3. Follow-up activity.

Read the notes below for another presentation. In pairs, discuss how you could customise the introduction to this presentation. Then present your introduction to another pair.

Your role:	You work for sales management at headquarters
Audience profile:	Sales staff from Latin America
Objective:	Give results of major survey of international customer satisfaction
Your interest:	Give information to help sales staff improve sales and level of service
Audience interest:	To sell more / How to make customers happier / To earn a bigger bonus

In pairs, prepare a short presentation where both of you speak to welcome a group of visitors to your organisation. After the welcome, the visitors will begin a tour of the company with a senior manager.

1. Decide the profile of the visitor group:

   1. nationality

   2. professional area

   3. reason for visiting the company

2. Customise the content and style of your introduction as much as possible. Use the briefings on national culture at the start of this unit to help you prepare your introduction.

3. Give your welcome presentations. Before you begin, tell your audience the visitor profile. Those listening to the presentation should give feedback on how effective it is in terms of clarity of the message and appropriateness for the given audience.

3. The Q & A (question and answer) part of a presentation is crucial. It is an opportunity for a presenter to check the audience’s level of understanding and agreement with what has been said and for the audience to comment or clarify.

Here are some guidelines for handling this phase of a presentation.

• Do you agree with them? Why / Why not?

• Are there any you disagree with? What advice would you give instead?

• Can you add any more?

1. Invite questions from your audience when it suits you, either during the presentation or at the end, e.g. ‘I’d prefer to take questions at the end of my presentation if that is OK with everyone.’

2. If you know people in the audience and there are no questions but silence, ask individuals to comment on your questions, e.g. ‘Marie, what do you think of this design?’

3. Give yourself time to think when answering a question. Don’t rush to respond. For example, you can say That’s a very interesting question, Philippa.’ or ‘I’m pleased you asked that.’ to give yourself time to think.

4. If you are not sure you fully understand a question, reformulate it in your own words, e.g. ‘So what you are saying is...’ or ‘What do you mean exactly by ...?’

5. Link the last question to the next part of your presentation or your summary, for example ‘If that is the last question, I’ll move on to the next part/ my summary.’ Never end with your last answer.

3. Samira Saeed is a project manager in Dubai. Listen to her giving a presentation to colleagues at an internal product development meeting.

How well do you think Samira handles the Q & A part of her presentation?