What Does Your Audience’s Sixth Sense Tell Them About Your Presentation?

How often have you attended a seminar or a meeting and sensed right from the start that it was going to be a great presentation or one that keeps you looking at your watch and thinking about taking a bathroom break? How does the audience know these things before the speaker has gone more than 30 seconds into the presentation?

Your resume or the bio you provided may tell the audience about your education and work experience. Your body language, dress and approach to the platform or your podium tell them about your preparedness and respect for them. But their sixth sense picks up other signals from you and helps them form an opinion just seconds into your presentation.

Here are five areas to help you positively impact those sixth sense messages:

1. Is there enough gas in your tank to go the distance?

How are you feeling? Did you get enough sleep so you feel strong and alert? Did you watch late night TV shows or even worse, toss and turn worrying about your presentation? It is very stressful to make a presentation with little or no sleep. Have you heard your stomach rumbling in a meeting? Lack of food will cause your energy to drop and all kinds of noises to come from your stomach.

Commit to getting 8 hours of sleep the night before the presentation. Eat a nutritious but not heavy meal so your stomach will not grumble and your blood sugar will not drop. It will do wonders for your energy level.

2. Are both your mind and body completely here?

Are you fully present? The audience will quickly sense it if you are not fully engaged in the situation.

Practice improving your focus and eliminating thoughts of things on your to do list or going on mental tangents on the topic or related ones. Presence helps the audience to build trust and respect for your knowledge and expertise.

3. Are you being authentic?

Have you seen TV interviews and movies where you immediately sense the person is lying?

Don’t even think of it in your presentation. Audiences can immediately sense it by your body language, eye contact and voice. It will immediately alienate them. An audience will connect with someone who does not have perfect delivery or grammar but not with someone who is lying.

4. What’s your level of confidence?

Confidence is faith that you will succeed in capturing the audience’s attention, and communicating your message. Practice is a critical element of success in any undertaking whether it is sports, politics, entertainment, or business. Obtain feedback on your content and delivery skills from a trusted friend or business associate. Practicing bad habits only reinforces them.

Practice, practice, and practice – it develops confidence.

5. Do you have an ulterior motive?

People want to buy not be sold. In presentations they are looking for help, education, and entertainment, but not a hidden sales pitch. Their antennas will go up and they will be on alert for signals that you are selling.

Demonstrate that you are there to provide the information or entertainment they are seeking and they will return to you to find out more, including what you have to offer.