Why you shouldn’t show ‘Thank you’ on your last slide?

‘Thank you’, ‘The end’, ‘Q&A’. So these are the common words that we usually see that indicates the end of a presentation.

Are these the best messages for the final slide?

How does that create value as the takeaway message?

Most of us make this very mistake by showing ‘Thank you’ on the final slide.

Yes, you would like to tell the audience that it’s the end of the presentation. And we thank them for staying with us till the end. And we want to show them that it’s Q&A time and that you’ll be here to answer their questions.

Let me ask you this …

How long do you usually stay back to after the presentation to answer questions?

(Let’s say you are presenting to a potential client)

I guess, it’s about 10 to 15 minutes on average, depending on the situation. 10 to 15 MINUTES … Wow! That’s a long time for your audience to be staring at the slide that says Thank You.

Wouldn’t you think so?

So, the Final Slide is the longest exposed slide in your whole presentation. And if it’s showing Thank You, then we are missing the opportunity to visually reinforce the key take away message of the presentation.

Let’s look at this from another perspective.

IMAGINE … Imagine buying a 5-minute advertising slot on television. How much would that cost you? Really expensive right, isn’t it?

I would say the The final slide is also a really expensive slide.

As such, we should put something valuable on the final slide as a takeaway message. Something that we would like our audience to remember.

We shouldn’t be showing ‘Thank you’, or ‘Q&A’, or ‘The End’.

We can end the presentation by saying Thank You verbally without showing it on the Final Slide.

So what should we show on the Final Slide then?

• Well! We can show our mission statement on the Final Slide, if that’s what we would like our audience to takeaway;
• A summary of the action plan;
• Highlight or recap of a key message or key learning from the presentation content;
• Or maybe a famous quotation that resonates with the presentation.

EXAMPLE

Thank you very much for taking time to attend my presentation. Before I take any questions, let me leave you with something that will help you achieve clarity when designing slides for your next presentation.

Always remember that “if your audience cannot see what you put on the slide, it is as good as not showing them anything.”

END EXAMPLE

There you go. In this example, I took a key learning from the presentation session and repeated it on the Final Slide instead of ‘Thank you’, ‘The End’ or ‘Q&A’.

If there is nothing that you can put on the final slide, you can show a related photo or an image that will inspire your audience.

Or show your company logo really big on the Final Slide. At least for branding … so that you do not waste the air time of your Final Slide.

So, Make good use of your Final Slide in every presentation.

Do not show ‘Thank you’, Do not show ‘Q&A’, or ‘The End’ on … the Final Slide.

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