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2. Read the text on ‘PRESENTATION STRUCTURE AND USEFUL LANGUAGE’. Dwell upon the main points orally.
| |[pic] |
|Presentations are commonly divided | |
|into three main sections: | |
|1. INTRODUCTION | |
|2. MAIN BODY OF PRESENTATION | |
|3. CONCLUSION | |
| |a) Opening courtesies. |
|1. INTRODUCTION is typically divided |Common courtesy dictates that the presenter should signal the start, |
|into four parts: |greet the audience, introduce himself/herself and create the positive |
|a) opening courtesies, |emotional atmosphere: |
|b) stating the target, |● O.K… . |
|c) providing an overview, |● Right O.K. . |
|d) stating the rules. |● Let's begin / make a start / get started. |
| |● Shall we begin. |
| |● Can I have your attention, please? |
| |● Good morning …. . |
| |● I'd like to welcome you… on behalf of…. |
| |● My name is… . |
| |● Let me begin by…. . |
| |● It's my privilege to day to be taking to … about… . |
| |b) Stating the target: |
| |a clearly defined purpose is essential to grasp the audience's attention. |
| |The purpose of a presentation needs to be stated from the start: |
| |● My purpose / goal / subject / topic / objective is to analyse / review / |
| |identify / consider / present … . |
| |● What I'd like to do to-day is to….. |
| |c) Providing an overview: |
| |a clearly stated and precisely structured overview is intended to give an |
| |indication of how the presentation is likely to be developed. It is common |
| |practice to provide an overview right after the a statement of purpose: |
| |● Let me put you in the picture about today's presentation. |
| |● I've divided my presentation into …. parts /sections. |
| |● In the first part of my presentation I am going to… . |
| |● Secondly. |
| |● Thirdly. |
| |● Finally. |
| |d) Stating the rules: |
| |The audience is also told about the rules for relating the presenter, how|
| |long the presentation will last when questions are invited: |
| |● This will take about…. . |
| |● I intend to talk to you for about... |
| |● Please stop me if you don't understand. |
| |● If you have any questions feel free to interrupt. |
| |● To save time could you leave questions until the end. |
| | |
| |a) Background information. |
|2. MAIN BODY OF A PRESENTATION |Experience shows that before the speaker gets down to the problem itself |
|usually consists of easily digestible parts, one moving logically |he has to survey: the history of the company/ problem; the factors which |
|to the next: |influenced the failures/ successes; the present state of affaires; |
|a) background information (position), |peculiarities of the market ; potential competitors. |
|b) problem definition, |b) Problem definition. |
|c) possibilities, |While analysing the problem of central concern it is essential: to |
|d) proposals. |identify the main points; to lay special emphasis of the root of the |
|Signalling phrases are of paramount importance, showing the audience|problem; to use argument and figures in the best order possible. |
|where the speaker is: marking the start / finish of each key point,|Ways of introducing a problem: |
|identifying every new idea, argument, topic, linking the sequencing |● I’d now like to define / explain the main problem; |
|information. |● Now for the main problem. |
|These phrases are: |c) Possibilities. |
|● Let me begin with the history of the company/ the first part of my|It is essential to consider all the alternatives. The following tactics |
|presentation. |are preferable: positive factors come before negative, then the positive |
|● Let me begin…/ continue…/ conclude…/ by analysing / looking at / |factors are restarted to reinforce the argument. |
|examining. |Ways of presenting possibilities: |
|● Let me outline… . |● What are the possibilities / options open to the company at present? / |
|● Let me draw your attention to…/ point out that…/focus on…. |in the circumstances? / in the current situation. |
|● Next we come to… . |● Let me suggest / explore some possibilities / alternatives / options. |
|● Turning now to… . |● It might be wise to accept / to choose option B. |
|● As I mentioned… . |● That’s one course of action. |
|● Let me sum up. /recap. | |
| |● The other one is… . |
| |● Are there any alternatives in this possibilities. |
| |● This alternatives has points in its favour. |
| |● If we took option A, we would… . |
| |● We don’t think the project will be a commercial success if… . |
| |● We reject / rule out / have decided against this option because… . |
| |● The prime drawback of this alternative is… . |
| |● None of the option is satisfactory… . |
| |d) Proposal. |
| |Stating a proposal make it absolutely clear to the audience. Give the |
| |reason why you think the recommended solution is true or correct. |
| |Ways of stating a proposal: |
| |● So my recommendation is… . |
| |● I strongly recommend… . |
| |● I’d like to propose the following…/ plan / idea / solution. |
| |● I would suggest that we do… / should do… . |
| |● What I am suggesting is… . |
| |● To put it briefly / In a nutshell there can be no better solution to the|
| |problem / the difficulties in the area. |
| | |
| | |
| |a) Summary. |
|3. CONCLUSION usually consists |There might be two versions here: a summary of all the main points (the |
|of two sections: |new factual information which has been presented, the opinion considered |
|a) summary |and any proposal made) or a summary of the proposals / the recommended |
|and |course of action. |
|b) closing courtesies. |Ways of summing up: |
| |● This brings me to the final part of my presentation here today... . |
| |● So, in conclusion, I’d like to emphasize / go over the main point again…|
| | |
| |● To sum up… . |
| |● So, to summarize what has been said so far…. |
| |● To recap we / the company must.../ should… . |
| |● As you’ve seen today… . |
| |b) Closing courtesies. |
| |At the end of the presentation it is necessary to thank the audience and |
| |invite them to ask questions: |
| |● That’s all I have to say for now. Thank you. |
| |● Thank you for being attentive / listening to me attentively. |
| |● That concludes my talk / Let me finish here. Thank you all for your |
| |attention. |
| |● If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. |
| |● Please feel free to ask questions. |
| |● Does anyone have any questions? |
| |● Any questions? |
| |● If there are any questions, I’ll be glad / pleased / happy to answer |
| |them. |
| |● No doubt you have many questions, so… . |
| |● Your are welcome to ask questions. |
| | |
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS DURING AND AFTER PRESENTATION.
|Questions from the audience: |The speaker’s questions. |
|● Please tell me…. |The presenter may need to ask questions for different reasons: to keep |
|● Do you really think / believe that… . |the audience alert, to know how the session is progressing, to simulate |
|● Are you absolutely sure / convinced that… . |/ direct audience thinking, to gather additional information. |
|● I’d like to ask you… / to know… . |The speaker may ask the following questions: |
|● Do you happen to know … . |● What does our experience tell us? |
|● Could you possibly tell me… . |● Has anyone encountered such difficulties? |
|● Would you mind telling me…. |● Has anyone any experience of … ? |
|● I was wondering if you could tell me… . |● However, how will this affect our company? |
| |● What else is there to say on this problem? |
| |● That’s the difficulty? |
| |● But what’s the way to cope with it? |
| |Answering the question from the audience, make sure you understand the |
| |question: |
| |● I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’ve just said. |
| |● Sorry, I don’t (quite) see what you mean. |
| |● Sorry, I don’t follow (you). |
| |● Could you explain what you mean, please. |
| |● What exactly do you mean by? |
| |● Sorry, I mist that / I didn’t (quite) catch what you said. |
3. Watch the video ‘Make up your case’ and make a list of twenty principles of a successful presentation.
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|4. Study David Cotton’s | |
|‘RULES FOR A SUCCESFUL PRESENTATION’. | |
|Work in pairs and prepare dialogues to discuss the rules in detail. | |
❑ Planning Plan your presentation carefully. Thorough preparation will make you more confident and help you to overcome your nervousness.
