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BEP 116 – Presentations: Analyzing Trends

Advanced, Business English, Business English e-Books, ESL Podcast, Presentations in English /

In this Business English Pod episode, we’ll be completing our discussion of charts and graphs by studying language for making predictions and for supporting your predictions with analysis. We’ll also look at a couple of advanced ways to rhetorically emphasize a point. Rhetorical means using words effectively to get your message across.

Today’s listening continues Pat’s presentation of the market trends for Ambient and its competitors. This time Pat is coming to the “real story” – the main point – of his presentation. As you listen, see if you can catch what it is.

Listening Questions

1) What is the main focus of this part of Pat’s presentation?
2) What happened in 2005 that caused the trend in RPU to “break out” of “existing trend lines?”
3) What are Pat’s predictions for Ambient’s RPU in 2007?

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BEP 115 – Presentations: Describing Trends

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

In this episode from our e-Book on presenting in English, we’ll look at how to describe the trends show by a chart or graph. To get the background to the presentation and to review language for introducing visuals, you can refer back to BEP 103 – Charts and Trends 1.

A trend is the general direction or tendency of a metric or measurement – upward, downward, flat, fluctuating, peaking, bottoming out, and so on. So, you’ll be learning how to use these and many more terms for describing your charts and graphs in fluent, vivid sentences so that you can present your data with maximum impact.

Pat, Ambient’s new Central European finance director, has just finished talking about sales revenue and is now moving on to discuss market share. The visual he will be talking about is a line graph that compares the trends in market share over the last six quarters from Q1 2006 to Q2 2007. His discussion centers on the top three players in the mobile phone business – his own company, Ambient, and their two top competitors, CallTell and Sirus.

As you listen, pay attention to the trend language that Pat uses to describe the recent changes in the market.

Listening Questions

1) Which company has the largest share of the market at the beginning of 2006?
2) How does Pat describe his own company’s performance in 2006?
3) How big is the “others” group share of the market in Spring 2007?

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

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

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, Presentations in English, Sales /

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, Presentations 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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