Business English Pod / Presentation in English / Page 10

BEP 92 – English for Sales: Features, Advantages, Benefits (or FAB Presentation)

Business English, ESL Podcast, Intermediate English, Presentation in English, Sales English /

For today’s Business English Podcast lesson, we’re going to focus on the “classic sales” approach to selling products and services. This approach is based on explaining the features, attributes and benefits of your products using the “FAB” technique.

The FAB technique is useful for people working in the manufacturing and retail trade – anyone who has to present products. In particular, we’ll look at how this approach can be applied in the Merchandizing business. Merchandizing is the trade name for businesses involved in the design and manufacture of clothing and household items.

In the dialog, we rejoin Marco and Francesca on their trip to a fashion trade show in the U.S. Their company, Viva, has just created an exciting new line of clothes. With the help of their American partner, Foxtrot, they are hoping to get a couple big sales contracts with U.S. department stores.

The listening takes place in the Foxtrot showroom. We’ll hear Francesca speak to a potential customer, Bill, who is a buyer for Bancroft’s, a retail chain store that targets professional women.

Listening Questions

1. What is the key feature of Viva’s fall colors this year? Can you name some of the colors?
2. Why is the Viva Professional line more expensive?
3. As described in the dialog, what are the main benefits of Viva’s clothing line?

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BEP 85 – English for Sales: Informal Product Presentation

Business English, ESL Podcast, Intermediate English, Presentation in English, Sales English /

In this Business English Podcast, we’re going to look at the language of presenting your products and services to potential clients in informal situations.

Following on from our episode on hosting a site visit, we return to our friends at the railway tunnel. Stanley Wang is a site agent for a railway construction project in western China. He has just taken Matt and Paul, sales engineers from a small American company, on a tour of the tunnel. Now, in the evening, Stanley and his boss Bill Zhang are hosting a dinner for Matt and Paula. The group is discussing possibilities for future cooperation.

In many countries and cultures around the world, informal occasions – such as a friendly meal or a game of a golf – are more important to the sales process than a formal presentation in the boardroom. And so in this episode, we’ll be studying language for presenting our products in such casual situations. In particular, we’ll see how you can sell your products in relation to your customers’ needs with a few soft-sell techniques.

Listening Questions

1) Were Matt and Paula able to go to the tunnel face, that is, the end of the tunnel?
2) What is the main point of interest that Matt and Paula pursue in the discussion?
3) What are the advantages that Matt and Paula’s device have over traditional surveying methods?

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BEP 106e – Presenting for Success: Using your Voice

Business English, ESL Podcast, Presentation in English /

In this Business English Podcast lesson we’ll look at how to speak naturally and how to emphasize, or highlight, key language and ideas. In addition, we’ll be looking at a few key English expressions and phrases you can use to add extra emphasis to your presentation in English.

Today’s listening takes place at PharmaTek, an international pharmaceutical manufacturer based in Switzerland. A group of European journalists are taking a tour of PharmaTek’s new high-potency production center in Beijing, which is scheduled to start making PharmaTek’s new blockbuster medication, Zorax, in the fall of 2007. “Blockbuster” means hugely successful. “High-potency production” refers to using highly potent or very strong chemicals. This is a manufacturing technique that requires “state-of-the-art” or very advanced technology.

We’ll be hearing PharmaTek employees introduce the new plant. Let’s start with a couple bad examples, where the voice needs a lot of work. Listen to Gunter Schmidt, the manager of PharmaTek’s corporate affairs division. As you listen, focus on his voice. What does he do wrong?

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BEP 103e – Presentations: Describing Charts and Trends 1

Advanced, Business English, ESL Podcast, Presentation in English /

This lesson has been updated – view the improved lesson here.

This is the first of three Business English Pod episodes on charts and trends from our new eBook – Presenting for Success. Over these three shows, we’ll be learning language for dealing with visuals, describing trends, analyzing and comparing data, and making predictions. “Visuals” refers to any visual element of your presentation – charts, graphs, pictures and so on. A trend is the general direction – upward or downward – of some metric, that is measurement, such as price or revenue. For example, when we say, “The price of oil has risen 30% in the last three months,” that’s a trend.

In this lesson we’ll focus on the basics of how to deal with visuals in your presentation: That is, how to attract attention to them, how to emphasize the key parts, and how to relate points about different visuals as you move through your slides. A slide is just one picture in your PowerPoint presentation.

The listening comes from a presentation at the Central European head office of Ambient, an American mobile phone manufacturer. Ambient has regained market share after a couple of bad years and has now taken over the number two place behind market leader Sirus and just ahead of the third player, CallTell.

You’ll hear Pat, the new finance director in the Central Europe region, in the middle of a presentation to the sales team. As we join them, he is bringing up a slide on revenue trends among the top three players in the business.

As you listen, pay attention to the language that Pat uses to call attention to his points and to relate them to each other.

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BEP 62 – Persuasion 3: Satisfaction, Visualization and Action Steps

Advanced, Business English, ESL Podcast, Persuasion, Presentation in English, Sales English /

In the first two ESL lessons (BEP 59 & BEP 60) in this three-part series on persuasion, we saw how getting your audience’s attention and demonstrating a clear need were essential to the persuasive process. We learned that in the indirect method of persuasion you should demonstrate the problem before you offer a solution. This mirrors the psychological process of decision-making: First we feel a need, and then we look for a way to satisfy that need.

After you have established the need, you then describe the future benefits if your proposal is accepted. This is the visualization step: Talk about how accepting your proposal will have positive future outcomes or maybe how not accepting it will have negative outcomes. Finally, you need to make a concrete, specific call to action – what the audience can do right now to implement your proposal.

Let’s finish listening to Steve give his proposal to Swift management. See if you can identify the satisfaction, visualization and action steps in his speech.

Listening Questions

1. How long will it take Swift to get back the investment in air conditioning?
2. How much extra profit can Swift make per year by adopting Nick’s proposal?
3. What specific action does Steve ask his manager’s to take?

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