Do the unexpected

Surprise your audience with an unexpected fact about yourself! Instead of just giving a long mini-biography of yourself, try a short introduction but include something little known and unexpected about yourself. This will get the attention of the audience early and show that you are different, most audiences will be expecting you to be boring and uninteresting. But make sure your 'interesting fact' is really something interesting like you 'once did stand up comedy' or 'you sky dive' or 'run marathons'. Even if you don't think there is anything interesting or unusual about yourself, if you think hard enough you will find something. If you really don't have anything, then perhaps you can use one of my other tips instead.... :-)

Creative use of pauses

Even the most thrilling of action movies have quiet moments for you to catch your breath, so should your presentations! There is no need to keep on talking non-stop while presenting. Used in the right way, a brief pause just after you have made a very critical point will allow your audience to digest what you said and amplify the significance of that point. Remember the phrase " The silence was deafening" ? In your next presentation, remind your self to slow down, at the critical points pause for a moment and allow what you just said to sink in.

Be visual

Use images to reinforce your message. How often have you had to suffer 'Death by Powerpoint' with slide after slide of hardly visible text that the presenter reads? It does not take long for the mind to quickly shut off an...d start thinking about other more interesting stuff like what will be served for lunch after this boring presentation. The human mind remembers more if there are visual cues which accompany the text on screen and the words being spoken. In fact the less text the better if you can choose a visual that expresses what you want to say very graphically. The master of this principle of " Picture superiority" was the late Steve Jobs, many of his slides were just a single evocative picture that literally said " A 1000 words".

Begin with the objective

Always tell your audience the objective of your presentation i.e. why they are listening to you, what you expect from them and how they will benefit. This will stop them guessing and speculating while you are presenting. If while you are presenting they are trying to guess what you are getting at, they will probably be missing the key points you are trying to make. They may make false conclusions that are opposite to what you intended. This will make it very difficult for you to get them to agree with you and take the course of action you want. One more thing, tell them at the start how long you will take and keep your presentation to 20 minutes or less. People do not have attention spans that stretch longer than than that.