商业演讲如何漂亮收尾

    上个月，在沙特麦地那的一间会议室里，我和当地一位商界朋友相坐而谈。这里距离先知穆罕默德安息之地仅几英里，让我惊异的是这里既不乏异国风情，但又倍感熟悉。我的银行家朋友围着传统的黑白格围巾，穿着长袍，与我穿的蓝西装形成鲜明的对比。外面的气温接近华氏112度。早餐桌上摆的是炸羊肝，豆蔻香味的咖啡和骆驼奶。

    但这位朋友谈论的目标、希望和烦恼，与美国高管们（从华盛顿到达拉斯）经常谈论的并无二致。在发展企业的同时，怎样给家庭更多时间？如何能在竞争中保持领先？如何与员工、客户、投资者和媒体更有效地沟通？等等。在与全球各地的客户打了多年交道后，我再度意识到至少在商界，不同国家人们之间的共同之处比我们以为的要多得多。。

    我和阿卜杜拉（Abdullah）的谈话是在Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (MILE)项目间隙进行的，这是由沙特政府和企业在麦肯锡（McKinsey）的帮助下创立的高管培训项目。在这个两周的项目中，每天都有来自美国或欧洲的知名商学院教授向来自中东和亚洲的大约30位高管讲授8小时的课程。希望让阿拉伯和穆斯林世界的高管无需前往费城或伦敦就可获得重要的商业教育。我到那里是进行小范围的媒体培训和演讲技巧训练，看到了演讲挑战之不分疆域。

    那天早上，我看到一位演讲者开始的表现完全符合预期：开头开得不错。他没有用那些我们经常能听到的、欠考虑的开场白（嗯，大家好，很高兴今天能到这里来，后排的人能听到我的声音吗？等等），他直接从一个年轻大学生阿莫德的故事讲起，亮出了演讲主题，让听众倍感兴趣。

    问题是他在结束演讲时没这么漂亮利落。他只是停了下来，说：“我想这差不多就是我要说的。有问题吗？”没有好好的总结一下，没有逐渐推到顶峰，让我们意犹未尽。他错失了进一步强调其观点的最后机会。

    有太多办法可以漂亮地结束演讲，把你的演讲要点深深烙在听众的脑海中：

    有力的援引。前英国首相戈登•布朗有一次盛赞美国总统奥巴马的演讲技巧，是这样收尾的：“当奥巴马演讲时，他给予听众信心——不是对奥巴马的信心，而是对听众自己的信心。据说当西塞罗演讲时，人们说‘这是伟大的演讲’。但当德摩斯梯尼演讲时，他们说，‘让我们游行吧’”。

    凤头豹尾。如果你用一个好的故事开篇，不妨将故事结尾留在演讲结束时。“比如：还记得我一开始告诉你们的、那个富有才华的理科大学生吗？上周，他的一项医疗设备获得了专利，明年该设备将能挽救两万人的生命。”

    As I huddled with a Saudi business contact in a conference room in Madinah, just a few miles from the final resting place of the Prophet Muhammad last month, I was struck by how exotic and yet how familiar it all felt. My friend, a banker, wore the traditional kafiyeh and thobe to my blue suit. Outside, the temperature approached 112 degrees Fahrenheit. On the breakfast table: fried lamb liver, cardamom-scented coffee, and camel's milk.

    But my friend spoke of exactly the same goals, hopes, and anxieties that I discuss every day with executives from D.C. to Dallas. How can I make more time for my family while growing my business? How do I stay ahead of the competition? How can I communicate more effectively with employees, customers, investors, and the media? And so, after years of working with clients from all over, I once again realized that in the world of business at least, we are much more alike than we think.

    My conversation with Abdullah took place at the Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (MILE), an executive-education program created by the Saudi government and corporate backers with help from McKinsey. Every day, over the course of each two-week program, a different marquee-name B-school professor from the U.S. or Europe delivers an eight-hour program to a group of 30 or so senior executives from the Middle East and Asia. The goal: to give executives from the Arab and Muslim worlds relevant business education without having to send them to Philadelphia or London. I was there to conduct media training and presentation skills coaching in small sessions. And I saw first-hand that public speaking challenges know no cultural bounds.

    That morning I watched a speaker do exactly what he was supposed to do at the opening of his presentation: he started strong. Instead of boring us with the kind of half-baked opening we all hear too often, (Um, hello, great to be here today, can everyone hear me in the back? etc.) he launched right into a genuinely riveting story about a brilliant young university student named Ahmed that previewed the key themes of his presentation and made us eager to hear more.

    The problem was that he didn't end his presentation with quite so much panache. He just sort of finished talking and said, "I think that's about all I needed to cover. Any questions?" No big wrap-up, no final crescendo to send us off with a sense of purpose. He missed the opportunity to advance his point one last time.

    There are plenty of ways to end with a bang and keep your key points fresh in the audience's mind:

    A powerful quote. In wrapping up a paean to President Obama's oratorical skills, former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, "When he speaks, he gives listeners confidence -- not in him, but in themselves. It is said that when Cicero spoke, people said 'That was a great speech.' But when Demosthenes spoke, they said 'Let's march.'"

    A bookend. If you started with a strong story, consider saving the end of the story for the end of the presentation. "So: remember Ahmed, that gifted university science student I told you about when we started? Just last week he patented a medical device that stands to save 20,000 lives next year."