Different speech settings may have different implications for your audience’s mobility—the degree to which listeners move around during a speech. For example, if you’re giving a presentation in a classroom, lecture hall, or conference room, you will likely have a stationary audience, meaning that listeners will be relatively motionless (sitting or standing) and captive as you’re talking. If you are delivering a presentation at an exhibitor’s booth at a sales conference, on a town common, or on a city sidewalk, you’ll probably have a mobile audience—listeners will be strolling by, stopping for a moment to listen to you, or drifting off to get on with their day.

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If you’re making a presentation in a college classroom, you know that you will have a stationary audience because your listeners are captive; their grades depend in part on their class attendance and participation. Don’t fall into the trap, though, of taking a stationary audience for granted. Surely you have experienced lecturers who do exactly that; knowing that their audience must remain present, they assume they don’t have to work as hard to capture the audience’s attention. Veteran teachers know they need to work to keep a lively, interested class.

Capturing the attention of a mobile audience is clearly more challenging than capturing that of a stationary one. To do so, take a hint from the salespeople who make their livings at conventions and county fairs selling everything from rugs and hot tubs to produce and kitchenware. These vendors contend with an entirely mobile audience, so they must draw an audience’s attention quickly and magnetically. For example, a seasoned vendor might try to sell a fruit and vegetable knife by arranging colorful, precut fruit in pleasing shapes, such as a flower or a windmill. She also might make the speech interactive by stopping passersby and encouraging them to “test-drive the knife, have some fruit, watch a little slice and dice!” You can adapt these effective techniques to your own presentations by offering fun (and maybe edible!) visual aids and making your presentation interactive—either by inviting audience members to come over or by asking invitational questions that fit with your overall message. (Just make sure the questions are appropriate to the speech setting and aren’t invasive or personal.)

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