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Hello and welcome back to Business English Pod for the second part of our lesson on handling a question and answer session at the end of a presentation.
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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 the 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 Brian and Cindy.
As you listen to the dialogue, try to answer the following 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 UK?
But how do we measure success?
You mean, how can we tell if it's working?
Yes, that's right.
That's a good question.
I would expect to see a 5 increase in order volume three months after the rollout, 10 within six months.
That's the main criterion.
Does that answer your question?
Yes, thanks.
But I guess another general point I'd like to raise is about staffing.
Uh-huh.
With so much new blood coming into the company, a lot of sales staff feel that the writing's on the wall.
And I think it's creating a bad atmosphere.
Let me check I understand.
Are you asking about potential redundancies and how they might affect morale?
In a word, yes.
Well, everyone's job is on the line here.
The most important thing is that we are fully committed to getting sales back on track.
I think that raises a different issue.
We can address staff changes and morale in another meeting.
Time's running short.
Let's stay focused.
Okay.
Well, I think we only have a few minutes left.
Is there one last question?
Yes, if I can just come in for a second.
Yes, John.
Well, from what we're seeing on the UK side, the salespeople just don't feel our promotional materials are getting through to our most important customers.
I'm talking about the decision makers, project managers, architects, etc.
How do you think we can adjust?
That's a very interesting issue, but I'm not fully up to speed on the marketing situation in the UK.
Brian, would you like to comment on that?
We can go into more detail about that in this afternoon's marketing meeting.
But I would just like to point out that what you're saying just flat out contradicts the results from our market survey.
Well, too bad we sell steel and not market surveys.
Um, so, right.
I'm afraid that's just about all we have time for.
Yes, thank you, Nick.
We really are running on a tight schedule today, as I think everyone can appreciate.
Now, Nick's proposal is definitely a go and needs our full support.
Brian, I want your team to work with Nick's on the value proposition for the new training material and get back to me next Tuesday with a time frame for rollout.
I'd like to have country managers retrain during next month's sales meeting and we need to work fast.
Okay, folks?
Now let's go through the dialogue again and learn how Nick and Max deal with the questions.
The first question is about how to measure the success of Nick's proposed plan to retrain the sales team.
But how do we measure success?
You mean, how can we tell if it's working?
Yes, that's right.
That's a good question.
I would expect to see a 5 increase in order volume three months after the rollout, 10 within six months.
That's the main criterion.
Does that answer your question?
After clarifying Cindy's question, Nick begins by saying it's a good question.
This is a way to create a buffer or give yourself more time to answer.
We learned all about that in our last lesson.
Then Nick provides very specific information about measuring success.
He talks about changes in order, volume or sales after rolling out or launching the retraining program.
And finally, he asks directly if his answer is sufficient.
This is a useful technique in Q&A.
You want people to feel that their question has been dealt with.
So instead of over explaining, just to be sure, you can answer simply and directly.
Then ask if the person is satisfied.
Let's run through some more ways to check that your answer is sufficient.
Do you see what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Does that cover everything?
So does Cindy feel that Nick's answer was sufficient?
Let's find out.
Yes, thanks.
But I guess another general point I'd like to raise is about staffing.
Uh-huh.
With so much new blood coming into the company, a lot of sales staff feel that the writing's on the wall.
And I think it's creating a bad atmosphere.
Let me check I understand.
Are you asking about potential redundancies and how they might affect morale?
Cindy seems satisfied with Nick's answer about measuring success, but she then moves on to comment on how staff feel with so much new blood or new people coming in.
At this point, Nick uses another strategy that we learned in our last lesson.
He paraphrases Cindy's question to make sure he understands.
Nick asks Cindy if she's talking about the impact on morale.
Morale is how people in a company are feeling.
Morale is high when people feel generally positive and it's low when people feel discouraged or negative.
Let's hear how they deal with this particular issue.
In a word, yes.
Well, everyone's job is on the line here.
The most important thing is that we are fully committed to getting sales back on track.
I think that raises a different issue.
We can address staff changes and morale in another meeting.
Time's running short.
Let's stay focused.
As you can hear, Nick tries to answer Cindy's question about morale, but Max feels that this is taking them off track.
Nick's proposal is about training as a way to increase sales.
