How to be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate!

12.3. CLOSING A TALK

First impressions, especially good ones, are fragile. Closing a discussion well is as vital to your presentation as opening one with style. Some of the tactics can be the same. For instance, one of the most powerful iterations of the artifact tactic I have ever seen was a closing tactic at the end of a presentation at a dull convention. A family values expert walked on stage with a giant plush panda bear, set it next to the podium, and then proceeded with his presentation as if everything were completely normal. He looked normal enough and his slide deck was normal, also. He went through an almost academic lecture format discussing various family statistics, but as boring as that sounds, I listened to him more intently than I had to any of the other presenters. Every sentence could have been the one explaining the reason for the big panda bear—was it his Woobie? Was there a bomb inside it? Was it a prize for an audience member? I couldn't figure it out.

He began to conclude his discussion, wrapping up some of the academic concepts he had proposed and providing the action points to the audience, but then he paused. After looking around the audience, he began to talk about family relationships. He talked about his own family and how every decision each family made resulted in a compromise or sacrifice for the other family members. He explained that his son had missed the opportunity to visit the zoo that weekend because he had been preparing for a professional ...