Business Meeting Skills, Customer Relations, and Advantage

Unit 4: Chairing Meetings

Chairing a meeting means ensuring that a meeting achieves its aims. The meeting should have been called for a specific purpose, and all discussion at the meeting must be to this end. These are some of the skills required:

Impartiality

A chairperson should ensure that all participants have an opportunity to express their point of view.

Assertiveness

Ensuring that everyone gets a hearing will almost certainly involve stopping someone from dominating the proceedings. The more contentious the issue, the more likely you are to require firmness, although phrases like “I think we should hear from Ms. Smith on this” should be sufficient in most cases. Once you provide this opening, however, you need to ensure: no interruptions while the next speaker has their say.

Staying on Course

A chair must assess the importance of each item on the agenda and allot time to each topic as required. If one issue begins to dominate, the chair must take control. You might suggest a further meeting to discuss the issue at a later date, or continue the discussion at the end of the meeting.

Summarizing

Summarizing can be used at the end of the meeting to ensure that everyone has a clear overview of what took place and what action is now required. It is a skill which is invaluable for a chair and which requires active listening.

Unit 5: Customer Relationship

Companies look for in the relationship: Information about future needs.

Customers look for: After-sales service, information about future products, and personalized treatment.

Both: Loyalty and cost savings.

Giving People What They Want

1. If you have difficulty installing your new software, you should ring the manufacturer’s helpdesk.
2. Your computer was shipped to you this morning, so it should arrive in a couple of days.
3. Our company’s products have an unrivalled reputation for reliability.
4. One of the duties of our customer-service staff is to handle customer complaints.
5. Our marketing budget is directed at retaining existing clients more than recruiting new ones.
6. We can reduce our exposure to risk by outsourcing many of our services to other companies.
7. New computerized data-collection systems have made more traditional systems redundant.

Unit 6: Competitive Advantage

Elements Which Give Companies an Advantage

• A proven track record
• Being one step ahead of the competition
• Clear brand identity
• Competitive prices
• Customer relationship management
• Good value for money
• Market research

What Gives Companies a Competitive Advantage

• A tender: a formal written offer to do a job for an agreed price.
• Procurement: the obtaining of supplies or services.
• To assess: to judge or decide the value of something.
• To itemize: to list things separately.
• Specifications: detailed description of how something should be done.
• Fee: amount of money paid for a particular work.
• Spreadsheet: computer program which allows you to do financial calculations and plans.
• To bid: to compete against other firms by offering to do a job or contract for a certain amount of money.

How a Company Prepares Tenders

• Dedicated: designed for just one purpose.
• Resources: any factor that's necessary to accomplish a goal or carry out an activity.
• Tracking: marketing technique that allows you to know the effectiveness of a specific campaign through multiple tools.
• Outset: at the start.
• Allocate: the process of shifting overhead costs to cost objects, using a rational basis of allotment.
• Rapport: A good understanding of someone and an ability to communicate well with them.
• Benchmark: a process that involves measuring the performance of your business against a competitor in the same market.
• Perspective: the way a company or individual views a given situation.

Verbs (of Business) Definition Used Informally

1. Bid for: offer to do work for a particular price
2. Come out with: produce
3. Come to: add up to
4. Go about: approach the problem
5. Go for: try to get
6. Put together: prepare/organize
7. Team up with: work together with
8. Work out: calculate

Collocations: Words Used Together

1. How do you go about assessing the value of a contract before submitting your tender?
2. We devote a lot of time to building relationships with important private clients.
3. With our costs, it’s sometimes difficult to compete on price.
4. If you don’t cover costs, you will almost certainly go out of business eventually.
5. We itemize all the work we have to do on a contract; the best way to establish a fair price.