How To Handle Questions - Business English Presentations

mr callum during your presentation you mentioned that you'd had some problems recently and that the project was behind schedule how long do you think it will take to get back on schedule i don't know what impression would you get if a presenter answered your question like this probably not a very good one hi everybody and welcome back to english for professionals i'm derek and i'm here with another short lesson for you busy people in this business english presentations lesson i'm going to give you lots of useful tips for handling questions [Music] before we get started if you're new to the channel and you're interested in short lessons to help you with your business english then hit the subscribe button and don't forget to click on the little bell that way you'll be notified every time i upload a new lesson and now let's get started we're going to look at four different things in this lesson first how to be prepared for questions second repeating questions then handling different types of questions and finally checking for satisfaction first of all it's good to know when questions will be asked if you have a more open flexible style of presentation you may choose to accept questions at any time however if you have a strict time limit and you prefer not to be interrupted then you'll probably prefer to accept questions at the end of your presentation when you make your introduction make sure to let your audience know when they can ask questions and always be well prepared and know your topic it doesn't matter whether you accept questions at any time or only at the end the better your preparation and knowledge of your topic the better you will be able to handle your audience's questions if you want to be really well prepared think about the questions your audience could ask and put them into the following categories category 1 questions you expect and can definitely answer category 2 questions you would expect but would find difficult to answer and the final category category 3 questions you wouldn't want someone to ask and would find very difficult to answer and when you're finished categorizing these questions try to come up with strategies for dealing with the questions in category 2 and 3. when somebody asks a question it's a good idea to repeat the question for a couple of reasons for example if somebody asks are you expecting this product to be a big success you can repeat the question like this you're asking me whether we're expecting this product to be a big success so why is this a good idea well first of all when you repeat the question it can help you to understand the question better and the person who asked will feel that you were really paying attention when they asked the question it can also help other people in the audience who maybe didn't hear the question by repeating the question you give them the chance to hear the question again and finally and this one is important it also gives you an extra little bit of time to think about your answer here are some other ways to repeat the question is this something we can afford to do at the moment you want to know if this is something we can afford to do at the moment well are you planning to expand into new markets with this product if i understand the question correctly you would like to know if we are planning to expand into new markets with this product what i can tell you is how will this new technology help to reduce costs you're wondering how this new technology will help to reduce costs well a good question gives you the opportunity to give more details about your topic it could make your presentation better it could also be about something you wanted to mention but forgot so why not thank the questioner for reminding you here are some different ways to respond to good questions that's a really good question i'm glad you've asked that question an interesting question ah yes thank you for reminding me an unnecessary question is normally a question that you've already answered during the presentation don't say i already answered that question that's too direct and it may make the questioner feel uncomfortable maybe they just missed that part of your presentation instead say this when i spoke about earlier i mentioned that as i mentioned earlier perhaps i didn't make that clear sometimes people ask questions that are not connected to the topic of your presentation here are some different ways to handle these kinds of questions i'm sorry but i don't see the connection here i'm sorry but i don't quite follow you to be honest i think that raises a different issue maybe we could discuss it afterwards a difficult question is one that you don't know the answer to or that's difficult to answer if you don't know the answer it's better to be honest and say you don't know however let the questioner know that you will try to answer the question at a later point but be careful if you have to do this too often it will give the impression that you don't know your topic and that you're not well prepared here are some ways to handle difficult questions i'm afraid i don't know but i will find out and get back to you to be quite honest i don't really know can i get back to you about that i'm afraid i'm not in a position to comment on that or i'm afraid that's not my area of expertise it would be better to ask my colleague frank winters frank could you answer that question for us please and if your colleague is not present i'll ask him to contact you to clarify that would that be okay and one more example i'm afraid i don't have that information to hand but i'd be happy to forward it to you if you give me your contact details when we say we don't have something to hand it means it's not available to us in that moment and finally i believe that an important part of being a good and professional presenter and making a good impression is to check with the questioner that they are satisfied with the answer you gave to their question now you don't have to do this for every single question with a lot of the questions you'll be very confident that you've answered the question well but sometimes it is a good idea to do this and here are some examples of how you can do it does that answer your question i hope that answers your question would you like me to elaborate further to elaborate further means to give more details i hope i've managed to clarify that for you is that what you wanted to know so that brings us to the end of another presentation skills lesson i hope you found it helpful and if you have any other tips for handling questions in a presentation please do let us know in the comments if you liked the lesson hit the like button and share with your friends and colleagues subscribe to my channel if you haven't done that already and join my email list every two weeks i send out my free vocabulary email with additional business english words from the news and everyday english for you to learn the link is in the description below thanks a lot for watching and see you soon

Channel: Derek Callan - English for Professionals

Views: 9,471

Rating: 4.9553571 out of 5

Keywords: how to handle questions - business english presentations, how to handle difficult questions in a presentation, how to handle off-topic questions in a presentation, english presentations q & a, answering questions presentations skills, improve your presentation skills, make great presentations in english, business english presentation tips, how to present well in english, how to deal with questions in a presentation, Answering difficult questions in a presentation

Id: L5V8B7FFJbU

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021