Tips for salvaging a presentation when you notice your audience losing interest?

According to John Medina, in his wonderful book Brain Rules, people have about 10 minutes before they start to lose attention. He suggests creating your presentation in "discrete modules." "each segment would cover a single core concept — always large, always explainable in one minute."

After the 9min and 59 seconds are up you have to "reset" the audience's attention. The best way to reset your audiences attention is through the use of a relevant hook that triggers an emotion.

You can use a story, video clip, fact or figures, shocking anecdotes, metaphors, or even a group activity to help your audience "reset" their attention.

Before any presentation you should really know four things:
Who is in your audience (age, culture, level of knowledge about your topic, etc)
Why they NEED to know what you are telling them.
What you want them to DO with what you are telling them.
How you want them to FEEL about what you telling them ( fear, joy, relief,etc.)

Along with the 10 min rule, this information will help you create a hook to get back your audience's attention.

This is more a funny story than an answer - or maybe it is an answer :). I was giving my first presentation to a office supply trade show audience - the title was How To Wow A Crowd. Being my first public seminar, I went for elegant - black sweater, skirt, hose, shoes and a string of pearls.

About 20 minutes in, I noticed I was loosing the attention of the first couple of rows and a kind of nervous/wariness was spreading throughout the room. At about the same time, I took a step and caught a flash of white where I should have seen black. I took another step to verify and yes - sure enough - my white half slip was heading south and I could feel that the more I moved the more it moved!

By now the whole room was more focused on the slip of my slip than my words. I finished the point I was making, lifted the edge of my skirt, grabbed the slip, pulled if off, twirled it over my head, tossed it under the flip chart and said "and that is another way to wow a crowd".

The audience went wild, laughing, clapping, stomping. When I again had their undivided attention, I finished. The whole impromptu event went so smoothly that some in the audience acutally thought it was part of the presentation.

I guess the answer in my story is to assess why you are loosing their attention. Is the room too dark? Is your energy less than it should be? Are you speaking right after a meal - it takes something extra to capture the attention of an audience that whose blood is more engaged in digestion than giving full mental attention. Is there a distraction pulling their interest elsewhere?

A question will usually engage an audience but so will a personal story or even an honest admission that you can feel they are not engaged with you or the topic so let's resolve it together, this is your expertise - what is their need? And maybe every once in a while, take a chance, be a little wild or over the top and shock them back to life!

You have received some excellent answers already. The most direct answer to your question about reviving the interest of an audience is to use my SIRE method:
1. STOP talking about your topic.
2. IDENTIFY the distraction - This may require conversation with the audience.
3. REMOVE the distraction (room temperature; lack of movement after a meal; room too dark or too bright, etc.)
4. ENGAGE the audience. See your presentation as a dialogue with the audience, not a monologue. Involve them in many ways: their ears, their minds, their hearts, their imagination, their funny bones, their muscles (movement), and in a few instances, even their tear ducts. Public speaking is a contact sport. Treat it as such and you will never lose an audience!

Te answer is in your question, When you have noticed that the audience is loosing intrest then you need to motivate,The problem is when you don't recognize it.
But the simple way to energize the audience is by a charming smile and do not go out of your content, Try to KISS things.
Keep It Short and Sweet.
Nobody is 10/10.

Telling isn't selling! If you just present to an audience, then some will naturally lose interest. You need to start with a "grabber" statement to gain an initial level of interest. You need to ask questions and gain responses, you should direct parts of the presentation to individuals rather than the group and use their name. If you see someone flagging, ask them a question or ask them their opinion.

Ask a question to get the customer to respond. Then take whatever their response is and engage them again with a follow-up question to get them to explain more. The three best follow-up questions you can ask are:
Why
Tell me more
Can you give me an example
Each one of them will help to get the customer involved in your presentation and keep them from losing interest.

The short answer is simply to engage. Forget about the presentation, and bring it back to the audience and you, and engage with them directly.

Walk away from the podium and the PowerPoint and ask a few questions (yes or no questions) that lead them to your overall point, and then tell them an "interesting" and short story that relates to those questions and shows some direct benefit to them. And it helps if you get excited, so make it some story about your product or service that allows you to put a little passion behind it.

Then get back to your presentation and speed it up hitting that elevator pitch, and end on a high note. At the end - provide an incentive for them to reconnect with you on a smaller setting for information that is more specific to them.

Stop the presentation and engage the group by asking relevant questions. Be prepared to modify your presentation of the fly and leave out non-relevant portions as well as address specific concerns or interests of the group.

