Archive for the ‘closing’ Category

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How Moses Can Help Speakers Wrap Things Up Successfully

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
Image Credit Sometimes We All Need A Little Help Delivering A Great Closing

Sometimes We All Need A Little Help Delivering A Great Closing

The voice of authority is one that any audience will respond to. However, all too often you and I just don’t represent enough of an authority figure to command that level of respect from an audience that didn’t know us before we started to speak to them. If we want to wrap up our speech in a way that will leave a lasting impression with our audience, we need to find a way to use a voice of authority to deliver our last few words to them…

Bring In Moses

It really doesn’t matter what your religious beliefs are (or for that matter, what the religious beliefs of the members of your audience are). That’s because everyone knows the story of Moses: he went up the mountain, got some instructions on how to live his life, and came back down with the 10 commandments written on two stone tablets.

What this means for you as a speaker is that your audience is already primed and ready to “receive” 10 commandments from you – and they will instantly associate them with the story of Moses. In fact, they may even start to treat you as if you were Moses and the “10 commandments” that you are presenting to them will be treated as if they come from a higher power.

No matter how this unfolds, presenting your closing points in the form of 10 concise statements makes them very easy to both understand and remember. What you are doing is making it easy for your audience to grasp your main points and to remember them long after your speech is over.

Use An Authoritative Quote To Close

Often times there is a single individual who is associated with the topic that we are talking about. If we’re talking about people getting along, Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King comes to mind. If it were about space travel then Neil Armstrong would be one of the first people that we’d think about.

Since your audience already knows about this person and the fact that they are somehow a figure of authority in regards to the topic that you are talking about, why not invite them to say a few words during the closing of your speech.

By taking the time to research your subject area and to identify the individuals who are the authority figures for that area, you are already well on your way to winning your audience over. Now take the time to study the quotes that those important figures have made – which one most closely aligns with the closing message that you want to leave with your audience?

When you use a quote from an authority figure, for a brief moment it is as if that person was in the room. With a little luck and if you’ve selected the right quote, then it will also appear as though they are endorsing or echoing what you’ve just said. This is what it takes to make sure that your message makes a lasting impact on your audience.

What All Of This Means For You

No matter how fantastic the opening of your speech is or how many powerful points you made during the body of your speech, it’s really how you go about closing the speech that will make the difference. Now you have two more ways to do this well.

Using the 10 Commandments closing technique allows you to boil down the main points in your speech into “10 commandments”. Your audience will recognize this format and will treat it with additional respect. You can also use authoritative quotes as a way to include an authoritative figure in your closing and make it appear as though they endorse the points that you have made.

In order for your speech’s closing to make an impact on your audience, it must have authority. No matter if you choose to create your own 10 commandments or if you invite a respected figure to provide a quote for you to use, adding this kind of authority to your closing will ensure that you end your speech on a high note.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: Can you think of a situation in which using the “10 Commandments” closing would be the wrong way to go?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

A bad global economy means one thing for workers: loss of jobs. Just about every company has gone through this painful experience as firms have struggled to find ways to stay afloat during the most recent global recession. Into this environment, public speakers can find themselves asked to give a speech to a dispirited audience. How the heck are you going to give a good speech to an upset audience?

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Good Speeches Always Have A Happy Ending

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
Image CreditLeaving Your Audience Happy Makes For A Good Speech

Leaving Your Audience Happy Makes For A Good Speech

When you are designing your next speech, you’re going to have an important decision to make: how do you want your audience to feel once you’re done talking? More often than not, you’re going to want them to be in a happy, positive mood. This means that you’re going to have to end your speech in a way that makes this happen. Say hello to the Great and Bridge speech closing techniques.

The “How Great It’s Going To Be” Speech Closing

When you use this speech closing technique, you use the ending of your speech to paint a mental picture of the future for your audience. The image that you are going to leave them with is one filled with unlimited possibilities.

In order to set the stage for this mental image, you are going to have to use the part of your speech that comes before the closing to paint an entirely different picture. During the body of your speech you are going to want to show your audience just how bad life is right now. We’re talking about serious doom and gloom.

