You're listening to Business English Pod, the Business English podcast for professionals on the move.
Hello and welcome back to Business English Pod.
My name's Edwin and I'll be your host for today's lesson on English for video conference meetings with clients.
In the past, meeting with clients often meant you had to travel.
That might mean across town, or it might mean across the country or overseas.
But with modern video conferencing tools, you can now meet with your clients without ever leaving your office.
But running a virtual meeting doesn't look exactly the same as an in-person meeting.
While you use a lot of the same skills, those skills will sound a bit different in action.
And there are some new skills you'll need to develop, as you have to manage not only a group of people, but also the technology.
At the start of a meeting, you'll probably get things going with a semi-formal welcome before giving a rough outline for the meeting.
At some point you'll have to ask for people's patience while you take care of a technical issue like sharing your screen or admitting new people to the meeting room.
One big difference between in-person and virtual meetings is how you deal with questions.
Yes, you'll have to call on people that you can see have a question, but you may also need to deal with questions or comments that come through the chat function.
In today's dialogue, we'll listen to a meeting run by Adam and Kathy, two business consultants.
They're talking with a group of managers, including Sophie and Fareed, at HealthWise, a chain of health food stores that is trying to improve their online sales.
You will hear Adam and Kathy demonstrate the skills you need to run a client meeting by video conference.
As you listen to the dialogue, try to answer the following questions.
1.
What is the rough outline for the meeting that Adam provides?
2.
Adam asks for his client's patience while he deals with what technical matter?
3.
How does Adam know that Sophie has a question?
Well, looks like it's 10 on the nose here, so hello everyone.
I'm Adam, as you all know, and I've got Kathy with me here today.
Glad to have this chance to talk with you all.
Yes, thanks for setting this up, Adam.
Excited to hear what you've been up to.
Great.
Well, I thought we could start by sharing some of our discovery results from the past two weeks, give you a chance to ask some questions, and then we've got a few questions for you.
Sound good?
For sure.
All ears.
Okay.
So, I'm going to share my screen now, if you can just bear with me for one second here.
Everyone see that okay?
Looking good.
Super.
Alright, a few initial things here.
First, we've gone through your existing online setup and looked at what's been selling and what hasn't.
And we've compared that with your in-store performance, just to see how things look there.
Okay, and before we move on to questions, if I can just reiterate, as Adam said, these are possibilities for future exploration.
Exactly.
Thanks, Kathy.
So, Sophie, I think I saw your hand up there.
You had a question on this?
Yeah, just curious about this 60-60 rule about upselling you mentioned.
I mean, isn't it more about product matching?
Like, if they're buying soy cheese, they'll probably buy soy milk too.
You know, rather than it being about price.
Great question.
And yes, it is absolutely about product congruency, as we say.
When a customer buys a laptop, you offer a laptop case, not a hat.
So congruency is number one.
But then what you're offering has to be cheaper and the sweet spot there is about 60 of the price of the first item.
That's in terms of profitability and likelihood of purchase.
I get it now.
So both are important.
Precisely.
It's not just one or the other.
You have to take both into account.
Now just looking at the chat here and I see there are a couple of comments that we should probably address.
First off, there's a question about delivery.
It says, how do we manage increasing orders and still fulfill our delivery promise?
So this question is about increasing delivery capacity, right?
Yes.
Seems like that would be a huge challenge.
Definitely a challenge.
And we really need to be strategic about how we do this.
Trying this out in just one store at the beginning will help us get a better idea of how that will work when we expand to other stores in the future.
Now let's go through the dialogue again and look at the language and techniques Adam used in the meeting.
Well, looks like it's 10 on the nose here, so hello everyone.
I'm Adam, as you all know, and I've got Kathy with me here today.
Glad to have this chance to talk with you all.
Adam gets the meeting off to a great start by beginning right on time, which people always appreciate.
Not only does he begin on time, he also provides a very nice semi-formal welcome to the meeting.
That involves saying hello, introducing himself and his colleague, and making a positive comment.
Other things you might hear at the start of a meeting are thanking people for attending and wishing people a good day, as we can hear in the following examples.