I agree with Chad. No point in going on if they have lost interest. So get them talking to each other. They need to find their energy again and so get them moving....movement creates energy.

Just read an article by Dr. Dennis Cummins addressing this exact issue: http://bit.ly/hI8Ii4

Susan, the reason your answer hit home with me is because I think it captures something really important to understand about attention-span in general. That is, learning is emotion; emotion is learning. Many psychologists and sociologists assert that in order to effectively learn something (as in ingrain it; establish it as a point of reference; remember it), one must experience it on an emotional level. Consider, this is why we (as individuals, as a culture) don't forget about emotional events the way our day-to-day to-do's sometimes get lost in the shuffle.There are biological reasons for this I won't get into, but I think this same rule (propensity) applies to giving an engaging and memorable presentation. While the above anecdote is a hilarious read, it sounds like it also evoked laughter, stomping; and on a deeper level probably empathy for embarrassment. These are all great ways to compel your audience to experience the presentation, rather than just sit through it numbly.

Great discussion!

I have learned to do two key things that have made a huge difference. A couple of people here have listed it in different ways.

1. I vary my presentation throughout. I see everything in the room and the entire environment as "props" and my presentation as a "performance." So, if it is a PowerPoint presentation with a darkened room I may stop after a few slides, turn up the lights, and ask a few questions about personal experience. Which leads to my second approach.

2. I seek engagement from the audience. Even if it is a boring "push" type presentation I will find ways to directly interact and engage with them. Not just entertainment but active and direct engagement. By eliciting their participation periodically throughout the presentation you will have their attention.

Great question Courtney. I've found it helpful to engage people with an interactive activity of some kind. It's also positive to set up the presentation so that people are sharing their knowledge with you and thinking about how the subject matter applies to their lives. Time management is also valuable, I'd allot more time for questions and discussion than for presenting the material. http://www.guyfarmer.com/facilitation.

This is a situation that happens to everyone on occasion. The best presentations happen when there is an honest connection between speaker and audience. Therefore, the best strategy is not to make a joke or to try and distract them, the best way is to deal with the situation directly.

Stop your presentation. Acknowledge that their attention is drifting. Talk to them about it. Ask a few diagnostic questions:

Do we need to take a break? Do we need to wrap it up? Is this current topic less relevant/important, How do you want to use the remaining time?

Involve the audience in refocusing or redirecting the presentation. The secret is to be serious and direct about it. Don't be embarrassed or try to make a joke. Show that it is important to you that their time is used wisely.

Hope that help,

JB

Write out your speech (of course):
The first tip I have is to write out your speech (of course) with ideas about how to prevent yourself from losing your audience. What is the saying? "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?" Something like that!

Handouts:
Handouts are very helpful. They are perfect for directing your audiences attention to something when you see that you are losing them. This is also a way to give them something to remember you by.

Focus On The Benefits:
Benefits get the audiences attention. Features do not. My "extensive" background and experience is a feature, one that if I spend more than 30 seconds on will most likely bore people, but how I can save you thousands per month by teaching you something you can easily learn and implement? Now that is a benefit worth paying attention to no matter how much I just ate! Right?

Stay focused and Go Deep:
Focus on one simple concept and go deep. I am in talks with Lynda.com now about doing a course for them and this was one of the first things that was stressed to me. Keep the scope narrow and be thorough about it. This helps people stay focused on your content.

The Blog Rule:
The blog rule - no more than 350-600 words for a blog post. The same concept should be applied to speaking. I like to write it out in terms of blog posts for each topic. One blog post = 5 minutes.

You may need to adjust your formula here. 600 words is 'about' one page in MS Word with normal spacing and font size. Can you get through that amount in 5 minutes? If not revise it, fewer blog posts, or keep each segment to 350 words. The shorter each section the better as far as I am concerned.

The Pause:
Every once in a while I stop and ask the audience, "Does that make sense?" This has a way of engaging the audience and making them aware if they weren't paying attention. When someone asks that of me and I am not paying attention I make sure I start paying attention because I might actually have to answer.

The Twitter Effect:
The "Twitter" effect - Twitter has taught me by forcing me down to 140 characters to cut out all of the fat. After writing a 280 character sentence I can go back and start to see all of the stuff I put in there that I don't really need and the message is the same.

Master Your Message:
Master your message - Practice, practice, practice - I practice in front of a camera and play it back critiquing myself and looking for areas where I might lose my audience.

For a much more detailed look at each of these tips visit my blog:
http://nerdenterprises.com/blog/2011/03/5-tips-on-how-to-regain-and-retain-yo...