How to open and close presentations: Presentation lesson from Mark Powell

To give a successful presentation, they say you need to have a good beginning, a good ending, and keep them close together. And sure enough, research shows that audiences remember the first and last few minutes of a presentation long after they've forgotten most of what was said in the middle. Psychologists call this the primacy-recency effect. But you might prefer to think of your opener and your close as two bookends, holding up your talk. To do their job, they both need to be strong. Now, starting off by saying good morning, introducing yourself, thanking your audience for coming, apologising for a small technical problem with your audiovisuals, and asking if people can hear you at the back is clearly not a strong opening. But neither is this. I want to talk to you today about the kind of world we in the business community are passing on to the next generation. What's wrong with it? It's short, direct, and boring. Let's see how it might have sounded. Environmental degradation, a declining economy, crippling taxes, chronic diseases, a life expectancy shorter than that of their parents, and $30,000 of debt for every man, woman, and child. This is the nightmare world we're passing on to our kids. Now, that's a good opening. Watch how these presenters gain their audience's attention right at the start. Good morning. Sometime in the early 1980s, a business traveller called a low-cost carrier called People Express to reserve a flight. He was kept on hold for so long, he thought to himself, either this airline is incredibly busy or incredibly inefficient. Needless to say, the flight was never booked, and People Express went out of business in 1987. The name of the business traveller was Richard Branson, who, recognising a great business opportunity when he saw it, went on to launch Virgin Atlantic Airlines, and the rest, of course, is history. But my question to you is, just how bad does your customer service have to be to turn a potential client into a competitor? There was a great book published a few years back called The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. In it, he refers to the popular TV quiz show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which I'm sure you've all seen. As you may know, contestants can get help with questions they can't answer by either phoning a friend or asking the audience. As you might expect, calling an intelligent friend helps, 65% of the time, in fact. But here's the interesting thing. The studio audience isn't selected on the basis of intelligence. So how often do you think they're able to answer the question correctly? The answer is 91% of the time. Statistically, that's just amazing, and it proves the power of teams. I want to say a few things about winning. Did you know that in all the major golf tournaments of the last 25 years, the margin of victory has been less than three strokes? In Formula One motor racing so far this season, the average time difference between first and second place has been just over seven and a half seconds. And remember last summer Olympics? In the men's 100 meters butterfly, the American swimmer won by one hundredth of a second. One hundredth. It was so close that the Serbian team, who won silver, even filed a protest. These days in business, as in sport, the difference between winning and losing is practically zero. But not quite. In every case, the winner has that vital edge. The figures I'm going to show you this afternoon demonstrate that we too have that marginal but vital edge. From your audience's point of view, the end of your talk might be even more important than the beginning. These are the words they will be left with after you stop. If you've ever been to a firework display, you'll know that the biggest, brightest fireworks are usually saved for the end. This doesn't mean you have to finish with a bang, but you do want to leave a lasting impression. Watch these presenters clinch the close. To summarise, whenever we have offered bonuses to incentivise our staff in sales, HR and manufacturing divisions, productivity has increased, in some cases quite dramatically. But as we saw in R&D, introducing pay by performance has had precisely the opposite effect. Incentivised research units were on average only half as productive as those working without added incentives. What are we to make of this? Well, quite simply, it seems bonuses really do make you work harder when your job is pretty routine. But when your job is creative, incentives just stress you out and actually make you less creative, not more. Clearly, we all need to go away and think of a fresh initiative for motivating our most mission-critical employees. Thanks a lot. As you know, it's a tradition in Asia to quote words of wisdom, so I'm going to be totally predictable and do the same. An ancient philosopher once said, a man who chases two rabbits catches neither. In our research, we've been chasing too many rabbits for far too long. It's time to stop, to prioritise. If there's one thing we now need to do in a word, it's this. Focus. Thank you very much. At the preparation stage, a lot of presenters like to create their clothes first, so they know where they're going, and then work backwards, finishing up with an attention-grabbing opening. But whichever way you plan your talk, make sure you always give priority to the first and last three minutes.