❑ Objectives Think about what you want to achieve. Are you aiming to inform, persuade, train or entertain your audience?
❑ Audience Whom exactly will you be addressing? How many people will be attending? What do they need to know? What do they already know? What will they expect in terms of content and approach?
❑ Content Brainstorm your ideas first. Then decide which are most relevant and appropriate to your audience and to your objectives and carry out any research that is necessary. Be selective! Don't try to cram too much into your presentation.
❑ Approach A good rule of thumb is to 'tell your audience what you're going to say, say it, then tell the audience what you've said'. Try to develop your key points in an interesting and varied way, drawing on relevant examples, figures etc. for support as appropriate. You might also like to include one or two anecdotes for additional variety and humour.
❑ Organisation Think about how you will organise your content. Your presentation should have a clear, coherent structure and cover the points you wish to make in a logical order. Most presentations start with a brief introduction and end with a brief conclusion. Use the introduction to welcome your audience, introduce your topic/ subject, outline the structure of your talk, and provide guidelines on questions. Use the conclusion to summarise the main points of your presentation, thank the audience for their attention, and invite questions.
❑ Visual aids If you have a lot of complex information to explain, think about using some charts, diagrams, graphs etc., on an overhead projector or flipchart. Visual aids can make a presentation more interesting and easier to understand, but make sure they are appropriate and clear - don't try to put too much information on each one.
❑ Rehearsal Allow time to practise your presentation - this will give you a chance to identify any weak points or gaps. You will also be able to check the timing, and make sure you can pronounce any figures and proper names correctly and confidently.
DELIVERY
❑ Nerves! You will probably be nervous at the beginning of your presentation. Don't worry - most people are nervous in this situation. Try not to speak too fast during the first couple of minutes - this is the time you establish your rapport with the audience and first impressions are very important. You may find it helpful to memorise your introduction.
❑ Audience rapport Try to be enthusiastic - your interest in the subject matter will carry your audience along. Look around your audience as you speak - eye contact is essential for maintaining a good rapport. You will also be able to pick up signals of boredom or disinterest, in which case you can cut your presentation short.
❑ Body language Stand rather than sit when you are delivering your presentation and try to be aware of any repetitive hand gestures or awkward mannerisms that might irritate your audience.
❑ Voice quality You must be clearly audible at all times - don't let your voice drop at the end of sentences. If you vary your intonation, your voice will be more interesting to listen to and you will be able to make your points more effectively.
❑ Visual aids Use your visual aids confidently, making sure you allow your audience time to absorb information from flipcharts and transparencies.
❑ Audience reaction Be ready to deal with any hostile questions. Polite, diplomatic answers are a good disarming tactic, but if you should find yourself 'under fire', suggest that the audience keeps any further questions until the end of the presentation and continue with your next point.
❑ Simplicity Use short words and sentences that you are comfortable with. There is no benefit in using difficult language.
❑ Clarity Active verbs and concrete words are much clearer and easier to understand than passive verbs and abstract concepts. Avoid jargon unless you are sure all your audience will understand it.
❑ Signalling Indicate when you’ve completed one point or section in your presentation and are moving on to the next. Give your audience clear signals as to the direction your presentation is taking.
1. Sum it all up. Write a short summary of the material above (2-4) (150 words).
V. PRACTICE
|1. Video: Watch an episode from a feature film “Wall Street” and note how the skill of presentation | |
|helps to turn a near failure into a glorious victory. Get prepared to comment on the following: |[pic] |
|1. The general setting prior to Gordon’s taking the floor | |
|2. Gordon’s strategy and the lay out of his speech | |
|3. Non-verbal means to maximize persuasion | |
|4. His strengths as a presenter | |
|5. His major asset | |
2. Listen to the presentation and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the presenter.
Structure:
Content:
Voice:
3. Study the Sample presentation and analyse its structure, the language and the content. Comment on the factors making it (in) effective. Sum up its main points on the level of content.
You are making a presentation, your posture can affect the quality of your voice. The way you stand, you know, the position of your head, neck and shoulders and feet and so on is important. Check that your feet are parallel and apart and your weight is slightly forward on your feet. Make sure that your knees are relaxed, as in case you are tense your back will suffer. Pay special attention to your head. Look straight ahead and don’t push your neck out or drop it on your chest. I had a man come to see me once as he was constantly loosing his voice. It was all due to his habit of sticking his neck forward which was putting pressure on his throat. He sounded quite squeaky when he spoke. What he should have been doing was keeping his ears in line with his shoulders. Your head should feel as though it’s floating on top of your body! So watch that.
Now, most of us feel quite nervous before we speak in public. You’ll feel better if you spend some time dealing with the tension. It’s a good idea to try and think about what it is that’s making you feel this way. That way you can have some control over it. Next, try and locate the area of tension in your body. Often it’s your neck or your shoulders. Then concentrate on massaging these parts and consciously trying to relax them. Believe me, it works!
Let’s think about what you say, now. To maximise your performance make sure you are well prepared. Look over your notes, practice what you want to say, preferably out loud, and then perhaps most important of all, try to feel you really want to share your subject with your audience. If you feel and share your enthusiasm with them, you are more than half-way there.
Remember that how people feel about you and what you are saying to them will depend on your body language. There are three main behaviour types: Passive, Aggressive and Assertive. You can use any of these types, although I think the assertive posture is one that suits most occasions best.
The passive body type has a withdrawn posture. You may fidget a bit with your hand and hair.
In fact I remember a well-known politician who whenever he was speaking would constantly massage the top of his head. So beware of those funny little mannerisms. They can become intensely irritating to an audience.
If your posture is aggressive, however, you tend to be quite rigid. You could be constantly swinging your leg or crossing your arms and clenching your fists and the audience will feel uncomfortable. Your voice will often sound harsh or sharp and your audience may then feel quite aggressive towards you and that’s something you don’t want if your aim is to get them to see your point of view.
That brings me to assertive posture. Now you are standing straight, feeling comfortable and calm with your arms hanging loosely at your sides. In this position there is minimal tension and your voice is full, clear and varied. You’re a delight to listen to.
Finally, a few do’s and don’ts when it comes to looking after your voice, especially before giving a speech whatever the subject. It’s a bit obvious but avoid smoky areas, and alcohol, too. Drink plenty of fluids, especially things like fruit juice or even coffee or tea and keep your throat moist while you are speaking. Also, interestingly enough, stop eating too many dairy products when you have a cold. It can make you sound worse – and also don’t forget to use your lips and tongue carefully to make the words stand out clearly.