Hi, everyone.
Thanks so much for being here today.
I'd like to start off by wishing everyone a happy Friday.
Okay, I think we're about ready to get going, so welcome, everyone.
All right, folks.
My name is Fiona, and I'll be leading the meeting today.
Let's listen as Adam continues with his meeting intro.
Yes, thanks for setting this up, Adam.
Excited to hear what you've been up to.
Great.
Well, I thought we could start by sharing some of our discovery results from the past two weeks, give you a chance to ask some questions, and then we've got a few questions for you.
Sound good? it's always a good idea to state what you're going to cover in a meeting.
You might not have a formal printed agenda, but it's still wise to give people a rough meeting outline.
And as Adam shows, it's a good idea to keep it simple.
In this particular meeting he wants to look at their discovery results or what they've learned through research.
Then each side can ask some questions.
What do other rough meeting outlines sound like?
Let's run through a few more examples.
After a quick update, I'll open it up for questions.
So, we'll talk about three things today, the budget, the timeline, and next steps.
Let's have Kent give his report, then we can get into the marketing plan.
So the first topic for the meeting is sharing discovery results.
Let's hear how Adam begins.
For sure, all ears.
Okay, so I'm going to share my screen now, if you can just bear with me for one second here.
Everyone see that okay?
Adam asks his clients to bear with him or wait patiently as he shares his screen.
Of course, if you were doing an in-person meeting, you might be projecting a PowerPoint presentation or distributing handouts.
But in the virtual setting you'll need to handle these functions through the features of the software you're using.
Meeting participants can't really see what you're doing, so it's a good idea to tell them and ask for their patience if you're taking care of a technical task.
Let's practice some more ways of doing this.
Okay, if you can hang on a second, I'll post the link in chat.
Please just give me a moment to share the PowerPoint with you.
Let me check the connection here.
I'll just be a minute.
Bear with me a sec.
I need to admit a couple of latecomers to the meeting.
Now let's get back to the meeting, as Adam begins discussing what they've learned about his client's online setup, or e-commerce platform.
Looking good.
Super.
Alright, a few initial things here.
First, we've gone through your existing online setup and looked at what's been selling and what hasn't.
And we've compared that with your in-store performance, just to see how things look there.
Again, Adam outlines what he's going to talk about, but we're not going to hear their entire presentation.
Instead, let's jump ahead and listen as they move on to the discussion stage of the meeting.
Okay, and before we move on to questions, if I can just reiterate, as Adam said, these are possibilities for future exploration.
Exactly.
Thanks, Kathy.
So, Sophie, I think I saw your hand up there.
You had a question on this?
In this situation, Adam sees that one of his clients has raised her hand, and so he calls on her directly.
Sometimes in a video conference people will put their actual hand up to show they have a comment or question.
They may not leave it up, but rather just trust that the host has seen that they have a question.
Some video conferencing platforms also have a raised hand button for signaling you want to ask a question.
Either way, your job as the host is to take note and to call on people for their questions and comments.
What are some other ways of calling on people?
Let's try a few more examples.
Yes, Fiona, I think you had a question on this.
I see you've got your hand raised there, Amy.
You have a question?
Okay, so, yes, Scott, did you have something you wanted to ask?
I'll take your question first, Asha, then we'll go to Ian.
Now that Adam has called on Sophie, she can ask her question.
Yeah, just curious about this 60-60 rule about upselling you mentioned.
I mean, isn't it more about product matching?
Like, if they're buying soy cheese, they'll probably buy soy milk too.
You know, rather than it being about price.
Great question.
And yes, it is absolutely about product congruency, as we say.
When a customer buys a laptop, you offer a laptop case, not a hat.
So congruency is number one.
But then what you're offering has to be cheaper and the sweet spot there is about 60 of the price of the first item.
That's in terms of profitability and likelihood of purchase.
You'll notice that Adam started his response by saying great question.
Complimenting someone on a question is a good way of encouraging further participation.
Adam then goes on to explain what Sophie asked about, which was the 60-60 rule related to upselling.
