Giving a business presentation

When you work in management or in many other areas of business, it is common to have to give some sort of presentation.  For many people, speaking in front of an audience is a greater concern than the language they need, but using appropriate vocabulary is vital if you want to hold your audience's attention.

Introducing yourself and your presentation.

Good morning everyone.

Some people still use the phrase ladies and gentlemen when they give presentations, but this can sound more like a circus act is being introduced.  Use your discretion, as many people find it quite acceptable and some see it as too outdated.

Let me start by thanking you all for coming here.

First of all thank you all very much for coming here.

It might not be a good idea to use these phrases if you have a captive audience.  A captive audience is people who have to be there whether they like it or not.

Let me briefly take you through what we'll be discussing today.

First we're going to be analysing the current state of affairs.

Other words that can be substituted include scenario and situation.  Different terms go in and out of fashion over the years even though they describe the same thing.

Then we'll take a look at a few of the  problems some of you have been having.

Once we've identified the problems, we can look at the options available.

Finally, I'll outline what I believe the best course of action to be.

Making your first point:

So, if I might start with the present situation.

As you know, we are expanding our business into the north-east of the country.

What you might not know is that the customer level has dropped since we first planned to do this.

This then is the way things look at the moment.

The situation at present then looks something like this.

Always make use of as many visual aids as you can lay your hands on when introducing the main points of a presentation.  There's an old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words.

Now let's take a look at some of the implications of this.

We've focused on customers, now let's look at our competitors.

I believe you've already tried several solutions.  Let me briefly outline what these are, then you'll be able to see how our solution differs.

Back in 2004 you tried what was then a new strategy.

The following years saw a period of tremendous growth but then a sudden drop.

If you take a look a this graph you can see a definite drop after the last quarter.

As you can see from this chart, we need to put more emphasis on this area of our work.

Other proposals had been put forward in the past when this sort of problem arose.

The one fundamental drawback of all those approaches was that they were too time-consuming.

Our solution is to...

Inviting questions:

Please feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions, or if there's anything you don't follow.

Would anyone like to add anything at this point?

Are there any questions you have before I go on to the next part?

That's a good question.  Can I come back to it in a little while after the second point?  It might make more sense then.

One tip if you have never given a presentation before in English is to practise it before an empty room, possibly with a tape recorder so you can hear what you sound like.  You may also like to give the presentation to a group of your friends, whether they are from the firm you are working for or not, and invite constructive criticism from them.

A final point that many people do not like to admit to is that the audience usually prefers presentations to be short.  Keep an eye on the clock when you give your presentation, but not for the purpose of filling up the time available.  Never overrun the allotted time and your presentation will be more popular.