And just a final reminder. We can’t always control the room we are speaking in. So, if a pane goes over, don’t shout. Wait till it’s gone. Don’t battle with things you can’t do anything about. If your throat feels uncomfortable, try not to cough violently or clear your throat. Just swallow instead. It doesn’t always work but it’s much better for your voice.
That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. We shall be going on to do some exercises to help you relax now. If you can gather round…
(from ‘Practice Tests for the CBEC’ by Jake Allsop, Patricia Aspinall)
4. In his manual ‘Presenting in English’ Mark Powel gives the following 12 techniques for a successful presentation:
Emphasis,
Focusing,
Softening,
Repetition,
Rhetorical Questions,
Dramatic Contrasts,
Tripling,
Machine-gunning,
Build-ups,
Knock-downs,
Simplification,
Creating Rapport.
Study the following summary of a chapter from M. Powel’s manual and practice the techniques in the exercises (5, 6, 7) that follow.
|Emphasis: | |Focusing: |
|● You can dramatically change the significance of what you say in a | |● If you really want to get the attention of your audience, simple|
|presentation by stressing words which would normally be unstressed or | |emphasis may not be enough. In English there is a way you can |
|contracted: | |focus key points so that everyone knows you want them to listen to|
|It’s our best chance of success. It is our best chance of success. | |what you have to say next, e.g.: |
|● Another method of emphasising, which helps to make a presentation more | |We can’t expect too much too soon / What we can’t do is expect too|
|persuasive consists in using simple intensifiers to emphasise the points:| |much too soon. |
|I’m afraid it just isn’t good enough – the entire system needs updating. | |● ‘What … is …’ pattern builds up the anticipation of the |
|● There exist some emphatic expressions, common for more formal | |audience. |
|presentations like: | | |
|completely, firmly, strongly, totally, freely, sincerely, utterly, fully,| | |
|positively, etc. | | |
|I completely agree with everything you’ve said so far. | | |
|We firmly oppose any suggestion that the company be sold. | | |
|● One more method of emphasising is to pay attention to how you say | | |
|things. You can create dramatically different effects by placing emphasis| | |
|on particular words and phrases: | | |
|This was successful. This was very sucCESful. This was VEry successful. | | |
|● One more method is to give more than one reason for an argument, you | | |
|present, and to make it clear what the most important reasons are: | | |
|Above all, in particular, what’s more, in addition, or What’s especially | | |
|important is…, But there’s more to it than that…, The main thing is… | | |
| | | |
| | |Rhetorical questions: |
| | |● It is often more interesting to present your ideas as questions |
| | |rather than direct statements. Questions involve the audience. |
| | |They also make your presentation sound more conversational and |
| | |create anticipation in the minds of your audience, e.g. : |
| | |For the fifth year running we’ve managed to increase sales volume.|
| | |So how did we do it? |
| | |● Sometimes a good way of introducing an emphatic statement is to |
| | |ask a rhetorical question first, e.g.: So just how big IS the |
| | |market? …eNORmous. |
| | |● You can make a rhetorical question more powerful by repeating |
| | |key words, e.g.: |
| | |The fact is, cheap imitations of our leading product are flooding |
| | |the market. So what’s the SOLUTION? The SOLUTION is to push for |
| | |tighter CONTROLS. |
| | | |
|Repetition: | | |
|● This is one of the most powerful techniques, e.g.: | |Dramatic contrasts: |
|It’s always far, far easier to identify a gap in the market than it is to| |● Good presenters frequently make use of dramatic contrast to |
|fill it. Generally one repetition works best. | |reinforce the point they are making, e.g.: |
|● Another powerful technique is simple repetition of key points. | |Ten years ago we had a reputation for excellence. Today we’re in |
|Sometimes it’s not how you say it, but how often you say it that makes | |danger of losing that reputation. |
|the difference, e.g.: | |● Contrast is one of the most common presentation techniques. And |
|Sales are up… Sales are up because we spent more on advertising. | |a lot of famous quotations take the form of dramatic contrasts, |
|● A pause and the strong repetition of a single key word can transform a | |e.g.: |
|simple remark, e.g. : | |That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind. (Neil |
|Nobody knows that better than we do – NOBODY. | |Armstrong) |
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|Softening: | |Tripling: |
|● As well as being able to emphasise important points, you sometimes need| |● Good presentations frequently chunk important points in threes, |
|to reduce the force of points which are of less immediate significance, | |e.g.: |
|e.g.: | |Our service is swift, efficient and professional. |
|a great improvement, a slight improvement. | |What’s needed now is time, effort and money. |
|● ‘Softeners’ are extremely useful when you are uncertain of your facts | |● Lists of three are especially memorable. And throughout history,|
|or want to be diplomatic, e.g.: | |some of the most famous quotations in all the languages of the |
|We’ve more or less completed the first round of negotiation in Osaka, and| |world have been lists of three, e.g.: |
|we are pretty certain they like what we’re offering, although with the | |Government of the people, by the people, for the people (Abraham |
|Japanese it is quite difficult to tell sometimes. It’s a little too soon | |Lincoln) |
|to say whether we’ll get an exclusive contract. Exclusivity is probably | |I came, I saw, I conquered (Julius Caesar) |
|rather too much to hope fore. But we’ve just about reached agreement on | | |
|price And, all in all, we’re fairly happy with the way things are going. | | |
|● When people in the audience make negative remarks about the information| | |
|you’re presenting, you can often soften the impact by restating their | | |
|point in a more positive way, e.g.: | | |
|These figures are very disappointing. / Well, they’re certainly not very | | |
|encouraging/ or | | |
|The shareholders are going to be furious./ Well they certainly aren’t | | |
|going to be very happy. | | |
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| | |Simplification: |
| | |● As a general rule, the simpler what you say is, the more impact |
| | |it will have. Sometimes by cutting out all but the most important |
| | |words, you can have a powerful effect, e.g.: |
| | |Should we be thinking of expansion? No, that would not be a good |
| | |idea. Why wouldn’t it? Well, that should be obvious. It’s much too|
| | |risky. / Expansion? Not a good idea. Why? Obvious. Too risky. |
|Machine-Gunning: | | |
|● Three important points seem to be the most an audience can comfortably | | |
|keep in their heads one time. And if you make four or five, people will | | |
|probably forget some of them. But make six or seven or eight points and, | | |
|although no-one will remember them all, you will impress your audience | | |
|with the force of your overall argument, e.g.: | | |
|It’s cheaper, newer, faster, bigger, cleaner, safer and better designed | | |
|than anything else on the market. WHAT MORE CAN I SAY? | | |
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|Knock-downs: | |Build-ups: |
|● A popular technique with presenters who want to sound provocative is to| |● One very effective way of emphasising a point is to present |
|carefully build up a series of points which seem to oppose their main | |several connected pieces of information which build up to a short |
|argument and then knock them all down in a single sentence, e.g.: | |and simple conclusion, e.g.: |
|Of course the experts said that a palm-top computer could never succeed. | |As far as this contract in the Emirates is concerned, we’re pretty|
|They did market research which showed that people would just see it as a | |tied up with a lot of other projects at the moment, so there’s no |
|gimmick. They said its memory capacity would be too limited for serious | |way we could meet their deadlines. We have very little experience |
|business users. And thy did feasibility studies which showed that the | |of this kind of work, anyway. And to be honest, they’re not |
|keyboard would be too small for even the fingers of a five year old! | |prepared to pay us what we’d want>>> BASICALLY, it’s out of the |
|So, how come it sold more than a million units in its first year? | |question. |
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|Creating rapport: |
|● Building up a good relationship or rapport with your audience is important, especially in the especially in the early stages of your |
|presentation. Personality plays a part, but some simple language patterns help, e.g.: |
|1. Use the words WE (ALL), US (ALL), OUR, OURS as much as possible: Basically we all share the same goal. |
|2. Use question tags to push for argument: And we all know what that means, don’t we? |
|3. Use negative question forms to appeal to your audience: Haven’t we all had similar experiences at one time or another? |
|Using a few simple words and phrases which do not mean very much in themselves will change the whole tone of your presentation and make it less |
|formal and more friendly, e.g.: |
|You know, over the past four years more than five hundred international companies have actually set up in Dubai. |
|Clearly, then, Dubai has enormous potential. |
5. Rebuild the following so that to attract the attention of the audience:
MODEL: I’d like to approach this question from two different angles. / What I’d like to do is to approach this question from two different angles.
