you want to handle this as concisely as possible. this is the one sentence you

really want to pop out of your introduction. You should pause right

before it and right after it make sure it sinks in. It should be about one

concise sentence and it should be your claim, your argument, the main point. If

they remember nothing else, how would you boil it down into one sentence. And

that'll be that theme that runs through your presentation all the way can be

very powerful and memorable sentence if you craft it right.

And the last part of this funnel of introduction is even more specific and

that's the preview of the main points that you're gonna share. So usually you

have three or so main points I recommend keeping this preview very brief if you

can pair your main points down to single words or very brief phrases you're going

to be better off. Don't get into any detail. So let's say you're talking about

retirement planning. You would say I'm going to talk about individual

retirement accounts, 401ks, and Social Security. Little pause, a little beat

between each one. And it really clearly forecasts what you're going to talk

about in your main points of the body of the presentation. So those are the main

parts of an opening of a presentation with a lot of emphasis on the attention

grabbers because that's usually the part that is key but it you have to connect

it to the rest of this introduction for it to make the most sense for your

audience. And now we're going to transition to talk about your conclusion

and show how this can be directly connected, if you do it right, to your

introduction. You're at the point in your presentation where you've done your

introduction. You've done your body the main points. And now you're ready to

conclude. So let's unpack this conclusion and especially that last closing part of

the presentation. So the first thing you need to do in your conclusion is signal

the end. You have to say in conclusion or something along those lines, in closing

in summary, to wrap things up. Now a lot of people

push back on this, say I don't want to say that. It sounds so typical. Isn't there

some other way to say this? Well, you're welcome to try, but I can tell you it's

okay. Even high-level speakers, even the President of the United States sometimes

at the end of a presentation will say in conclusion. Because it's a really clear

signal that you're ending. Even though it might feel a little bit wooden or robotic

when it comes out of your mouth, it's really good for your listeners. They want

to know that you're shutting it down, you're coming to a close and that's the

clearest signal you can get. There are a couple of ways to express this but you

have to say it really cleanly. this only takes a few words though. so that's the

first part, is signaling the end of the presentation. The next thing you want to

do is reinforce the main point. If they missed it in the intro, if they missed it

throughout the body of the presentation, this is your last chance to emphasize

the main takeaway point of your presentation, your thesis. You can also as

an add-on to this summarize your main points again. Maybe it's the kind of

presentation where people would benefit from hearing you delineate your three

main points again. Sometimes it's not necessary depending upon your message.

Sometimes it really helps. The next step is to give your call to action. A

lot of times in a presentation where there's a persuasive element to it. You

want people to take some concrete action and this is where to spell it out. You

have to tell them exactly what you recommend they do next and this is gonna

be different depending upon the topic, depending upon the audience depending

upon you there's the situation. Everything. So there's no real way to

give you a boilerplate solution but I will say to avoid this common thing that

people do I've heard this a million times and it always is lame people will

say, So the next time you find yourself [blank] and then they tell you to remember

what you said. Well this--so the next time-- has got to go. Iif you're doing a

presentation and your in front of me and you say so the next time, I can tell you

right now I'm not doing whatever it, you've already lost me. And a lot of speakers do

this because they didn't work hard enough at this closing, this call to

action. So you have to figure out an appropriate and in doable

call to action that you can spell out exactly there in concrete fashion. And

the very last thing you should do, most people call the closing of the

presentation is the final clincher where you end on a high note. I call it a

clincher. Other people call it other things like a closing and this is where,

this is where you can really do some some magic. You're going to connect the

opening attention-grabber to your clincher, to your closing. so if

you start it off with a story in your opening, you want to echo that story,

maybe even tell a little bit more of it in your closing. If you start off with a

quotation, bring that quotation back around. You

started off with some kind of illustration, you bring that illustration

back around. Boy, do audiences love it! It's very

psychologically satisfying for people to call back what they did in the beginning.

It's like a comedian will have a good punch line

toward the beginning and then later on in the same routine they'll call back

that punch line and they get a big laugh again. There's a sense of closure, sense

of satisfaction that you have really buttoned up this whole idea and it's

come full circle. So the person presenting about the food pantries that

I mentioned in the attention-grabber, the story they told, they finished a little

bit more of the story and revealed that it was in fact their family. He was

talking about himself in this opening story and how his family helped get by

on the first couple of years in the United States because of the help of

food pantries. This the person who had the bag of objects as an illustration

pulling out objects talking about her identity

later on held up the open bag and talked about the kinds of things that she

wanted in the future to put into the bag to help define who she was and move

forward in her life in that next chapter. The person who told the story about

Thomas Crapper, the person who helped innovate improvements on the toilet, she

brought that story back around and used a little humor to talk about you never

know maybe we our family name could be known again and we could be the next

Thomas Crapper. I mean that was a really great way to end it on a high note and

everybody loved it. It takes a little art it takes a little skill but working hard

at that attention-grabber in the beginning will help set up your clincher

at the end. And that's what you should be doing when you're looking at a great

opening and a great closing. Now a couple of other little quick tips

once you're done, zip that mouth. You want to be silent smile nod and say thank you.

That's all. And then pause for two seconds and walk off. You're done. Do not

say, That's it. So that's all I have to say. Uh, okay. You want to be practicing your

ending the whole time, every time you practice your presentation practice that

ending where you zip your mouth, smile, nod, say thank you.

And that's all you say. Two seconds and you walk off. Don't multiply words at the

end. It's gonna really ruin a great presentation. So there's the tips

for the opening and the closing and how they can be directly connected. Make sure

you watch for a few more moments to see how I did that magic trick with the red

ball. that's my opening and my closing. And I would love to hear your comments below.

Question of the day. What are your tips for strong openings and closings? Put

those in the comment section below so everybody else can benefit from your

experience. So thanks. God bless. and I hope the next opening and closing for

your next presentation is out of this world.

Watch this.

Whoa, whoa. Hey guys. It's the wand! That is nuts!