How to Conclude a Presentation Like a Pro [A Step-by-Step Guide]

A presentation has recently become one of the most vital forms of communication in a business ecosystem. It is used for a variety of reasons in almost all sectors to reach out to stakeholders, team leaders, team members, colleagues, and more. Some might argue that the most important part of any presentation is not the content but the ending slide of the presentation. In other words, how to conclude a presentation. 

An inefficient ending is directly related to an immemorable presentation. Simply put, no one will remember what you have presented if they don’t remember your presentation. Studies suggest that when people are recalling any sort of information, they do so by recollecting the beginning and end. Enough emphasis has been laid on the importance of a great first impression but seldom has been talked about the powerful ending. Learn how you can add a professional touch when it comes to concluding presentations with these easy steps.

Step-By-Step Guide On How To Conclude A Presentation

Giving your presentation an organized conclusion is something that most people don’t know about. It is very important to know how a presentation should end and there are different interpretations about it. Simply put, there are a few steps that need to be followed to ensure that your conclusion is as solid and persuasive as the rest of your presentation and make your slides memorable for the audience. Following these steps will help you tick off the presentation completion checklist and produce presentations that resonate with the audience, increase audience engagement, and retain their attention. 

Construct a Concise Summary

You have company if you struggle to remember what to say at the end of a presentation. Most people do not realize that an overall summary of the content is often the most fundamental part of an ending. There are a few points that you can take into consideration to create the perfect summary for your presentation, which mostly have to do with the basics of an ideal summary and how you can correlate your summary to your content. Take into note the following points to ensure that your summary hits the mark.

• Highlight the Main Points: You can cover a wide range of topics throughout your presentation, and reminding your audience what you spoke about just reminds them what they should take away. Repeat briefly what the few main points of your presentation were and how they relate to the main topic of your presentation. This could be done simply as “You will remember when we touched upon…” or, “I had mentioned earlier…”
• Give the Summary a Structure: Keep the summary very brief by keeping in mind that a summary is just a recap of what has already been presented, so it is important to know that this must not be as detailed as the presentation was. This is an easy but effective way to end a PowerPoint presentation. A way you could do this could be by trying to relate it to your introduction slide so that the audience feels that they came a full circle throughout the presentation.
• Avoid Information Overload: In addition to the previous point, it is best if you keep it brief as a presenter. The last thing an audience wants to hear in a conclusion is a detailed overview of the things that they just went over. Limit yourself to just the key takeaways rather than a story similar to what has already been presented to ensure an audience listens to you rather than tuning themselves out. 

A summary is necessary if you want to know how to conclude a presentation. However, if you are not able to create a summary slide by yourself, browse through our wide range of summary templates, where you can simply edit the text to cater to your requirements.

End on a Strong Note (Choose One)

While a summary ensures that your audience knows the key highlights of your presentation, it is equally important that your presentation stays memorable. An essential point on how to end and conclude your presentation is by giving it the conclusion it deserves. As touched upon in the introduction, an audience will often try to remember information in attempting to recall the beginning or end so try to make the end memorable even more important in the context of your entire presentation. Choose one of the following elements to inculcate in your ending to give it the wow factor. 

• Call To Action (CTA): A CTA gives the audience something to do after the presentation. This could be something as simple as visiting a social media page, signing up on a website, contacting the presenter for anything related to the presentation, or following up on a future presentation or event. This makes the audience an active part of your presentation rather than passive listeners and makes them feel included and involved, where they are participants rather than mere spectators. 
• Use More Quotes: When we talk about quotes we don’t mean the typical, overused “words of wisdom” that you see in every presentation. To go out on a strong note, quote someone relatable or relevant to your field; keep the quote as relatable as possible. Don’t go out of your way to find overly philosophical sayings that go over your audience’s head; instead, find something that gives your presentation a conclusion that speaks for itself.
• Questions that Make the Audience Think: Ask a rhetorical, thought-provoking question for which your audience must think back to your presentation for answers. Another way of doing this is by presenting your question at the beginning of the presentation and circling back to it by introducing the audience with enough information to answer it after the ending slide of the presentation. This allows you to make your presentation more interactive and helps you retain your audience’s attention. 

Anticipate What the Audience Will Ask

You could have presented the most clear and easy-to-understand presentation, and there is a chance that the audience will still have a few questions. However, this may not necessarily be bad as it could mean that you have created enough interest in a topic for the audience that they are curious to know more and understand your thought process. One of the most effective ways to conclude a presentation is by staying ready for any questions that the audience may throw at you and answering them with the same confidence and body language that you presented your slideshow with. 

• Think about Potential Questions: Showing your presentation to your colleagues or a focus group where you can understand what the audience may ask is a very healthy practice that any presenter inculcates for each presentation. There are many instances where the audience comes up with an unpredictable question that fazes the presenter and makes them change their attitude and body language. Ensure that you are prepared for all sorts of questions and prepare your answers effectively. 
• Prepare Brief Answers: Sometimes less is more when facing a question at the end of your presentation. This means that try to keep your answers as short and crisp as possible, as it shows how well-versed you are with the information and to keep your audience’s interest piqued. Practice on questions you have thought about to give you someplace to start, and think about how the audience will receive the answers to prepare accordingly. 
• Offer Resources: Due to many factors, there will often be times when you simply need help to answer certain questions. Plan according to the off-chance that this may happen with you and prepare a set of resources that you can offer to the audience if this happens to be the case, and you need to provide them with further information outside of the presentation.