1. I’d like to move on to the question of cash flow.
2. I’d like you to ask yourselves a simple question.
3. I’m going to be looking at the arguments against networking.
4. I want to know how long it’ll be before we start seeing a profit.
5. I’ve tried to put our recent difficulties into some kind of perspective.
6. Read the following quotations out loud so that they have an impact:
“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
(A.Lincoln)
“What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.”
(Richard Harkness)
“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
(Winston Churchill).
“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.”
(Oscar Wilde).
“There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”.
(Benjamin Disraeli)
7. Read the following introduction to a presentation. Discuss in pairs which techniques to use to make it sound best. Practice it aloud for some time, until you are happy with the result
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’m very pleased to be with you today. My name’s Marina Potter. I am the Marketing Manager at Arcon plc. I’d like to talk to you ‘about the marketing environment’.
I’ve divided my talk into three parts. In the first part I’ll look at political and legal forces. The second part will deal with economic and competitive forces,, and in the final part I’ll show you how technological forces have made an impact on our marketing activities.
I plan to speak for about thirty minutes. I’ll be happy to answer your questions at the end of my presentation.
I’d like to start now by looking at the meaning of the term ‘marketing environment’.
8. Watch a CUP production “Bad Dream” and get prepared to report on the weaknesses of the presenter.
9. Revise what you have studied in this section so far and make a presentation on the same subject as the “Bad Dream” presentation.
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|10. Choose one of the following situations and prepare a presentation to give to the rest of the group. | |
1. As sales director of an electronics company, you must make a presentation to launch your new range of telephone answer machines to the trade. Your presentation should cover the main features of each product and emphasise their selling points. You may invent any information you wish about the company and its products or use ads.
2. Choose or invent a company in one of the following product categories: food, sports goods, fashion, electrical products, health and beauty. As sales manager of that company, make a presentation to your sales force on the latest additions to your product range. Your presentation should cover the main features of each new product and emphasise their selling points. You may invent any information you wish.
3. As a member of the human resources department of a large multinational, you visit universities/colleges making presentations to students on your company and the job opportunities it offers the graduates. Choose or invent a company to represent. You may invent any information you wish. If you have time, you might like to contact the company's PR department and ask for a copy of their annual report. This will give you a lot of information about the company's main areas of business, financial performance, product range, future prospects etc., and provide you with some useful visual aids.
4. Think of (or invent) a company with certain faults in organisational structure. Make suggestions on how to improve it. Get prepared to defend your position and convince the audience in the validity of your proposal.
5. Think of a particular sole proprietorship (or partnership) to be set up in the business environment of a definite area within this country. Be prepared to give grounds to your choice. Develop a business plan for a new organisation. Present your project before the board of to-be investors. Try to make your project as attractive as possible for them.
Start from developing a PRESENTATION PREPARATION SHEET:
|Introduction of speaker |Language reminders |
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|Theme of presentation | |
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|Main points of presentation | |
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|Presentation | |
|Part one | |
|Part two | |
|Part three | |
|Part four | |
|Conclusion | |
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|Questions | |
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|Listen to each other's presentations, imagining you are a buyer/agent/distributor (1), sales | |
|rep (2) or student (3), as appropriate. Make notes as you listen, and use the chart, | |
|developed by David Cotton to provide constructive feedback on each presentation. | |
|Aspect |Points to consider |Grade (1-5)* |
|Planning |Evidence of careful preparation | |
|Objectives |Clarity: appropriacy to audience/subject | |
|Content |Extent; relevance; appropriacy; | |
| |Subject knowledge; research | |
|Approach |Message support and reinforcement; | |
| |Variety; humour | |
|Organisation |Coherence; clarity; appropriacy | |
|Visual aids |Appropriacy; clarity; handling | |
|Delivery |Pace; enthusiasm; rapport/eye contact; | |
| |Audibility; intonation; confidence; body language | |
|Language |Clarity; accuracy, fluency; appropriacy; | |
| |Pronunciation; signalling | |
|Overall |Clarity of message; achievement of objectives; | |
| |Interesting? Enjoyable? Informative? Motivating? | |
|Other | | |
Grade scale: 1 = unacceptable 2 = fair 3 = average 4 = good 5 = excellent (i.e. could not do better in the time available)
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|Recommended additional tasks and exercises: | |
|from English for ‘Business Communication’ by Simon Sweeney. | |
Module 3
Unit 6: part 1- ex.4; part 3 - ex.1, 2, 3, 4.
Unit 7: part 1 - ex.2, 3; part 2 - ex.1, 2, 3, 4, practice 1; part 3 - ex. 1, 2. role play.
Unit 8: part 1 - ex.2. part 2 - ex. 1;part 3 -ex.1,2 , practice 1, practice 2; part 5 - ex. 1, 2; practice 3, 4.
Unit 9: part 1 - ex.1, 2, 3, 4; part 2 - ex. 1, 2; practice 1; part 3 - ex. 1-6; practice 2, 3.