Cindy's question isn't truly relevant.
How do you deal with irrelevant questions after a presentation?
As Max shows, you can be direct about it.
He says very clearly that Cindy is raising a different issue.
You can soften this kind of statement with words like might, or you can simply show doubt that it's relevant.
Let's try these different ways of dealing with an irrelevant question.
Are you sure that's within our scope here?
I'm having trouble understanding what the connection is.
That might be a bit of a different topic.
Remember, Max is Nick's boss.
He interrupted when he heard an irrelevant question to keep the group focused.
Now we go back to Nick as time is running out.
Okay.
Well, I think we only have a few minutes left.
Is there one last question?
The Q&A doesn't have to go on forever.
In fact, you can be clear right from the start how much time there will be for questions.
Or, as Nick does, you can let everyone know when time is running out.
In this case, Nick mentions there's a few minutes left and allows one more question.
Let's try some more examples of controlling the timing during a Q&A.
We've just got a couple minutes left.
I can take one more question before we have to finish up.
Unfortunately, we don't have time to get into that today.
We appear to be out of time, so I'm going to wrap up now.
Now let's get back to the dialogue and hear the last question.
Yes, if I can just come in for a second.
Yes, John.
Well, from what we're seeing on the UK side, the salespeople just don't feel our promotional materials are getting through to our most important customers.
I'm talking about the decision makers, project managers, architects, etc.
How do you think we can adjust?
That's a very interesting issue, but I'm not fully up to speed on the marketing situation in the UK.
Brian, would you like to comment on that?
Sometimes, people will ask a question that you really can't respond to.
Often, this is because you don't have the information necessary to answer.
This is exactly the situation here, where John is asking about marketing in the UK.
Nick isn't up to speed or knowledgeable about the topic, but he knows that Brian is up to speed, so he redirects the question to him.
What are some other ways we can redirect a question to someone else?
Let's try some more examples.
Well, I think that's more of a question for Susan.
Maybe I can put that question to Ryan if you don't mind.
That's a bit out of my expertise.
Gerald, maybe you want to comment?
I'm going to leave that topic for Simon to address.
Let's hear how Brian deals with this question about marketing in the UK before they wrap up the Q&A.
We can go into more detail about that in this afternoon's marketing meeting.
But I would just like to point out that what you're saying just flat out contradicts the results from our market survey.
Well, too bad we sell steel and not market surveys.
Um, so, right.
I'm afraid that's just about all we have time for.
Yes, thank you, Nick.
We really are running on a tight schedule today, as I think everyone can appreciate.
Now...
Nick's proposal is definitely a go and needs our full support.
Brian, I want your team to work with Nick's on the value proposition for the new training material and get back to me next Tuesday with a time frame for rollout.
I'd like to have country managers retrain during next.
After Brian's response to John's question Nick states simply and clearly that they're out of time.
At this point, Max takes over to thank Nick and reiterate that they're on a tight schedule.
This simply means that they have a lot to do and not a lot of time.
And this is the reason why Nick and Max had to ensure questions were relevant and to control the timing of the QA.
Now let's practice some of the language we learned in today's lesson.
Imagine you've just given a presentation and you're answering questions from your colleagues.
You'll hear a cue from someone in the meeting, then I'll tell you how to respond.
We'll guide you through each step in the practice and provide an example answer for each response.
Ready?
Let's give it a go.
Start by asking if your answer to a question covers what the person needs to know.
Does my answer cover what you need to know?
If I can just ask, how much do we expect the budget to increase?
Respond by saying that you're not sure that question is related to today's topic.
Answer I'm not sure that question is related to today's topic.
Thanks so much for the detailed answer.
Respond by saying you're welcome and state that there's time for just one more question.
Answer.
You're welcome and we have time for just one more question.
Could you comment on the upcoming leadership change?
Answer.
I'm going to leave that topic for Barbara to answer.
That's all for this lesson on handling the Q&A after a presentation.
We've learned how to check whether your answer is sufficient and how to deal with irrelevant questions.
We've also covered how to control the timing and how to redirect a question to another person.
For more practice.
Premium members can access the online quizzes and PDF transcripts for this and other lessons on the BEP website.
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Thanks for listening, and see you again soon.
