In 1988, the task of nominating and introducing the former Governor of Massachusetts Michael Stanley Dukakis at the Democratic presidential convention fell to one William Jefferson Clinton. His speech was long. Loooooooong. Afterwards, Clinton said he knew he was in trouble when the phrase, “In conclusion …” got the loudest cheer of the night.

Think of all the professional public speaking you have witnessed down the years, from your school and college days to internal presentations, seminars, training courses, after dinner speakers and the big marketing and media gurus from home and overseas.

How many of those speakers were truly outstanding? How many of them inspired you? Unless you have been extremely lucky, the answer to that question is “A teeny, tiny percentage.” Why? By dint of the fact these people are up at the blackboard or behind the lectern, they are de facto experts in their field and yet so few of them light up the room.

There's the rub – too many presenters, doing what they think is their best, with an internal dialogue along the lines of: “I don't want to be here; you don't want to be here; but I have a job to do, so let me just plough through this and we can all go home.”

Bad presenters suffer from:

1. Myopia – they literally cannot see beyond the end of their nose and so fail to notice that their audience is either asleep or has gone home.
2. Tunnel vision – they can only see the one person in the audience who is smiling and nodding out of sympathy, not the other 99 who have fallen asleep/gone home.
3. Lack of empathy – presenters who use the phrase, “Now this is a very important point” more than once never ask themselves the essential question – important to who?
4. Slide amnesia – when the presenter seems surprised that a certain slide has popped up on screen and proceeds to read it out to the audience…
5. Dispunctional – the presenter has no concept of time and is eating into the next presenter's slot or, worse yet, into coffee break.
6. Complarrogance – a rare condition, characterised by all of the above symptoms.

There is a broad spectrum of ability on this front. At one end, someone like myself deals with superb, inspirational presenters with the humility to spend 20-plus hours in rehearsal for a talk. At the other end, you see fumbling, bumbling half-wits, steadfastly refusing to make eye contact with anyone in the room as they slavishly read out their cue cards.

Enough ranting – some tips to consider:

1. My foremost piece of advice on the subject of presenting well: Don't! If there is any other way you can communicate with your intended audience use that instead and don't make a presentation. Send carrier pigeons, use smoke signals, learn Morse code, but do not stand up with a bunch of PowerPoint slides on the screen behind you unless it is the absolute best way of communicating this information to this audience.
2. Define your intentions. Are you educating, informing, persuading, proselytising? Content, length, look-and-feel and tone will all flow out of that determination.
3. Distil. In the days of 35mm and overhead slides, I used to make three piles. The first was absolutely essential; secondly there was the useful adjunctive info and thirdly, self-indulgent crap. The third pile was always the biggest. Use the Slide Sorter in PowerPoint and insert a slide with the words 'Thank you' about 12 slides in. Then think long and hard about any slide that makes it to the left of that one.
4. Find time to rehearse. A 30-minute presentation requires an average of 4,500 words. Shakespeare's Romeo only speaks 5,031 words onstage. Would you get up in front of an audience to do “Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say 'good night' till it be morrow” without the benefit of rehearsal? The people who make it look so effortless and so off the cuff, are always the ones who have put in the hours.
5. Please your audience's senses. Look at the space you are presenting in – light, scents, temperature, layout – and change it to suit the tone of your talk. A neutral backdrop and a couple of well-placed lights and plants can vastly alter the feel of a conference room. Think aurally; how often has a wedding speech been ruined by the catering staff clattering about in the kitchen? Sit in the space with your eyes closed and think about how you will eliminate background noise on the day.
6. If you are using visual aids, make sure they are stupendous. Clear, stripped back; a mixture of words, images, and whatever else you need to use. No small fonts. No 30-word slides. No clipart. No blurry images enlarged from the web. Human beings are immensely visual animals. Seduce your audience with your visuals.

Too much like hard work? Your diary is too busy to do any or all of this? Then the best advice is to get someone else to do the presentation. Presentation is a serious business. If you don't take it seriously, you cannot expect to be taken seriously.

Rowan Manahan is director of Fortify Services career consultancy