Section 3: CASE STUDY
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|1. Read the case ‘BUILDING AMERICA. 150 years of MassMutual.’ by J.M. Fenster | |
|Working in teams get prepared to | |
|1.Present the vocabulary | |
|2.Present the content | |
|3.Discuss the issues raised | |
Team 1: LANGUAGE PRESENTERS
1. Prepare a list of vocabulary, divided into three sections:
|General English words (new) |Business terms |Links |
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| |Translate all the entries into Russian and bring the list into class in the form of a hand-out |
|[pic] |for every participant. |
| |2. Develop with the help of your instructor gap-filling and translation exercises, based on the |
| |list of vocabulary and prepare the keys. |
| |3. Run the Vocabulary session, consisting of: |
| |1) introduction of the list of vocabulary |
| |2) doing the exercises with the participants. |
| |It is important to split the job between the members of the team, so that each could take part in|
| |both developing the material and presenting it. |
Team 2: CONTENT PRESENTERS
|1. Divide the content of the case into logical and consumable parts. | |
|2. Each member of the team should be made responsible for one of the parts of the case in accordance | |
|with the division, you’ve carried out and prepare an oral presentation. Each presentation should | |
|start with giving the listeners hand-outs, containing 3-5 questions to be answered by them after the | |
|presentation. | |
Team 3: DISCUSSION ORGANISERS
|1. Choose the issues to be discussed in class | |
|2. Negotiate the structure of the discussion | |
|3. Prepare a list of questions for discussion on a hand-out. | |
|In class be prepared to | |
|1. Introduce the issues one by one (i.e. the next one is not to be introduced until you are through with| |
|the previous one) | |
|2. Invite the response by the participants | |
|Don’t forget to | |
|1. State your own position | |
|2. Exercise resolving conflict if necessary | |
|3. Sum up and make a final statement | |
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|BUILDING AMERICA | |
|150 years of MASSMUTUAL | |
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Like a Brand-New Company
The MassMutual Financial group is often described as ‘150-year-old New Age company’.
Although Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) has been on the scene since 1851, it has the feel of a vigorous young business that has only just begun. “Seventy percent of our growth companywide now comes from new products and channels developed within the past two years”, says O’Connel, chairman, president and CEO.
Reputation and tradition – adjuncts to longevity that can quietly smother a company in competitive times- have not constrained MassMutual. While its long past is essential to the company, it does not mandate what it does now or in the future. Rather, history reminds MassMutual of why it is in business. For all that is changing, this core remains: enabling customers to achieve long-term stability and financial security.
More than a third of the employees at MassMutual joined the company within the past two years, half arrived within the past five, and the CEO himself is one of those new faces. Robert J. O’Connel was named to his posts early in 1999, after 28 years with other firms in insurance and finance. This is what he says about the company: “I happen to think that MassMutual is really a combination of characteristics. In many ways it behaves like a brand-new company. It is intensively profit- and product-driven. We’re launching new products and new businesses on a constant basis, and we’re growing very rapidly. Those characteristics, and particularly the emphasis on creativity, flexibility and innovativeness and on driving accountability deep into the organization, you would find in what I would call a ‘New Economy” or a ‘New Age”, very young company. We have a very strong heritage.
The company has a deep commitment to values, a keen awareness of the importance of financial soundness. We’re heavily driven by a respect for our customers that dates back 150 years. We don’t walk away from many of the things that characterize traditional old companies. But we’ve blended them very well in the last few years with all of the characteristics that describe a young and vibrant company.”
What MassMutual does for individuals with assets of $ 250,000 or $ 25 million, it also has done quite deliberately for itself, with its assets under management of more than $ 213 billion, as of December 31, 2000. Seeking progressive diversification, the company has improved its position and secured its future partly by buying companies outright, such as Oppenheimer Funds and David L.Babson & Company, both investment management subsidiaries. At the same time, it also has developed businesses in-house, including Persumma Financial, as Internet-based company that offers a new online approach to administration. The MassMutual Trust Company and a fast growing financial products division. The expansion has been global too, establishing new operations in places from Argentina to Luxembourg to Hong Kong and – most recently – Taiwan.
While MassMutual was originally an insurance company plain and simple, it is now far more, offering a range of products and services to help customers accumulate, manage, transfer and protect wealth. But the dedication on which it was founded endures. “Our responsibilities literally last lifetimes”, wrote former president Thomas B. Wheeler in 1996. “We often refer to this concept as ‘stewardship’. The word may sound old fashioned, but the fiduciary obligations it implies are not.” No one is calling MassMutual old-fashioned in 2001. The company is truly dynamic, and though that word might have surprised some who knew it in the past, there was one man it would not have surprised in the least – the man whose idea it was, George W. Rice. When he started MassMutual in 1851, a mutual life insurance company was the most dynamic and modern of institutions – a wholly new creation called into being to meet the needs of a rapidly changing America.
Birth of an Industry
The first life insurance in the young nation was written into marine policies in the 1790s and covered only very specific contingencies, such as capture by pirates. The English had several life insurance companies, and they expanded to America in 1805, when Israel Whelen, the first of many agents for English insurers, started selling policies in Philadelphia. No one knows how well Whelen did, but it didn’t matter much, because all the English agents were fired with the outbreak of the War of 1812. One of them responded by helping found America’s own first life insurance company, in Philadelphia that same year. Over the next 30 years a smattering of insurance companies started up, all of them organized as stock companies and none of them particularly successful. In a stock company, investors put up the initial capital and shared any profits in the form of dividends. Those investors tended to be very conservative, and they often directed a company away from insurance into safer pursuits such as trust administration. It took the mutual companies to show how to build an industry in life insurance.
MassMutual's founder, George Rice, was in his early twenties when both he and a flock of infant mutual companies entered the insurance world. The first of the mutuals was founded in New York in 1843, with the idea that every policy represented a share in the company's fortune. Instead of traditional stockholders, it was the policyholders who owned the company and received the dividends generated by the surpluses.
This structure meant two things. First, the founders didn't need wealthy investors, and they didn't need to be rich themselves. Second, their companies had to sell a great many policies quickly; without that, their meager start-up capital would not last long, especially if an epidemic or some other widespread calamity struck. In fact, the word "mutual" reflected the fact that the policyholders needed one another and could not look to anyone else. And there had to be a lot of them.
That meant having aggressive sales agents, for without them "the advantages and beauties of life insurance ‘ would not be awakened in the public,’ as one industry pioneer put it. The idea had clarity and power enough to field a small army of agents so vigorous and persuasive that almost immediately they had fomented a whole new industry.
By 1849, George Washington Rice was part of it, working for one of the fastest-growing mutual start-ups, the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company. At three years old, it was already a success. Rice, only in his mid-twenties but already known as a vigorous and astute entrepreneur, was from Springfield, Massachusetts. His family couldn't afford to start an insurance company, no matter how contagious his enthusiasm for the young industry, but they were well-connected and he knew they could help find people who would listen when he wanted to talk about starting his own mutual life insurance company.
Legend has it that George Rice's ambition to start a company in Springfield grew partly out of a feeling of rivalry with Connecticut common to southern Massachusetts in those days. He didn't see why Hartford should have two insurance companies (Aetna and Connecticut Mutual) while his hometown had none.) Only one of the two really was a city, though. Springfield was still just a collection of neighborhoods and villages, and Hartford citizens responded with amused disdain when this amorphous municipality called itself "The Infant City." Indeed, Springfield's residents mocked themselves, sardonically dubbing their scattered, disparate community "The City of Magnificent Distances."
