Becoming a Powerful Presenter

"I felt a loss of control. I was in that fight-or-flight mode with my body," recalls Esposito, whose problem only worsened with time. While formal presentations terrified her the most, even introducing herself at meetings became cause for alarm. "I was losing more and more confidence in myself as the fear took over," she says.

Today, Esposito has mastered her anxiety. In fact, she's now president of In the Spotlight, a Danbury, Conn.-based company she founded six years ago to help people overcome their fear of public speaking and performing. "A lot people are very embarrassed about [their fear]," says Esposito, who says many of her clients have gone to extremes — such as claiming the death of a relative or even quitting their jobs — to avoid speaking engagements. Esposito, who runs workshops and has written a book on the subject, now uses some of the coping techniques that helped her to control her fear to help others.

Let's face it: No task causes as much anxiety as public speaking. (Remember the old Seinfeld joke that at a funeral most people would prefer to be in the casket than reading the eulogy?) Like it or not, however, it's a job skill most professionals must learn. "You can't sit there at a meeting and not speak up. You can't not get up and do a presentation. It's going to hurt your career," says Laurie Rozakis, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Public Speaking."

So you've got a choice: You can either master the fine art of presenting, or, when forced to do it, you can humiliate yourself so profoundly that no colleague of yours will ever want to look you in the eye again.

The good news: Achieving the former probably isn't as hard as you imagine. (And the chances of the latter aren't nearly as high as you think they are.) Here's how to deliver a knockout speech.

Know What You Want to Say
The first step to a good presentation is, of course, to create a compelling outline or draft. Start by understanding what your audience is expecting from you, says Dilip Abayasekara, a public speaking coach and senior vice president of Toastmasters International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people improve their public speaking skills. So be sure to ask the person who's invited to you speak about who will be attending your presentation, and why.

Next, think about the content of your speech. Don't feel that you need to cover your topic exhaustively: A common mistake of novice presenters is to overwhelm their audience with too much information. Instead, think about the main points you'd like to get across and how best to support them. Don't have a lot to say? Don't struggle with filler. Take a tip from Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg address: Be brief. If you need to fill up some time, answer audience questions, says Rozakis. (The exception here is if you're facing a hostile audience, in which case you should avoid a Q&A if possible.) You can even plant some friendly faces in your audience to throw you some softballs.

Of all the sections of your speech, the introduction is probably the most important. It's during this time that you need to make a connection with your audience and convince them to should pay attention.

Conventional wisdom holds that a joke is usually the best way to kick off a speech, but experts say this should be done only if you're actually funny — and, let's face it, most of us aren't. And even if you are a laugh riot, telling a joke that's genuinely funny but unrelated to your topic isn't going to accomplish much.

Not much of a comedian? A good alternative is to start off with a (relevant) anecdote from your own life. You could also begin with an evocative question or fact — one that's geared to startle the audience a bit, says Abayasekara. The key is to create a bit of drama, and to get the audience — which is no doubt full of people who are thinking about 1001 things other than what you're about to discuss — entirely focused on you.

It's also essential to close your speech on a powerful note. End by summarizing your key points, and if appropriate, give the audience some next steps, says Abayasekara. This is particularly important with speeches that are meant to persuade. "You may have persuaded them mentally, but they haven't really bought it until they do [something] — maybe write a letter to their congressman or write a letter to the school board," says Abayasekara. "Until they buy it, you haven't sold it."