Add Contact Details on the Ending Slide of the Presentation

This could be considered an addition to the CTA, but it goes without saying that your audience must know how they can reach out to you after the presentation. Present to them your phone number, email address, social media links, or any appropriate website links for audiences to reach out to. That said, give only a few contact details that may overwhelm your audience to the point of ignoring all contact details altogether; keep only the most relevant and necessary forms of contact available for your audience to rely on. 

If you are wondering how to conclude a presentation, keep in mind that providing your contact information is key, as it gives your audience a chance to get involved further than what they could with just a presentation by enrolling themselves in further activities or information, allowing them to retain more of what you presented. 

Thank the Audience and the Team

One of the last things that a presenter does is thank all parties involved for all their contributions. This begins with thanking team members – those who compiled the slideshow, those who went through the efforts to find the relevant data and information, and those who are direct team members. This is an easy and efficient way to acknowledge those who have been involved with a project and give them the credit that they deserve for the work that they have put in. 

Finally, thank the audience for their time, patience, efforts, and respect to ensure they feel seen and understood at the end of the presentation. This is an etiquette for appreciating them and their participation. To add to your visuals, add a Thank You slide that encompasses your brand identity. Interestingly, this can be combined with the Contact Us page to make it more streamlined and include all vital information in a singular slide.

Ending your presentation with a proper Thank You slide allows your audience to understand that you have reached the end of your presentation. It avoids any sort of confusion between the audience and the presenter. If you are looking for high-quality readymade thank you slide templates, browse our template catalog.

Additional Tips on How to Conclude a Presentation

After taking a look at the step-by-step guide on how to end a presentation slide, it can also help to keep in mind a few additional tips you can use to elevate your landing to another level and ensure that your audience finds it memorable and helpful. Here are a few ways to end a presentation and ensure that your slideshow becomes a hit with your audience.

1. Be Respectful of Your Audience’s Time

It is important to understand and respect that the audience has taken time out to see what you have to present, and the easiest way to do that is by ensuring you are not overstepping any bounds and are completing your presentation in the promised timeframe. This includes any post-presentation activities that you may have planned to engage the audience with. 

2. Ending With a Precise Meaning 

Ending a presentation can quickly become very awkward if you have not prepared how to close a presentation as it transitions into an abrupt silence or unplanned conversation. Be sure to include a definite ending to your presentation so that there is no confusion between you and the audience, and that lets them know you have concluded your presentation.

3. Come Full Circle at the End of the Presentation

This is an effective way to conclude a presentation, where you take the audience on a narrative journey and bring it full circle, in the end, to relate it to something you said in the beginning. This could be as easy as answering a question you laid out at the beginning or a simple quote that relates to the situation after the end of the presentation. This makes it seem like you have rehearsed and planned a complete conclusive presentation, which helps your reputation as a presenter.

4. Try to End On a High Note

This particular tip may depend on each circumstance and situation, but a presentation becomes a great medium wherein you can uplift and motivate your audience by leaving an empowering and encouraging message. While most topics lead to a positive message in the end by themselves, it is important to remember that at the end of every tunnel, there is light, and a presenter has the power to guide the audience toward the light. 

5. Use a Strong Visual Message

We are all familiar with the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” which essentially means that an image can strike a chord with the audience in a way that words simply cannot. Use vibrant colors and themes, maintain an aesthetic, and include background images and other visual elements to improve the quality of your presentations and make them more memorable with your audience, as they are more likely to remember and recall a visual presentation rather than a boring, text-heavy presentation slide.

SlideUpLift’s Conclusion Templates You Should Try

Want to know how to conclude a presentation? You can choose from a variety of conclusion templates for inspiration or download them to use in your own slideshow. These templates allow you to present the main details of your presentation in point format and describe your findings efficiently. Keep in mind that the elements of these templates are completely editable, this means that the text, font, images, illustrations, icons, and color can all be customized as required by the user. They are all also fully compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Conclusion Slide PowerPoint Template

This template provides a neat and professional-looking blue-white theme that helps cover the three main points of the presentation. The light bulb illustration gives the presentation a concluding feeling, and the icons help illustrate the main points of the presentation. It can be used by users of PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Conclusion Lessons Learned PowerPoint Template

This is a visual-driven template that uses a five-point summary to cover the important findings or the key points of the presentation. The left side of the template shows a pencil broken down into five pieces, each in a different color, representing a different point. This template, which can be used in PowerPoint and Google Slides, is visually appealing and helps increase audience engagement. 

Blue Conclusion Slide PowerPoint Template

This is an image-themed template that presents a general takeaway from the presentation that can help the audience keep track of what was presented. This template has a blue color theme, as depicted by the shape and the title, which can be edited to cater to personal requirements. The image corresponds to the content and the shape gives the template an overall structure, which is compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Thank You Conclusion PowerPoint Template

This attractive template combines the features of a typical Thank You slide with those of a Contact Us page to provide the audience with more than what they would have otherwise gotten. The purple and white color theme is engaging but can be customized to suit brand or personal requirements. You can use this template for PowerPoint or Google Slides to cater to your needs.

Conclusion

To understand how to conclude a presentation, you must realize how important and overlooked presentation closures are and how reliant the entirety of the presentation can depend on how well-received the conclusion is. If the introduction of a presentation has to start with a bang, the conclusion must make the audience want more. It should rightly balance elegance and transition into that phase of the presentation where you give the most vitally important part of your content to close the gathering and acknowledge all those who made the presentation possible.

An ideal conclusion is like the backbone of a presentation which allows your audience to take time to understand and comprehend your content matter so that what you wanted to convey reaches them. Hence, keep in mind the importance of a conclusion and how to close a presentation with the various steps you can follow and the few additional tips that have been provided for your presentation to be remembered by the audience.

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