BEP

Welcome back to Business English Pod for the second part of our lesson on English for presentations and handling a question and answer session at the end of a presentation.

Presentations can be stressful. Speaking in front of the public, or even just your colleagues, makes even confident people nervous. And there’s one part of a presentation in particular that might dial up the nerves: the questions people ask at the end of your presentation.

The Q&A requires you to think on your feet. Some of the questions you get might be really difficult. And for that reason, it may be important to check that your answers are sufficient for the question-asker. At the same time, the questions might not even be relevant! So you’ll need a strategy for that situation as well.

Sometimes a person will ask a question that you think you’re not the best person to answer. In that case, you can figure out who to redirect the question to. And if this entire Q&A situation is stressful, well at least you have some control. You can control the timing, instead of letting it go on forever.

In this lesson, we’ll continue listening to a Q&A in a meeting at a steel company. Nick, a sales director, has just given a presentation. He and his boss Max are dealing with questions from Bryan and Cindy.

Listening Questions

1. After telling Cindy about measures of success, what question does Nick ask her?
2. What does Max say about Cindy’s question regarding morale and how the sales staff are feeling?
3. How does Nick respond to John’s question about marketing in the U.K.?

Download: Podcast MP3

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on how to deal with the question and answer session at the end of a presentation in English.

A presentation can be planned, organized, scripted, and rehearsed. But that’s simply not possible with the questions you might get at the end of your presentation. Sure, you can try to anticipate what people might ask, but you never really know. They may refer to specific points in your presentation and challenge you on these points.

For this reason, you need the skills to handle whatever you’re faced with. And sometimes that means overcoming doubt or resistance to your ideas. You might have to use buffers to deal with tough questions and concede certain points to your audience. You may also find yourself clarifying a point and paraphrasing your audience’s questions.

In this lesson, we’ll listen to the Q&A following a presentation in English by Nick, a sales director for a steel company. Bryan and Cindy are posing some difficult questions. Nick, and his boss Max, are using several techniques for dealing with these questions.

Listening Questions

1. How does Nick respond at first when Bryan asks a tough question about the survey results?
2. Cindy begins to ask a question about retraining the salespeople. What does Nick say to clarify what he meant?
3. How does Nick deal with Cindy’s question about measuring success?

Download: Podcast MP3