Think about your audience for a moment.  What kind of folks are they?  If it’s a business audience, then it’s a bunch of active people whom you’re asking to sit still and listen for an hour or so. 

That’s tough for them.  So make it easier by giving them permission to become active.  You’ll be surprised at the burst of energy that explodes in the room when an audience gets active.  It’s fun to watch.  It’s a little chaotic.  And it’s hard to get back under control.

But it’s worth it.  Audiences retain much more when they get a chance to make the messages you’re sending out their own. 

What can you get audiences to do?  Audiences love competition, so break them up into groups and set them to it.  Just make sure the prizes you offer are significant enough, but not too significant.  A gift certificate to the hotel spa at which you’re meeting, for example, is prize enough.  If you offer too expensive a gift, you’ll create resentment in the rest of the audience.

Audiences love to tell their own stories, so get them testifying to each other, to you, in small groups, in large groups — you get the idea.  The important thing here is to validate in the whole group what individuals and small groups do.  Otherwise it won’t seem ‘real’ to them. 

Audiences love to solve problems, designing solutions, so let them loose in small groups and get them started on the problem of the day. 

Three things to remember:  whenever you ask an audience to respond to something, you must ask for its input with complete confidence that it will respond.  If you have doubts in your mind, you will ask tentatively, and send out a message to the audience that you don’t believe it will work.  That’s fatal.  Be confident, and ask energetically. 

Second, you must also wait, at the moment that you ask your question of the audience, until it responds.  A classic mistake speakers make is to ask a question, wait a nanosecond, assume no one will respond, and nervously answer the question themselves.  That sends the speaker and the speech on a downward spiral to audience apathy.  You must be prepared to wait.  There’s a good little study that showed that it takes an audience no more than 6 seconds to respond, so count to yourself.  If, after 6 seconds, no one has said anything, then you may panic.  But they will, so you won’t.    

Third, whatever response the audience does give you — it’s fabulous.  Don’t ever trash an audience member’s contribution.  Your job as speaker is to find some way to praise, include, or work with the idea.  Not always easy, but that’s why you’re the star, right? 

It’s a true audience killer to criticize a response.  Don’t do it.

Let the audience in on the fun — let them become active.  Their energy and enthusiasm will be your reward.