1 thing you must do after your keynote presentation is over

A couple months ago, I’d written a keynote presentation for an executive who needed to travel across the country to deliver it at a major industry conference attended by peers, partners and competitors.

Several days had passed, and I hadn’t heard anything.

I was wondering how his keynote presentation went since he’d been under the weather right before the conference.

So I dashed off a quick email.

“Any feedback on your presentation last week?” I asked him.

In 15 minutes, I had my answer.

He wrote:

“I was more than a little concerned that my voice was not going to hold out … as it happened, I only had to take one sip of water during the 40-minute talk and really didn’t have any nerves with regard to speaking to the group. 

“Yes, I did go over the time a bit, but they were fine with it.

“There were 500 people in the room – the largest group ever.

“I had a number of very positive comments. One of our competitors spoke right before me and basically gave the group a history of his company. My wife and I went to dinner with the convention chair and the association president, and our competitor who spoke. The whole experience was very nice. 

“Oh, you’ll find this interesting: Our competitor said at dinner he really liked what I had to say about what we’re doing at the company, and he planned on going back and talking with his team about doing the exact same thing.

“Thanks for all of your help. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Clearly this keynote presentation had gained this executive some new reputational capital (ROI = priceless).

Nevertheless, there’s always room for improvement.

From the reflection he shared with me, I made this quick note, which I will apply to a keynote presentation for this executive in the future:

Next time, trim his final presentation by at least 20 percent to ensure that he finishes within the allotted time period.

So here’s the big question for public speakers:

After you deliver a keynote presentation, do you take time the next day to reflect on how it went?