Welcome to ESLPod.com's “Business Meetings" course: lesson seven.

I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development, in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

In the sixth lesson of “Business Meetings,” we learned business vocabulary for ending presentations at formal and informal meetings.

In this seventh lesson, we're going to learn how to manage a discussion.

When we ended lesson six, Shawn was asked to be the moderator, or the person who leads a discussion.

Let's listen to Shawn managing the discussion at the formal business meeting.

Shawn: When you have a question, please raise your hand.

This will allow me to call on people one at a time and avoid having people talk over each other.

Also please make sure that your questions are on topic.

Who would like to begin?

Chris: I need to voice my concern about how the focus groups were not asked about color or design.
I think this would have….

Hannah: Please pardon my interruption, but with all due respect, Mr. Hanson, I completely disagree with you.

I understand your concern, but in our experience those product characteristics pale in comparison next to “affordability” and “ease of use.”

I don't have time to address your concern fully, but most customers aren't interested in design as much.

Alex: If I may offer my opinion, I believe Mr. Hanson has a legitimate concern and I'm glad he asked that question, but Ms. Graff may be right about the importance of listening to our customers.

However, this topic is outside the scope of my expertise.