After enough appearances in front of employees, customers or prospects, they eventually discover that the keys to feeling comfortable before an audience are feeling thoroughly familiar with the content of the presentation and feeling in control of the presentation and the audience.

Understanding the importance of these factors is one thing; achieving them can be a challenge. The fact is that you do not need to undergo a charisma transplant or choreography lessons to make your presentation a success. Small changes in the way you connect with the audience, present yourself at the lectern and pace your presentation can produce an amazing improvement in your effectiveness.

Over the years, in our presentation training sessions for executives, Franco Public Relations Group has recorded the most common, recurring problems that interfere with communicating to the audience and has developed some simple techniques to help overcome these difficulties.

Here are half a dozen of the tips that these executives have found to be most helpful:

1. The most important step you can take is to rehearse your presentation repeatedly. It helps if you speak from notes, rather than a script. Many executives script their speech, learn it well, then translate it to bullets. Speaking from notes—and rehearsing the presentation—will allow you to talk more conversationally than when you are reading a script. Also, speaking from notes allows you to connect with the audience. Part of the isolation speakers sometimes feel results from their hiding behind a lectern and burying their face in the text of the speech. You should be looking down to grab the next note and then focusing most of your attention on the audience during the presentation.

2. Speakers often feel they can "include" listeners in their presentation by constantly scanning the audience. This actually results in excluding listeners. Individual members of the audience feel the speaker is scanning past them and that no one in particular is the focal point of the speaker's remarks.

Instead of scanning, pick out one person or a small group of people and deliver a full sentence or paragraph in that direction. Then pick another group of people and deliver your next set of remarks to that part of the audience. You include the audience by focusing your attention on various portions of it sequentially, and you feel more in control when you receive their nonverbal feedback.

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4. What do you do with your hands? Use gestures to turn your nervousness in a constructive direction. Always keep your hands apart so you do not play with a ring or wring your hands. Also, keep your hands out of your pockets and avoid putting them behind your back in the "hostage" position.

One simple technique is to stand with one hand resting gently on the text or notes and the other being used to gesture or resting at waist level. You can use both hands to gesture for a more emphatic point.

5. To change a page in your script, slide the page to one side as you move toward the audience to make a point. (You'll end up with your pages stacked in reverse order.) Disguise the page turn with your movement toward the audience or gesture with the other hand. Never flip the page over—this tells the audience you're reading to them rather than communicating with them.

6. Vary the pace of your speaking pattern. The biggest mistake executives make is delivering their presentation at a constant speed, cadence and volume. For the audience, it's as if they're looking at a newspaper page that has no headlines, no illustrations and no bold type—just one long gray page. It's your task to put in the bold type with emphasis, to separate key headlines with your pacing, to highlight important points with pitch and pace.

These are a few important small changes that can have a very large impact on the effectiveness of your presentation. Once you have mastered these, other improved presentation techniques can be made even more easily.

In the future, as you receive more smiles and head-nodding and fewer puzzled stares from your audience, you may even enjoy your presentations and the satisfaction you receive from educating or persuading an audience. You might even have second thoughts about saving up for that bungee harness.

Steve Friedman is Chief Executive Trainer for Franco Public Relations Group. For more information on Franco, contact us at info@franco.com or by phone at 313.567.2300 in Detroit or 702.450.9903 in Las Vegas.

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