Here are the four most common closures I have heard:

  • “So what do you think?”
  • “So…?”
  • “How do you feel about that?”
  • “Any questions?”

None of these is a valid close. All of these closes make it very easy for your audience to evade telling you what they’re thinking, and practically invite them to give you the brush off.

When you give a presentation, you want an action to be taken as a consequence. You need to know before you begin what action you want the audience to take when you present.

Then you need to make sure that when you close, you ask them to take that action.

You could start the presentation by saying, “We’re here today to look at how the sonic machine can help your company grow their business and what it would take to get started today.” The close of the presentation should be a direct recap of the hot points or buy points, and you should recap all of those points in your summary. Throughout the presentation you should be having lots of questions and interaction so that you understand completely their needs and are focused only on the customer, not the product.

You could close like this:

“As we’ve discussed today, the sonic machine will help your company by eliminating waste, improving your delivery time to customers by 20%, and increasing your profits. So now we want to look at how to get started.”

PS: Take a look at the strategic presentation skills training offered.