The process that sets you on your way to speaking like the best speakers in the world, speakers who possess The Skills, goes like this: You find a target in your audience and you lock eyeballs. You deliver a complete thought to that one person, and then you do the hardest part, you pause. You pause before turning to the next person, and speak to the next person with your next thought.
Here's a tip to begin the whole process correctly: Whenever you get up to speak, before you ever get out of your chair to come to the front of the room, know which person with whom you're going to begin speaking. Have that person picked out before you get up there. Otherwise, you're going to start off on the wrong foot: you're going to start scanning around for those "friendly faces". Choose the person you're going to deliver your opening line to ahead of time, and begin your talk by looking at that one person and letting it flow.
Let's be clear - one thing you definitely don't want to do is to look for and speak to only a few "friendly faces". That might be advice that works well for the few faces, but what about all the other less than friendly mugs? How do you suppose they feel when they notice that you are engaging other people but not them? Do you suppose it might get them thinking about something other than your message? Do you want a few people buying into what you're saying, or the whole group? Your job, remember, is to look at everyone in the audience. Everyone in the room needs to leave feeling that you took the time to personally engage them as individuals...
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