Nothing will relax you more than to know you have properly prepared. The stage fright or speech anxiety felt by many speakers is due to not knowing enough about the speaking environment or the audience. The more you know about your speaking environment and your audience, the more relaxed you will be when delivering your speech. Many speakers, however, often overlook the need to include any kind of audience analysis as part of their speech preparation. Proper audience analysis will assure that you give the right speech to the right audience. Most professional speakers send their clients a multi-page questionnaire in order to gather enough information about them and the speaking event to properly customize their speeches. Using the word "A-U-D-I-E-N-C-E" as an acronym, I have defined some general audience analysis categories that these surveys should include.

A nalysis - Who are they? How many will be there?

U nderstanding - What is their knowledge of the subject?

D emographics - What is their age, sex, educational background?

I nterest - Why are they there? Who asked them to be there?

E nvironment - Where will I stand? Can they all see & hear me?

N eeds - What are their needs? What are your needs as the speaker?

C ustomized - What specific needs do you need to address?

E xpectations - What do they expect to learn or hear from you?

Develop specific questions which fit into each of these eight categories and ask the client or audience to tell you what they want. Essentially, ask them what they need and give it to them.