Remember serial TV? We had to wait a full week to watch the next episode of our favorite show (which was yours?). Back then, great TV shows excelled at creating cliffhangers.
For many of us, it’s a love-hate-relationship with cliffhangers. In a way, it’s why we watched the show in the first place. That feeling of tension. That urge to want to know so badly what happens next. But then, when at the moment of greatest tension, they just said: “To be continued … Please come back next week!” … we were all like “Gosh. Really?!”
But of course we came back.
Is there a moment in your presentation when you could do the same? When you could stop and the audience would riot because they want to know what happens next so badly? A moment to guarantee that your entire audience would come back? (and bring their friends along because they couldn’t help but tell them…)
“Would they come back?” is a much more ambitious goal than “Will they stay on their chairs until the end?”.
Once people sit down, there’s a good chance that they will stick through to the end. You’ll have to torment them quite a bit before they will actually stand up and leave.
But having them come back is something else entirely. Was it really that good?
So, was it? Would your audience come back? What would you need to change so that they would?
