Home | Model | Cover | Explanation | Purpose | Bottom Line | Blueprint
Moving Blueprint | Body | Ending | Sample | Quiz | Handout

Yes—this section tells you how to end your presentation. There are several good ways.

Repeat your blueprint slide

If you've gone over something complicated, your audience may appreciate a recap:

You don't need to retitle this slide. The audience has seen the slide before and knows what you're doing.

For many presentations, repeating the blueprint slide is too mechanical. But there are other ways to end your presentation. Here are a few:

Restate your purpose

Reminding your audience why you gave your presentation can be important, especially if your goal is to persuade them or to tell them a conclusion. That's what's going on here:

Finishing with your bottom line leaves it firmly in the minds of your audience.

Give a summarizing example

The presentation on golf might benefit by showing what types of scores a pro and a hacker might get when playing 9 holes, like this:

The scorecard helps put everything together for the audience.

Call for questions

Many presenters want to take questions from the audience. The best signal for that is a slide asking for questions. Here's an example:

Use a combination of techniques

The presentation on golf might end by showing the scorecard for the pro and hacker and asking for questions:

Or . . . just end!

For a computer presentation, your last slide should always be an opaque one. If you're through with the body of your presentation, have nothing to say, and don't want to take questions, just go directly to your opaque slide. It says your presentation is over!

Your next step

You've seen the entire model now. Want to see it at work? The next step is to look at the sample presentation.

Copyright 2007 by Edward P. Bailey
(all rights reserved)