Now That We Have Your Complete Attention ...

2. Don't talk to strangers.

It's hard to persuade an audience when you don't know who's in it -- their backgrounds, interests, goals, pet peeves. At EDS, Gunby urges his colleagues to conduct informal research a few days before they make a presentation. He calls it CYA: Cover Your Audience. "You should know as much as you can about who you're speaking to," Gunby says. "What are their expectations? Where are they positioned on the issue? What's their knowledge level? What are their demographics and cultures?"

Being serious about CYA means being willing to scrap your presentation if that's what the audience wants. Last spring, marketing executive Clyde Kesling was asked by some colleagues to make a presentation on EDS's strategic-planning methodology to a prospective client. In the spirit of CYA, he began by outlining the presentation and asking for feedback. The audience said their real challenges involved people, not strategy. So he invited a colleague to give a completely different presentation. "The salespeople were floored," he says, "but I was delighted. It drives me crazy when people assume they know what their audience wants to hear. Lots of people don't find out until the end of the presentation, which is the wrong time."

Fors urges presenters to do their research in small groups. He says most presentations at Intel begin with an informal ritual called a "walkabout." The speaker arrives early to collar members of the audience in the meeting room, a hallway, even nearby cafeterias. The presenter describes the core message, finds out what else people need to hear, and probes for objections. "Walkabouts seem like informal one-on-ones," says Fors, "but they're really mini-presentations. You don't make a presentation cold at Intel. It's part of our culture to be critical, even cynical. This lets you get ready for any concerns people might have."

3. First (and last) impressions are everything.

Every presentation guru makes the same point: the two most important parts of your presentation are the first 30 and the last 15 seconds. Everything else is, no matter how substantive, is utterly forgettable if the presentation starts or ends badly. "People make a decision in the first 30 seconds about whether they're going to listen to you," says Cecilia Macdonald, who teaches executives at AT&T, Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard, and other companies.

Warning: capturing your audience's attention up front does not mean telling a joke or entertaining them. Macdonald learned this lesson the hard way when she delivered a presentation on how to manage time more effectively. She wanted to do something different -- to grab people's attention -- so she began her talk with a skit. She pretended to be disorganized by fumbling with her papers and looking generally disheveled. It worked too well. "It destroyed my credibility," she says. "Some people thought it was funny, but most just thought I was disorganized. I've never done another skit."

A powerful close, Macdonald says, leaves the audience with something of value and relates directly to the opening. "If you opened with a story, complete the story at the close," she says. "If you opened with a statistic or quote, restate it at the end. People should walk away with something specific in mind."

A final point on which the experts agree, and which almost no one follows, is that presenters should always finish early. It creates positive feelings in the audience that can influence how people feel about your message.

4. Simpler is better.

Maybe it's our talk-show society. Maybe it's the allure of multimedia technology. Whatever the cause, too many presentations are too long, too slick, and too convoluted. Rae Gorin Cook recently asked top executives at six large companies how people could present more effectively to them. The response was overwhelming: Make your presentations shorter and more candid.

According to Cook, the twin virtues of simplicity and candor should influence every aspect of a presentation. "The most memorable slides are the simplest," she argues. "Most executives find jazzy slides suspect. 'Why are you screwing around making overheads with five colors when you should be making better products?.'"

And don't try to spare people's feelings by being nice, she adds, just tell it like it is: "'Nice' people are being run over," Cook warns. "A younger generation is getting to the point and telling the truth in a straightforward way. Thirty-minute presentations are being cut back to ten-minute briefings to vice presidents or the CEO. Senior people don't have time to learn about your topic. They just want to know how they can help you."