BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS

People give presentation in order to communicate their purpose, i. e. to inform, train, persuade, or sell something. A successful presentation is one of the most effective ways of communicating the purpose. English is so widely used in international business; therefore, working with the knowledge of vocabulary and techniques used in an English language presentation is valuable. A presentation is a formal talk to one or more people that "presents" ideas or information in a clear, structured way. People are sometimes afraid of speaking in public, but if we follow a few simple rules, giving a presentation is actually very easy. As a general rule in communication, repetition is valuable. In presentations, there is a rule about repetition: 1. Say what we are going to say, 2. say it, 3. then say what we have just said. In other words, use the three parts of our presentation to reinforce our purpose/message. In the introduction, we tell our audience what our message is going to be. In the body, we talk about our real message. In the conclusion, we summarize what our message was.

A. Opening Before we deliver our presentation, we have to greet the people and introduce who we are. But, if we know the people already, we dont have to introduce our self. - Good morning ladies and gentlemen/everybody. Thank you for coming. Its great to be here today. As you all know, Im the Head of the Photo Talk Department. Ive been in this job for five years. Before that, I worked for another very successful company in Yogyakarta for three years. Im talking to you today as the manager of the team which developed this new product. After introducing our self, we might explain the reasons for the people to listen our presentation. - By the end of this session, youll know enough about the new product to be able to sell it with confidence to our customers. Youll know where the idea came from, how it was designed and how it can benefit our customer. Later, we can start to deliver the presentation by talking about a personal story or an interesting fact. It is used to give the background of the presentation. - How do we avoid problems? When I got out of my car this morning, I forgot to switch off the lights Thats we need in our company system that will warn us - I read something interesting yesterday - As I think you know - As you all know

Other ways of inviting people to take things include: - I have the handout with the main points of my presentation. Please take a handout. - Please take one each and pass them round. Did everyone get a copy? - Help your selves to a brochure. After that, we can outline what will be presented later. To start with, I'll describe the progress made this year. Then I'll mention some of the problems we've encountered and how we overcame them. After that I'll consider the possibilities for further growth next year. Finally, I'll summarize my presentation (before concluding with some recommendations).

We also give the instructions about the questions. If you have any questions, please feel free to stop me. Im happy to answer any questions as I talk. Do feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions. I'll try to answer all of your questions after the presentation. I plan to keep some time for questions after the presentation. Ill leave fifteen or twenty minutes at the end for questions,

B. Body The body is the 'real' presentation. If the introduction was well prepared and delivered, we will now be 'in control'. We will be relaxed and confident. We can use this following expression to report bad news: - Im sorry to say that the number of new customers was below target. - Unfortunately, - Sadly, we will not be able to Reporting good news: - However, the good news is that weve nearly doubled sales - Youll be happy to know that - Im pleased to say that

Giving opinion on the information we have presented: This is worse than expected This is not very good This is disappointing This is excellent/very good/better than we had expected.

Introducing a slide: You can see from this slide that Im going to cover three points.

Take a look at this graph and youll see As you can see on the slide, This slide shows the Here is the next slide. This shows Lets look at another example of this which is on

Analyzing a point and giving recommendations: Where does that lead us? Translated into real terms... Let's consider this in more detail... What does this mean for ABC?

Repeating our point using different words: Again, we need to improve our customer In short, In other words, That is to say To put it another way,

Dealing with questions: Thats a good question and one that Ill be answering later in my talk. I'd like to deal with this question later, if I may... We'll be examining this point in more detail later on... I won't comment on this now... Perhaps you'd like to raise this point at the end... I'll come back to this question later in my talk... Im sorry, could you rephrase your question please? (We dont understand a question) Im sorry, but thats not really part of todays discussion and Im afraid its not a question I can answer. I suggest you to speak to one of the Directors about that. (A question that is not on the topic) Im afraid I cant give you a full answer right now. Ill look into it and get back to you later.

When we have finished presenting a point, well probably want to summaries the key points for the people by saying: To sum up, last months sales doubled and this is excellent for this time of year. In short, we need to improve our customer service. Therefore, Let's summaries briefly what we've looked at... In conclusion,... Right, let's sum up, shall we? I'd like now to recap... If I can just sum up the main points...

Finally, let me remind you of some of the issues we've covered...

To change the topic, we can use this phrase: Next, Id like to move on and look at the sales for the following six months. As you know, were doing well as a company but we need to continue this increase in sales and that means everyone must work even harder. Lets move on now to Shall we now turn to Now, well move on to

C. Ending Giving recommendation: In conclusion, my recommendations are... I therefore suggest/propose/recommend the following strategy. In my opinion, we should buy I suggest that we should

Inviting question: Now I'll try to answer any questions you may have. Can I answer any questions? Are there any questions? Do you have any questions? Are there any final questions?

And, if there is no questions, we can use this expressions: So, does anyone here any questions? Any questions at all? No? no question? Thats fine. If anyone wants to ask anything, please feel free to speak to me individually.

A final summary: Finally, the demand of this programme is increasing. We need to continue to grow and develop and that means improving customer care, continuing to focus on quality, and increasing our customer base We need to improve results and that means selling more products, getting more customers, and encouraging existing customer to return.

Thanking people can be a good way of ending a talk. Many people like to finish by thanking the audience for coming. This is some examples of thanking: Finally, Id like to thank you all for taking time out of your busy day to listen to my presentation this afternoon. I hope

Many thanks for your attention. Thank you for listening. It was good to see you all here. Many thanks for coming. May I thank you all for being such an attentive audience.