While it's natural to spend a lot of time preparing your content for a presentation, you can't overlook the details of your delivery.
After all, only 7 percent of your communication impact what you say.
But 93 percent comes from the way you look and sound.
I have captured the seven delivery skills that are key to being a dynamic speaker in the acronym S.
P.
E.
A.
K.
E.
R.
Smile, Posture, Eye Communication, Appearance, Kinesics, Expressive Vocals, Resting Places for Your Hands In this article, I'm going to talk about "Eye Communication.
"   Notice I didn't say eye contact.
You can make eye contact with people by glancing up occasionally as you read from your notes or from your visual.
But eye communication implies that you're connecting with your audience.
To truly make an impact on your audience, you need to make members feel like you've looked at and talked directly to each of them individually.
  Here's a checklist of eye communication Don'ts: *Don't read your speech, rarely glancing up.
*Don't pretend to look at the audience by looking over their heads.
*Don't dart your eyes around the room, never really focusing on anyone.
*Don't exclude someone from your eye contact when the group is small.
*Don't appear to look at the same person at the exclusion of others.
*Don't look at the visual more than your audience.
*Don't look down at the floor or up at the ceiling, or anywhere but at the faces in the crowd.
  If you do any of these things, you're creating a disconnect between you and the audience.
The greatest gift you can give as a speaker is to make each audience member feel like you're talking to him.
This means you need to hold a person's gaze for a few seconds.
See your audience--really see them.
Look at each person individually and briefly talk to her and no one else.
To help you do this, as you look at individual audience members, pretend each one is the only person in the room, that you're having a one-on-one conversation with him or her, no one else.
For a relatively small group, say a dozen or less, it shouldn't be difficult at all to engage every single person.
For mid-sized groups of 20 or so, it might be a little more difficult, but still doable.
If you're speaking to a large audience, say a hundred people or more, you can't possibly connect with every single person.
So don't try.
Instead, concentrate on engaging as many as you can, ideally in different parts of the room.
  You'll know you're successful at this, by the way, when you get nonverbal feedback from a listener.
When you see an individual nod or smile, he's acknowledging that direct connection.
You want to get a lot of that when you look out at the group.
So look 'em in the eye.
Talk to them, not at them.
An added benefit of good eye communication is that it can also help with nervousness.
If you imagine that you're simply having a conversation with one person at a time, it can help you get over the anxiety of speaking to a whole group.
And you'll create a warm positive connection with the audience.