Upselling is when you try to sell a customer a better product or more products.
Now, raising your hand, either in real life or virtually, is one way of showing you have a question.
But another common way is to type your comment or question into the chat function of the video conferencing platforms.
Let's hear how Kathy handles that.
I get it now.
So both are important.
Precisely.
It's not just one or the other.
You have to take both into account.
Now just looking at the chat here and I see there are a couple of comments that we should probably address.
First off, there's a question about delivery.
It says, how do we manage increasing orders and still fulfill our delivery promise?
So this question is about increasing delivery capacity, right?
Kathy starts by saying that she sees some questions in the chat and then reads one of the questions out loud so everyone knows what she's referring to.
The question is about fulfilling their delivery promise, which means delivering consistently on time while handling increased orders.
Before answering the question, Cathy asks for a bit of clarification.
That will help if you want to ensure your response is clear, as Adam demonstrated with his answer.
Whether you're meeting with clients or colleagues, you'll surely have to monitor the chat for questions.
So let's run through some more examples of dealing with such questions.
I see here in the chat someone's asking about our safety policy.
Alright, a few questions coming through in the chat.
Let's start with Hannah's.
Let me just address the issue that Ryan has brought up in chat.
Someone has posted a question about the finish date that I'd like to talk about.
Now let's finish up the dialogue.
Yes, seems like that would be a huge challenge.
Definitely a challenge.
And we really need to be strategic about how we do this.
Trying this out in just one store at the beginning will help us get a better idea of how that will work.
We heard Adam say great question and now we hear another way to establish rapport and engagement by repeating people's words back to them as a way of agreeing with their point.
Overall, Adam and Kathy are doing a great job of engaging their clients during the video conference meeting.
Of course, it's much easier when there are two of you running the meeting, because in a video conference there's a lot to think about.
You're not only watching the people in the virtual room, you're also watching the chat and taking care of technical issues.
Now let's practice some of the language we learned in today's lesson.
Imagine you work for a web development company.
You're meeting with some clients whose website you've been redesigning.
You'll hear a cue from the client.
Then I'll give you a suggestion for what you can say in response.
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 welcoming everyone and saying you're excited to talk with them today.
Answer Hello and welcome everyone.
I'm very excited to talk with you all today.
Yes, and we're keen to see what you've been working on.
Now say that you'll start by showing the draft website, then open it up for questions.
Answer Great.
So let me show you the draft website, then I'll open it up for questions.
Sounds like a plan.
I'm sure everyone will have lots to ask about.
Next, ask for their patience while you share your screen.
Answer.
Okay, so just give me a second here while I share my screen.
Later in the meeting, you see someone put their hand up.
Ask if the person has a question.
Answer.
Ah, I see a hand up.
Do you have a question for me?
Yeah, just curious if those are the final images that will be used on the homepage.
Say it's a great question and add that another person asked the same thing in the chat.
Answer.
Great question.
And it looks like someone else has asked the same thing in the chat.
Now let's practice some of the vocabulary we've covered in this lesson.
In a moment, you'll hear a series of sentences with a word replaced with a beep.
Repeat each sentence, including the missing word.
For example, if you hear, Please tell me about the problem, Kendra.
I'm all You can say, Please tell me about the problem, Kendra.
I'm all ears.
After each response, we'll provide the correct answer.
Let's begin.
Answer.
When you're pricing new products, you really need to find the sweet spot.
In the budget, it looks like we didn't take fuel costs into Answer.
In the budget, it looks like we didn't take fuel costs into account.
Let's move on.
We need to finish at 3 on the...
Answer.
Let's move on.
We need to finish at three on the nose.
This is important, so let me... What I said earlier about the budget.
Answer.
This is important, so let me reiterate what I said earlier about the budget.
We've reached the end of this lesson, the third in our series on virtual teams.
We've learned how to deliver an opening welcome and give a rough outline of the meeting.
We've also covered how to ask for patience while you deal with technical issues, call on people with questions and deal with questions coming through the chat.
Thanks for listening and see you again soon.
