If you think back to the beginning of your last presentation, you might naturally conjure an image of yourself facing an audience, about to speak your first words.

But can you recall the moments just before that, when you literally walked through the door?

The rich amount of data available to you as you enter a room—and the way you “read” the space and the people within it—can give you an invaluable advantage as a speaker.

By the same token, if you fail to pay close attention in those first moments you cross through the threshold, you put yourself at risk of disconnecting from your audience—and ultimately diminishing the impact of your talk.

When it comes to reading a room, we can learn a lot from the true experts on the subject—medical clowns.

Stand & Deliver Director Jeff Raz, a renowned circus performer whose credits including the lead role in Cirque du Soleil, is the co-founder and artistic director of the Medical Clown Project, which provides therapeutic medical clowning in San Francisco-area hospitals and clinics.

When you’re engaging with patients in a hospital, where “life and death” is not just a metaphor, Jeff says, “reading the room as you enter is absolutely key. You have to sense the energy, ‘take the temperature of the room.’ What sounds are you hearing — is the TV on? Is that beep coming from a monitor? Then there’s the visual information: What are the patient’s injuries? Where is the family? What’s the expression on people’s faces? Are there teddy bears and flowers around, or not? What’s up on the walls?”

“In those milliseconds that you’re reading that room,” says Jeff, “you’re finding ways to calibrate your ‘ramp,’ or introduction. And if you’re not taking in the myriad signals, you’re in danger of establishing a one-way communication instead of a dialogue or, worse, of alienating the patient.”

Jeff offers the example of the Medical Clown Project’s Ben Johnson, who, while working in a hospital recently, approached the room of a teenager. As Johnson and his companion-clown entered the room, they read the boy’s body language — it was cheerless, closed off, even hostile.

But Johnson quickly read the room and noticed the rock n’ roll posters on the walls. So the clowns instantly adjusted their act, introducing themselves as a band auditioning for American Idol, and asking the teenager to evaluate them.

They launched into their comical musical performance and the boy smiled and gave them a huge thumbs-down. “His was fully engaged,” said Jeff, “and by the end of the visit, he was laughing and giving a thumbs up. We checked in with the boy’s father at the end of the day — he said his son was in a good mood for hours, even in the face of numerous medical procedures.”

“In business, we don’t tend to enter the room with that same kind of hyper-awareness and real-time adjustment,” says Jeff.

Your big presentation is going brilliantly. The audience is engaged and inspired: Heads are nodding; eyes are lighting up. As you conclude, the audience erupts in applause. Triumphant and glowing, you now prepare yourself for a spirited question-and-answer session.

“Does anyone have questions?” you say, smiling at the crowd.

You wait. Silence.

“Any questions?” you repeat.

More silence. Someone in the back coughs.

Your triumphant mood is slowly soured by doubt. (Why isn’t anyone asking questions? I thought they were with me.)

Nothing can put a damper on that after-speech glow like a silent Q&A session. But a quiet crowd doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of interest. Often, they simply need a minute to warm up.

You can help with that. Instead of fearing Q&A silence, prepare for it.

During his 24-year tenure as the head of Saint Mark’s School, Stand & Deliver faculty member Damon Kerby learned valuable lessons about understanding  audiences’ needs. Damon says his meetings with prospective parents were among his most important talks of the year, and when it came time for Q&A, he made sure to have a few questions ready to offer as examples—just in case there were no questions right away.

“The key is to put yourself in their place,” Damon says. “Often, parents came to these meetings with some anxiety—worried they might be judged. And for many of them, the simple act of asking the first question might feel pretty intimidating.”

To prepare for this possibility, Damon always made certain to have a few “idiosyncratic” questions ready to ask himself. He might say, for example, “Here’s a question some of you may have: ‘What are some of the eccentric traditions at Saint Mark’s?’ Let me tell you about a few ….”

Damon says he’d choose slightly unusual questions like this because once he’d primed the pump, the standard questions would inevitably emerge.

So as you prepare your next talk, be sure to plan a few questions to ask yourself. Instead of a source of dread, that silent beat at the beginning of Q&A will become another opportunity to give your audience a gift.