In order to make this sequence work out, when you are creating your speech you are going to want to work out what your closing image is going to look like and then work your way back. By doing this you’ll be sure that your story is consistent.

The “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” Speech Closing

Sometimes you won’t have to convince your audience that things are bad right now – they already know it! In this case, you are going to want to take a different approach with your speech closing.

The challenges that your audience are currently facing probably seem insurmountable to them. It’s going to be your job to show them how they can overcome them.

When you are using the bridge over troubled waters closing, you’ll want to paint a clear picture of where your audience wants to get to. Next you’ll want to acknowledge the obstacles that are standing in their way of getting there. Finally, you’ll want to show how your idea or solution can offer them a bridge over the troubled waters that they are facing that will allow them to get to where they want to go.

What All Of This Means For You

Attend any course on public speaking or read any book on the subject and you’ll be told that it’s what you cover in your closing that your audience is going to walk away from your speech remembering.

This means that if you can leave them happy, your audience will have a positive impression of what you’ve told them. The “How Great It’s Going To Be” and the “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” closings are two ways of accomplishing this.

Having a selection of different ways to close your speech is like having the right tools to complete a wood working project. Sure you could do it with the wrong tools, but having the right tools makes it that much easier. Next time you are writing a speech, take a look and see if either of these two happy ending techniques can make your audience walk away remembering what you said.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that it is always a good idea to leave your audience feeling happy?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Giving a speech in front of an audience can be one of the toughest things that you’ll ever do. Unless of course you are invited to be on television. Having watched 1,000′s of hours of television you might naturally assume that you are the perfect TV guest. That’s where you’d be wrong…

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Public Speakers Need To Put The Jigsaw Puzzle Together To Have A Good Closing

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Image Credit A good closing is no puzzle if you know how to put the pieces together

A good closing is no puzzle if you know how to put the pieces together

When it comes to wrapping up a speech that you are giving, you want to do it right and not leave your audience wondering why you stopped talking all of a sudden. Two great ways to do this are to use the “jigsaw puzzle” and the “future vision” closing techniques. For the right speech, using one of these closings can make the difference between a so-so speech and a real crowd pleaser.

The Jigsaw Puzzle Close

The jigsaw puzzle close is one of my favorites. It’s not easy to do correctly, but if you take the time to plan it out, then you can create a very powerful speech.

When you are using this type of closing, you start by identifying a major problem that your audience is dealing with. In this case, the bigger the problem, the better. As you discuss the problem, you really want to get the entire room nodding in agreement with you that it’s a big, big problem.

An example of such a large problem would be if you were addressing an audience who worked for a company who had outgrown their current offices. You could detail all of the difficulties that they were currently facing because they were out of room.

The next thing that you want to do is to break the problem into multiple pieces. Continuing our example, this is where you would break an office overcrowding situation into multiple issues such as the lack of available parking, not enough offices, and not enough conference rooms to meet with customers.

Once you’ve done this, you then start to identify how your solution can solve each of the separate issues that you’ve brought up. In our example, if you had a larger workspace that you were trying to get the audience to move into, then you’d show how it would solve each of their individual problems.

Finally, in your closing you bring it all together and show how your solution solves each of the pieces of their problem and thereby solves the entire problem.

The Future Vision Close

The future vision close is easy to use and is almost always a sure fire hit with your audience. Let’s talk frankly here for just a moment: nobody can really predict the future. However, when you use this closing for your speech, you boldly claim that you can see the future.

When you are using this closing, you need to make sure that your opening and the body of your speech all lead up to the closing. In the closing, you make your predictions about the future.

These predictions show that by adopting your point of view, your audience can make the most of what is coming their way. This type of closing is hard to argue with because of two things: it hasn’t happened yet and you seem so certain about how it’s all going to turn out.

What All Of This Means For You

How you choose to end your speech is one of the most important decisions that you’ll make when you are designing your speech. If you do it correctly, then your speech can make a lasting impression on your audience.

