Melvin Vu

Great Presentation Skills - 5 Sure Fire Ways To Lure Your Audiences Back

Many a times during the course of making our presentations, we tend to lose the attention of some of our audiences. This article presents 5 effective ways to re-capture your audiences attention attention.

Have you come across times whilst making your presentation, you feel like your audience is drifting into la la land or they beginning to switch off? According to communication psychologist people give a lot of non-verbal messages about whether they are listening. As a rule, if you see your audience start crossing their legs, fidgeting or looking around often, chances are you losing their attention. How to rein in those who are starting to switch off? I present to you the 5 strategies.

1. Sudden Change

Yes. It true. A sudden pause or change in vocal tone, pitch and volume can awaken the mind. But remember, if you want to use this technique successfully, be prepared to follow up with something insightful or clever. Otherwise, you will look stupid

2. Ask a Question

This is the classic method which my teachers always use in lectures or tutorials. When she sees someone dozing off or is pre-occupied with something else other than her lesson (usually its me) she will say “I am going to ask a question on what I just said..” We all usually perk up and become attentive.

3. Get the Audience involved as a Group

An example of this method is ask for a show of hands for the concurrence or disagreement on a topic or subject. Doing so will definitely rouse the non-attentive. Further more you can use this technique as a spring board to ask questions and get some answers.

4. Pin Point & Identify

This is a trick to pin point a particular non listener, identify with him so that the other laggards will come along. How you do this is simple. When you “catch” someone not listening, recoup his attention, and make him the new person you are relating to in your presentation. This would generally give the other a jolt because they do not want to be the next one to be singled out.

5. Test Them

If you find that the audience is wavering off, quickly say: “Let me go on for a couple more minutes. Then I will ask a handful of you some questions.” This not only gets them to listen for also prepares them for the questions you are going to ask

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