Nevertheless, Rice had picked the perfect place to found his new company. Perhaps because Springfield was the Infant City, up-and-coming and raw, it represented most of the rest of America, an infant country after all, even in 1850. And as for those magnificent distances, they spoke to all that there was to do in America: the spaces to be filled in, the roads to be built. Such a growing land needed life insurance, for it was swarming with people who earned their livings on what they knew and what they could do rather than on what they owned in terms of farmland, merchandise or other hard assets that could be passed on from one generation to another.
The Bread of the Fatherless
Growing numbers of workers who got good jobs in industry, from salaried executives to factory hands, salesmen, clerks and trainmen, had nothing to pass down for the direct care and support of a widow or children—except money. In 1859, Elizur Wright, one of the founders of the life insurance industry, described what it offered as "the complement of our general system of education. Since the more general diffusion of knowledge and machinery has multiplied the men whose minds solely are their estates, and very productive ones too, the bread of the fatherless is too often buried with the father."
Springfield was in the vanguard of that momentous shift of workers from the farm into industry. General George Washington himself had selected it in 1777 to be the home of a major armory, where skilled laborers collected under the eye of the Army to make and store muskets and rifles. By mid-century the city had become a transportation hub as well, home to three railroad companies (although the word around town was that the privately held G. & C. Merriam Company, publisher of Webster's dictionaries, was making the biggest local fortune). Springfield's industries, like those of any city in America, offered their employees good wages and practically nothing else. The people who labored there were exactly the types of workers who needed the “advantages and beauties”, of mutual life insurance.
After George Rice initiated the idea for MassMutual, it was quickly adopted by about a dozen other Springfield residents, including his father, William Rice, a businessman, and his cousin Caleb Rice, a lawyer. In January 1851, they joined with at least two dozen more citizens to apply to the state legislature for incorporation." One of the first stipulations from the government was that the company, though mutual in organization, nonetheless start its business with $100,000. The money was raised, but only after several of the founders mortgaged their houses. The act that created MassMuiua! and allowed it to "make insurance," as the state's wording put it, was formally approved on May 15, 1851. Just five years later the man who had made this happen was gone. George Rice died of tuberculosis in the summer of 1856 while he was still young and his company barely out of its infancy. Nevertheless, he lived long enough to see that MassMutual would likely survive—although it was a scramble at first.
Being allowed to “make insurance” was one thing, knowing how was quite another. So one of the first official acts of the directors was to authorize a two-man delegation to visit other cities and "collect information on the subject of insurance." Next, the directors rented a single room in central Springfield and engaged Caleb Rice to be president at an annual salary of $50. It was only a part-time job—Rice gave the title much more prestige than it gave him. "Colonel" Rice, as he was called after a stint in the scare militia, was a good choice to lead the new company. His integrity was unquestioned, and he represented just the type of person MassMutual wanted to attract as customers. Caleb Rice had grown up as one of two children on a farm in Conway, Massachusetts, but he left home early, going on to Williams College, to the practice of law, and then to a career that sometimes had him juggling a half-doyen positions in business and government around Springfield. The urbane Colonel Rice was clearly a city dweller by nature, but he had a brother who stayed working the family farm all his life. That was the hard divide of the era, and companies like MassMucual arose to give men like Caleb Rice a new kind of stability.
While Rice was hurrying around Springfield fulfilling a host of duties that ranged from bank president to sheriff, someone had to go every day to the little office downtown and run MassMutual. The man chosen was Fransis B. Bacon, and, of course, one of his first jobs was to find sales agents. As we have seen, agents at the dawn of mutual life were a remarkably determined lot, and the zeal that propelled them is understandable.
As is the case today, Americans were underinsured; in face, most of them were simply ^insured. Yet the heads of families were pouring into salaried jobs, and agents under pressure to sell policies knew chat practically any door they could talk their way through would have someone who needed life insurance behind it.
The irascible Henry Hyde, president of another insurance company in the mid-19th century, once kept a company director waiting interminably while he talked with a sales agent. Finally someone interrupted him to suggest that the director had been standing by for a very long time. Hyde didn’t care. “I can get a good director anytime,” he snapped, “but a good agent is another matter.”
So Bacon was eager to enlist a sales force, but only of “respectable and efficient agents,” according to a letter he sent out to prospective candidates on August 14, 1851, two weeks after operations officially began at the company. The candidates he selected all lived in towns and cities within 30 miles of Springfield. “Will you please write and inform me,” Bacon concluded his letter, “if you would give your personal attention to our interests should you be appointed.” The agents who represented MassMutual must have been respectable and efficient, because the business grew steadily. One might presume that married men were the most likely customers, but agents burrowing into the heart of the Industrial Revolution quickly made a sociological observation. Married men might need life insurance, but it was single men who wanted it.
Young people who intended to stay on the farm could marry as early as they liked with the assurance that should one of them die, the other would have the farm and the communal life of an extended family for support. A man who found work in industry could not even consider getting married to a worthy bride until he had enough money saved to provide for her and for any children who followed, should he die. Life insurance offered a shortcut for young men in love. A suitor with a policy was practically as attractive as one with a fortune — a fact eloquently hammered home by the early agents.
A Nation of Opportunity and Danger
According to those who in later years recalled MassMucual at its inception, the motivating force behind it lay somewhere between civic duty and humanitarian concern, Nonetheless, it quickly became known as a very well-run enterprise in a rising industry, a serious business in other words, and it underwent as much expansion before the Civil War as its staff of three office workers could accommodate. Caleb Rice, meanwhile, became the first mayor of Springfield in 1852, and was serenaded by a happy mob outside his home on election night. His popularity helped MassMutual, but Bacon’s dedication propelled it. As the company grew to embrace people beyond the familiar towns of southern New England, it came face-to-face with the problems of a whole continent.
America was big and busy and dangerous, and MassMutual couldn’t be expected to insure every foolish thing a policyholder might choose to do. Foolish things such as taking a job anywhere near a steam engine, going south of Virginia in the summer, riding on a boat or, worst of all, joining the throng headed to California. The prohibitions, graces and special clauses written into life insurance policies trace the whole history of peril in America. The company stayed abreast of hazards within each evolving industry. In 1908, the number of people who had flown in airplanes was still minute, but the number of people who had been killed by then must have been too high for MassMutual. That year it banned aerial trips for its policyholders.
Ocean trips were forbidden in the original 1851 policy, except to a few coastal islands such as Nantucket. No policyholder could go to the disease-ridden Deep South between June 1 and November l. The Rocky Mountains were out of the question. So was travel to California and Oregon, bur people kept going there anyway. So many policyholders paid the extra percent or two for the privilege of seeing the West Coast that before long MassMutual joined them, opening an office in San Francisco in 1868.
