We begin with Part I of a 4-part series on organizing the sequence of your presentation so that your information creates maximum impact on the audience Getting off the right start is absolutely critical

Opening with a “Bang” You’ve got at most 30 seconds to give your audience a compelling reason to sit up and listen to what you’ve got to say, or you’ve lost them to their Blackberries or Suduko Now that they’re listening, you’ve got to structure what you’re going to say in a way that makes for the easiest possible path for them to follow

In Part III we discussed the importance of making sure that you tell your audience what your solution or recommendation is immediately after announcing the problem or opportunity at hand Audiences absolutely need to know where you’re going from the beginning in order to put into proper perspective the evidence you unfold

In Part III we discussed the four different types of evidence you can use: Personal, Statistics, Example, and Analogy Each has its good points, and the type of evidence you choose will depend on both your topic and your audience

Organizing Your Presentation Before organizing your presentation keep reminding yourself that Less is More Also consider that most presentations have far too many concepts, and the concepts far too many details

Perhaps the most difficult thing for speaker to learn is knowing when and where to stop speaking When you pause, you establish the pace from the beginning of your talk

Early in the movie, The Fugitive, Officer Gerard catches up with Dr Kimball near the outlet of a high dam

It's common to believe, when you listen to great speakers at work, that certain people are simply born with the talent to speak well, and therefore no amount of training or practicing is going to transform you into a great speaker, no matter how hard you try And while it's true that both John Kennedy and Bill Clinton have what most people don't - charisma - their ability to speak as they do was not part of what they were born with

An Inconvenient Speaker We have made the claim many times that Bill Clinton is the Master of the Pause In fact, we have said that it is exactly this mastery that causes more people in polls to name the former president as the greatest living public speaker hands down

People who get paid well to speak all share one of two traits: either they're famous, or they own "The Skills" To be able to move people who don't know you as a celebrity of some sort, you must know how to keep your audience focused on you and your message, and how to keep them on the same page, on the same wavelength, every step of the way