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.