If you choose to use the jigsaw closing technique, then you’ll have to break the audience’s big problem up into multiple smaller issues that your solution can solve. If you use the future vision closing then your vision of how the future is going to turn out should lead your audience to adopting the points that you are trying to convince them about.

Both of these closing are very powerful tools in the hands of a public speaker. Make sure that you use them, but be careful and make sure that you use them with care!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How far into the future do you think your audience will believe that you can see?

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P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Communicator Newsletter are now available. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you are designing your next speech, you’re going to have an important decision to make: how do you want your audience to feel once you’re done talking? More often than not, you’re going to want them to be in a happy, positive mood. This means that you’re going to have to end your speech in a way that makes this happen. Say hello to the Great and Bridge speech closing techniques.

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Helping Your Audience By Going After An Iceberg With A Shotgun

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
Image Credit When You're Hunting For A Good Speech Closing, Sometimes A Shotgun Is What You Need

When You're Hunting For A Good Speech Closing, Sometimes A Shotgun Is What You Need

If how you wrap up your next speech is really the most important part of the speech, then what’s the best way to do it? The last thing in the world that you want to do is to end up leaving your audience flat – thanks for listening to me, got any questions? Instead, you need to have a collection of possible ways to close your speech that you can pick and choose from. I’ve got three for you to take a look at now: the iceberg, the shotgun, and the offer to help.

The Iceberg Closing

This type of closing is well suited to those speeches where you have a lot of interconnected details that you’ve laid out for your audience. Your challenge as a speaker is to find a way to remind your audience of everything that you’ve covered while not overwhelming them.

The key to this type of closing is to group the various points that you’ve made into two or three main conclusions. These are what you are going to want the audience to remember. During the close you’ll present your main point (tip of the iceberg) and then you’ll present the various points that support that main point (body of the iceberg).

Now there’s no way that your audience is going to remember your multiple supporting points. However, what they will remember are your two or three main points. They will even vaguely remember that you did a good job of explaining why they should support these main points – but they won’t remember all of your supporting points.

The Shotgun Closing

Let’s move on to a more tricky type of speech to give. Sometimes we are faced with the challenge of delivering a speech in which there is a lot of information that we need to get across to our audience. Now it’s nice if this information is related to each other in some way, but all to often that is not the case.

A good example of this would be if you were introducing people to a new piece of software. There are many things that you’ll have to talk about like how you log in, what the control bar does, where your files are saved, etc. In cases like this, you’ve got a challenge on your hands – it’s going to be all to easy to overwhelm your audience and have them walk away from your speech not remembering anything.

The shotgun closing provides you with a way to prevent this from happening. The shotgun closing starts, somewhat surprisingly, when you open your speech. The best way to do this is to give your audience a verbal quiz with multiple questions about the facts that you want them to walk away from your speech knowing. Clearly they won’t have the answers now, but have them take the quiz anyway.

Next, you deliver your speech and in your speech you need to step through each of the questions on the quiz in the same sequence that they were on your quize. Finally, as part of your closing, have your audience take the verbal quiz one more time. This combination of seeing / hearing / doing can do wonders for your audience’s ability to retain what you’ve said.

The “I’m Here To Help You” Closing

When you have a problem that you need to solve, who wouldn’t want someone to show up and offer to help you out? That’s exactly what this closing does for your audience.

This closing once again starts with your opening. In your opening, you need to identify the challenge that the audience is facing. Once you’ve done this, you then need to spend the body of your speech identifying the features of your product and then relate them to the goal of solving the challenge that your audience is trying to achieve.

Finally, in your closing you are going to want to take it up a level and review what your audience is trying to achieve, and then go over how your product will help them to achieve it.

What All Of This Means For You

The way that you choose to close your next speech is perhaps the most important decision that you’ll make about that speech. In order to create the most powerful closing, you need to know as many different closing styles as possible.

Three powerful closing styles include the iceberg, the shotgun, and the “I’m here to help” approaches. The iceberg is good for summarizing lots of related points, the shotgun is a good way to get people to remember unrelated points, and the “I’m here to help” approach works to show people how your solution relates to their issues.