War too meant special permits and an added premium. In the Civil War, much of the fighting took place in the Deep South—a region MassMutual considered unhealthy even without the addition of mini balls—and for policyholders who served, [he extra charge was 10 percent, with a reduction to 5 percent for those who Stayed north of the 34th parallel, which passes through northern Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
The Ugly Nineties
After the Civil War, life insurance began to take hold nationally as a growing segment of the population came to accept it as a necessity of modern life, especially of family life. This had the broadest possible social impact, granting stability to families broken by tragedy, encouraging saving and transferring wealth in an orderly, planned way. Over a century and a half, die effect has been to reinforce the financial construction of the nation, as though each policy were a rivet.
"The details and scope of modern life insurance are largely of American origin," wrote R. Carlyle Buley, an Indiana University professor who specialized in financial history, in the 1950s. "Its growth paralleled the unprecedented industrial development of the United States. Life insurance no less than natural resources, applied science, the willingness to work and to accept the responsibilities of self-government, became an important element of national strength."
Amid all the palpable good that insurance companies were doing for the country, a disreputable crowd barged into the industry during the last two decades of the nineteenth century—and who could blame them? Starting an insurance company was easy enough in many Stares, and jacking up the prices was a cinch. .
MassMutual steered clear of such practices for two good reasons: the company was managed by men of integrity; and Massachusetts, where it was chartered, had the most stringent insurance regulations in the country. The handful of companies approved for business there were kept to the straight and narrow by Elizur Wright, the pioneering innovator who now had become the state's insurance commissioner. He was a brilliant Stickler, and most of the Massachusetts insurers grumbled about his strong opinions and his barbed pen.
Grumbling about Elizur Wright was heard at MassMucual, but the company—always liking to innovate and Stay ahead of the curve—made business changes of its own volition, long before state regulations arose to enforce them. In large part because of the state's exacting commissioner, not one life insurance company chartered in Massachusetts failed during the nineteenth century. By the late 1890s, when a rash of scandals and defaults had brought the insurance industry under attack nationwide, MassMutual took to summarizing in its annual report the state laws under which it operated. Suddenly, Old Elizur's handiwork was a boon and a selling point. "The Laws of Massachusetts relating to Life Insurance are different from those of any other state, both in spirit and in letter," the 1898 report insisted. "No other state has laws that are so absolutely beneficial to policyholders." Thanks to those regulations, every company in the state escaped implication during a major 1905-6 investigation of life insurance practices.
The Home Office
In 1885, MassMutual still employed only three officers and 15 clerks. Clerk number 14 was William Sargeant, a pleasant, earnest man who would be named company president in the late 1920s. He recalled that the first thing he learned at MassMutual was how to copy papers: Carter's ink for the letters and Steven's ink for the figures. The company grew enormously during the next 30 years, along with the country, and by the outbreak of World War I, more than a hundred people were working at the Springfield headquarters.
Three of MassMutual's office workers served near one another on the Western Front in France during the war. At Christmas 1917, the company sent each of them a big box of candy and other gifts. Karl Walker wrote his boss a letter in return, thanking him profusely and promising him that all three "still consider ourselves 'good risks,' and expect to come back safe and sound before very long." All three did. The company could not be quite so generous with other doughboys, though, and necessarily charged a 3.75 percent added premium on policyholders who entered the service. At the same time, MassMutual gained a new competitor: the U.S. government, which introduced its own life insurance policy for servicemen during the war. In general, the death benefit was $10,000. (This was a sum substantial enough to cover the cost of a considerable piece of property in those days, and a grimly humorous soldier'ss expression for getting killed entered the language: 'buying the farm.") The government policy had thus introduced a vast number of returning doughboys to the solace of a good benefit, and it is credited with leading to a burst of new applications between 1919 and 1921.
With its business expanding and its workforce growing with it, MassMutual needed a new headquarters building. Springfield residents were surprised when the company announced that instead of staying downtown, where it had always been, it would settle in a more remote open space, albeit still within city limits, where it would have the room to cultivate a campus atmosphere.
The man charged with overseeing both the architecture and the construction was the secretary of the company, Bertrand Perry, a trained accountant with a cultivated sense of aesthetics. The final plan called for a redbrick Colonial-revival building surrounded by lawns. "I remember him telling about those marvelous pillars that are in the entrance," Perry's wife, Elizabeth, recalled many years after his death in I960. "He said, 'I stood while men poured buckets of water over any number of samples of marble, to be sure that we got the very finest."' The building has been maintained meticulously ever since it opened in 1927.
Hard Times
Two years after the new office opened its doors, MassMutual—and the nation—faced a test like nothing ever seen before: the Great Depression. The company, safeguarded against economic swings through a bulwark of strategic, conservative investments, might have ridden out the national crisis relatively easily. But the Depression toppled a great many of its policyholders, and their woes ultimately tried the company's limits.
In a normal year, about 5 percent of MassMutual's assets would be lent back to clients via policy loans. In 1908, during another severe panic, the rate had bobbed up to 12.5 percent. In the brutal year of 1931, 20 percent of the company's assets were out in loans, and the figure kept climbing. The company could not expect to remain solvent if many of those loans defaulted, for they severely strained the flow of business. But that was not even the worst of it.
"The mortality experience for the year 1931 was somewhat better than during the year 1930," the president, William H. Sargeant, wrote in January 1932. "In both of these years our experience has been higher than what we can reasonably believe to be our normal experience. The excess mortality has arisen largely from such causes as suicides and casualties—the almost invariable accompaniment of bad times."
The Thirties were a time of natural as well as financial calamities, and while dust storms blackened Western skies, Springfield too suffered a disaster. The second week of March 1936 brought uncommonly warm weather to most of the northern United States—a respite from heavy snowfalls that people might have been inclined to enjoy, until it started to rain on the 2Ist. The rains fell steadily on ground already drenched with melted snow and the result was flooding that grew overnight into a national crisis. The nearby Connecticut River looked just like the Ohio, the Susquehanna and every other body of water in the region: water up to the rooftops and rising. In most communities, hunger and thirst followed. But not in Springfield. The MassMutual home office, as safe as a fortress on its rise miles from the river, immediately opened its cafeteria to victims of the flood. After the company volunteered its resources to the Red Cross, MassMutual was assigned responsibility for one of five food stations established around the ravaged city. From insurance, the company switched temporarily to the catering business, extemporizing so effectively that soon it was managing to serve over a thousand meals at a sitting, until Springfield's normal facilities returned.
The flood waters receded; the Depression did not. Looking over the annual reports of MassMutual during those years, one can see hiding just behind the figures the heartbreaking dilemmas of the era. People would buy time with loans on the money contained in their policies. The numbers in the mortality tables, under "all other casualties," show when they gave up. One of those who did not survive that bitter epoch was William Sargeant; the company president, perhaps worn down by the strain of reconciling numbers that only barely met, died while on business in Boston in 1936. Bert Perry took over and brought MassMutual through the rest of the Depression. His wife later said that he worried it through, pacing the floor at home at night, preparing a strategy for every bleak contingency he could imagine.
