Everyone understands the importance of formal business meeting, but informal ones could be as significant. We continue our series of publications to help you grow your vocabulary around business meeting and improve your English speaking.
Always remember to check out our Smalltak Meeting course that simulates formal, informal and online situations. The course will help you solve typical English speaking problems, expand your vocabulary and provide ways to sound more confident.
Part 1: How to start a meeting
Key phrases:
Greeting and starting a meeting
- Thank you for coming
- I’d like to welcome everyone
- Sorry for being late
- I’d like to start by…
- So, let’s get started
- Since everyone is here, let’s start
Introducing yourself (if needed)
- Hi, my name’s …. I’m from the … office.
- For those of you who don’t know me already, I am …
- I’m empowered to … and have the task of …
Giving your reasons for being there
- I arranged this meeting because…
- We’re here today to …
- I can’t wait to share … with you
- We’re to discuss…
- I’ve called this meeting in order to …
- There are some things to be discussed …
- Today I would like to outline our plans for …
- The purpose of today’s meeting is…
Dialogue 1: Starting a meeting
Record your voice reading the beginning of the dialogue out loud.
Pay attention to the key phrases used to start a meeting.
Meeting attendees:
Sales manager (Lotti), Creative director (Mark), Head of sales department (Maria), New Sales Manager (Paul)
Maria: Hello everyone, sorry for being late; terrible traffic.
Lotti: Hey Maria. It’s ok, I’ve also just arrived. How are you doing? Any news so far?
Maria: Remember I told you about my trip this summer? It was terrific, and I even picked up some ideas for our next project.
Lotti: Happy to hear that; you never miss a chance to work on vacation.
Maria: Hey Paul, nice to see you here!
Paul: Hi there! For those of you who don’t know me already, I am Paul and I’m a new sales manager. I’m really happy to be a part of your team!
Lotti: Welcome onboard!
Maria: Hey Mark, thank you for coming.
Mark: My pleasure! I can’t wait to share a new improvement plan with you.
Maria: Sure, we’re about to start! Is Nick joining us today?
Lotti: No, he’s off work this week.
Maria: Ok, since everyone is here, let’s start. Today, I would like to concentrate on growing our business by finding ways to increase sales.…
Part 2: How to manage the discussion
Key phrases:
Giving background information
- As you’re aware…
- The situation is that…
- I’d like to update you on…
- The situation, as it stands…
Involving people
- Perhaps you’d like to talk us through …
- Do you want to talk about …?
Asking / giving permission to speak
- Would this be the right moment to mention …?
- Could I just say something?
- If I could just come in there …
- Go ahead.
Putting forward ideas
- I know you’re not keen on it, but …
- You probably won’t like this idea …
- I’m not sure what your feelings are about this, but …
- We were wondering if …
- Something else we’ve been thinking about is …
- I’m sure you’ll understand the need to …
- The obvious solution to this problem must be to …
Dialogue 2: Managing the discussion
Record your voice reading the next part of the dialogue out loud.
Pay attention to the key phrases used to start a meeting.
Meeting attendees:
Sales manager (Lotti), Creative director (Mark), Head of sales department (Maria), New Sales Manager (Paul)
Maria: Ok, since everyone is here, let’s start. Today, I would like to concentrate on growing our business by finding ways to increase sales. The situation is that we are releasing a new product in July; as you’re aware, it’s a “Branding and Identity” course for startupers. Previously, our primary focus was on the courses for experienced entrepreneurs who wanted to double their incomes. Now we’re going to consider the needs of startupers so that we can meet their expectations. Mark, perhaps you’d like to talk us through the ideas you have.
Mark: I’m sure you’ll understand the need to research our market to see whether there is a demand for our offering. I know we’ve already done it before starting the development, but I think it would be great to survey our clients to ask them about the problems they faced with building their own brands.
Lotti: Yeah, I am with you on this! They trust us, and they will definitely share their experience. Moreover, they are familiar with our platform and can give us their feedback. We’ll be able to take it into account while working on a new course. And if everything suits them, we’ll remain an existing working template and change the product only.
Paul: Could I just say something?
Maria: Sure, go ahead.
Paul: I find this idea awesome, but it’ll take the additional cost to attract a completely new target audience. By the way, would this be the right moment to mention that the training for sales managers I’ve just undergone is quite outdated…?
Maria: Yes, you are right! The thing is that we provided you with an old one, it’s true. We are starting to provide our sales team with enhanced training next week. It’ll take two weeks.
Paul: Good! I’m sure it’ll help us enhance our knowledge and succeed in increasing sales.
Mark: If I could just come in there, something else I’ve been thinking about is price.
Paul: I totally agree! We shouldn’t end up being out of money. First, we can figure out what our competitors are offering and what our profit margins are to determine.
Lotti: I am positive that this is the right path to take. Having gathered the data, I guess it’ll be possible to set a price for the first-course flow.
Maria: Sounds good! …
Part 3: Meeting summary
Key phrases:
- Here are some of the main points we discussed today.
- I would like to briefly cover the topics we mentioned today.
- Let’s quickly summarize the main points of today’s meeting.
- I think we’ve covered everything.
- I guess that will be all for today.
- If there’s nothing more to discuss, we can end here.
- If no one has anything else to add, then I think we’ll wrap this up.
- I want to thank everybody for a productive meeting.
- Thank you all for your time.
- If anyone has any questions about anything we discussed today, feel free to send me an e-mail.
Dialogue 3: Meeting summary
Record your voice reading the final part of the dialogue out loud. Pay attention to the key phrases used to start a meeting.
Meeting attendees:
Sales manager (Lotti), Creative director (Mark), Head of sales department (Maria), New Sales Manager (Paul)
Lotti: I am positive that this is the right path to take. Having gathered the data, I guess it’ll be possible to set a price for the first course flow.
Maria: Sounds good! Let’s discuss this issue a bit deeper another time. Since we’ve made no notes I’d like to briefly cover the topics we mentioned today.
Mark: Sure, we’re running out of time.
Maria: Here are some of the main points we discussed today: we are launching a new course of Branding and Identity for upstarters and to do this we need to understand how to sell it, attract a new audience and evaluate their needs.
Lotti: Sorry for interrupting. Don’t forget about the price for the course.
Maria: Sure! And as for your personal growth, we’ll provide advanced training for all sales managers in our company so you can upgrade your knowledge and come up with new ideas by the next meeting. Did I miss anything?
Mark: No, I guess that’s it. If there’s nothing more to discuss, we can end here.
Maria: Ok, I want to thank everybody for a productive meeting. If anyone has any questions about anything we discussed today, please send me an e-mail.
Lotti: Thanks, everyone. See you very soon.
Paul: Have a productive day!
You’re always welcome to take a look at other SmallTalk courses here.