As with all such things in life, there is no one solution that is right for every speech that you’ll give. Instead, you are going to have to evaluate what you’d like to communicate to your audience and pick the closing that works best for you. Good luck!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What would be the best way to deliver the quiz that is part of the shotgun closing?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Check with just about any professional speaker or pick up a book at the book store on public speaking and you’ll get some great advice. They’ll tell you exactly what you SHOULD be doing. That’s all good, but what’s been missing has been anyone talking about the other side of that coin – what should you NOT be doing?

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Why Your Speech’s Ending Doesn’t Work And What To Do About It

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Image Credit You don't want to lead your audience to a dead ending…

You don't want to lead your audience to a dead ending…

Quiz time: what’s the most important part of your next speech? The opening? The points that you make in the middle to support your position or idea? Nope, it’s the close. The last few words out of your mouth are the ones that will have the greatest impact on your audience. Since this is true, why are you doing such a poor job with your speech endings?

Where We Are Going Wrong

I’m no different than anyone else – left to my own devices, I’ll start writing a speech from the opening to the close. It turns out that this is exactly the wrong way to go about writing a speech.

What you really want to be doing is to start by writing out your speech’s closing. Look, your closing isn’t going to be all that long and so it sure seems as though you should make each word count. By writing it out you’ll be able to craft and polish exactly what you’ll end up saying.

An additional benefit of starting with the end is that once you’ve nailed down just exactly what your main point is, it makes writing the rest of the speech that much easier. You’ll be able to prevent yourself from going off-track because you’ll know where you want to leave your audience when your speech is done.

The “Solution Found” Ending

In the world of music, there are certain forms of music that get repeated in many different songs. The songs are all different; however, if you’ve studied music then you are able to pick out which form the song is using.

In the world of public speaking it’s exactly the same. There are a set of speech closing “forms” that get used over and over again. You need to pick the one that works the best with the speech that you are giving.

One of the classic forms is called the “solution found” ending. This type of ending is closely tied to both the opening and the body of your speech. When used correctly it can work as a powerful tool for convincing your audience.

The solution found ending requires that you start your speech by explaining to your audience what the characteristics of a good solution to their problem are. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about world hunger or how to clean your carpets, it’s the same idea.

In the body of your speech you are going to want to explain the features that your product or idea has. This is where you show the audience why it’s such a great product / idea.

In the closing part of your speech you now relate your product’s / idea’s features to the characteristics that make up an ideal solution to their problem. It’s this mapping of your product / idea to what you framed as being the perfect solution that will convince the audience to choose your solution.

The Funnel Effect

A different classic speech closing technique is called “the funnel effect”. This method is best used when you are giving a speech that has many different points in it.

The problem with giving a speech that contains a lot of information is that your audience is going to struggle with trying to identify just exactly what they need to remember when the speech is over. As the speaker, you can help them out by picking out the two or three key points that you want to remember as they walk away.

The net effect of this is that you create a “funnel” for your speech. The body has many key points while the closing has only a few – the most important ones.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers we all want the same thing: to change the world. If we are going to be successful at this then we’re going to have to make sure that our audience remembers our speech once we’re done talking.

It’s the closing of our speech that is the most important. In order to make it easy for our audience to remember what we’ve said, we can use some of the classic forms that have been created in order to design powerful speech closings.

Two of the classic closing forms are “solution found” and “the funnel effect”. Both of these forms allow you to start creating a speech with a clear ending in mind.

It is the responsibility of the speaker to make it easy for our audiences to remember the main point of our speech. By creating a great closing, you will have ensured that you are a successful speaker!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How many points do you think that you can pack into a closing and still have your audience remember them?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If how you wrap up your next speech is really the most important part of the speech, then what’s the best way to do it? The last thing in the world that you want to do is to end up leaving your audience flat – thanks for listening to me, got any questions? Instead, you need to have a collection of possible ways to close your speech that you can pick and choose from. I’ve got three for you to take a look at now: the iceberg, the shotgun, and the offer to help.

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