One employee remembered Perry calling an informal meeting and promising to pay salaries out of his own pocket, if necessary. But the company does not appear to have been quite that close to disaster. In fact, MassMutual and the nation's other well-run life insurance companies remained solid during the Depression, even while other financial institutions were withering. The going was perhaps hardest on the agents, who had to keep looking for new business.
Charles H, Schaaff signed on as one in 1931, after the crash wiped out his Job selling securities. "Life insurance gave me a product to sell with which I could be sure to keep my promises," he said. "In life insurance, I knew I could offer fixed-dollar guarantees and I could be sure that what I promised my buyers would actually come to pass." There was only one thing missing, though—the buyers.
The Importance of Agents
"I started under a general agent who was a great leader," Schaaff recalled, "but I had less than ten hours of supervised training in the office, no joint work in the field and few of the sales aids we have today. During the first six weeks I didn't sell a single case. All this time my general agent was paying me an advance, and very shortly I was so far in debt I had to sell or quit." Schaaff finally made a sale and eventually recouped his own finances. But he never forgot how tough it had been at the state.
During the 1960s, Schaaff became president of MassMutual, and he saw to it that the emphasis on training and recruitment, already growing in the years following World War II (the first agent training school had been established at the home office as early as 1939), became central to the company's efforts—in fact, to its philosophy. Moreover, the company strongly encouraged agents to qualify for professional certification. The result today is that more than two-thirds of MassMutual's 4,000 agents have Chartered Life Underwriter or Chartered Financial Consultant designations. MassMutual has a proven system for recruiting agents with the best chance for success. The system helps to find those with potential; MassMutual's ongoing training programs help them realize it. The five-step "Blue Chip Series" allows agents to develop their knowledge in progressive stages during their first two and a half years with the company. After that, MassMutual continues to expose agents to new methods and ideas. The company that pioneered the use of videotaped seminars in the early 1970s is now implementing live videoconferencing so that agents can be exposed to authorities in every phase of financial services.
This emphasis on agent training might seem a rather specialized point, important only to the company or its clients, but the fact is that MassMutual's long, patient effort to strengthen its agent force in the 1960s and 1970s was essential in preparing the company for its growth during the last years of the 20th century from a life insurance company into a diversified financial group.
Ahead of its Time — and the Competition
For decades, executives at MassMutual rejected any departure from the basic business of life insurance. The booming economic climate after World War II was, however, itself a departure from anything known before, as employers began to regard insurance benefits as a stabilizing tool in labor relations. Employees, moreover, grew to expect such benefits. MassMutual was prepared to meet the new demand with the creation of Group Insurance and Pension Management departments in 1946. That start has developed into a booming retirement services business today, with assets of more than $17 billion in 2000.
In the same way, changing conditions have led to the introduction of another new array of policies. While recent medical advances have extended life spans, even in the face of serious conditions, extended health problems can also cause financial stress. Years ago, MassMutual began offering disability income insurance, which provides support in case a medical problem prevents a policyholder from returning to work. In 2000, MassMutual was the second largest seller of individual, non-cancelable disability income insurance in the United Stares, according to LIMRA International, an industry trade association. That year, the company added a policy springing from a similar concern: long term care insurance. It pays for sustaining care in, for example, a nursing home, and MassMutual believes that as baby boomers draw nearer to senior status, such insurance will be regarded as a necessity.
New investment strategies also helped turn MassMutual's view outward, bringing it up and off the pages of the bond tables. In the 1960s, MassMutual capital helped launch entrepreneurial companies in two very modern industries, cable television and fast-food restaurants. "MassMutual has always been willing to look at situations that some of our competitors won't look at, because of the complexity or the level of leverage," says Robert Joyal, who started with the company in 1967 and is now a managing director of the David L. Babson subsidiary, which researches and manages investment in businesses. "We key in on the people," he explains. "The one thing that we always insist on is a management group that we can be comfortable with."
One of the best examples of this philosophy also illustrates that excellence in management can be found as often on a country lane as on a main highway. The trick is not to pass it by.
In 1971, a management group that consisted of Sam Walton and a single associate approached a rival insurance company in New York seeking a loan to help their Wal-Mart chain expand. In retrospect, it might seem almost inconceivable that the legendary retailer ever needed help, but at the time, Wakon was looking for just over $1 million, and he needed it badly. He felt quite certain that his chain could increase past the 26 stores it owned, and he had a sheaf of yellow pages from a legal pad, covered with figures, projecting how. The New York insurance company looked them over, looked him over and then said it couldn't take the gamble. MassMutual had the next chance.
"Wal-Mart's excellent management, strong historical earnings trend and solid current financial position provide adequate support for this financing," crisply concluded a company memo. "Walton recalled in his memoir, Made in America, that "somehow we had a contact at another insurance company, MassMutual. They agreed to lend us a million dollars and, in turn, we agreed to give them our right arm and our left leg."
MassMutual did the impossible: it out-negotiated Sam Walton. The company was not only the first financial services company to take a chance on Wal-Mart, it was also savvy enough to insist on warrants allowing it to buy Wal-Mart stock at a low price. That was especially shrewd considering that Wal-Mart didn't have Stock when the deal was struck. Later on, Wal-Mart did, and MassMutual made an excellent profit on the soaring shares.
The investment group at MassMutual also recommended buying into a new hotel chain started by a Washingtonian restaurateur, J. W. Marriott. That relationship continues to this day. MassMutual not only holds mortgages on various Marriott properties, but owns several of them outright. And MassMutual's expertise in hotel financing led to investments with a number of other firms as well.
An Industry in Turmoil
Anyone with a little extra cash in 1980 was likely not merely content but dazzled. Interest rates that had already doubled over the previous four years suddenly doubled again. Brokerages started passing the higher returns along to small investors, who were soon receiving as much as 20 percent on money placed on account. For Americans who couldn't remember any return far removed from a dull and steady 5 percent, 20 percent was hard to believe—and very easy to accept. Financial institutions, however, were devastated by the soaring rates. To survive, banks had no choice but to offer the same high rates as the brokerages, and even small depositors became speculative investors. It was a profound change, and banking would not be quite the same whether the 20 percent rate lasted or not. As a matter of fact, the biggest debate in financial circles—and in many a hair salon and barbershop—was just how long the high interest rates would last. The natural tendency was to believe they would never end. And that conviction shook life insurance companies to their core in the early 1980s.
Many of them rushed to offer universal life insurance—a brand-new product that consisted of an investment side fund from which was deducted the cost of insurance protection and service. Universal life granted more discretion to the customer than other types of life insurance; with it, policyholders did not have to pay premiums as long as there was sufficient money in their fund to cover those costs. This had its advantages, but the rival life insurance companies that were clambering on this particular bandwagon offered policies that were attached to the prevailing (and presumably eternal) interest rates. MassMutual did not, viewing the rest of the industry's impulsive shift with some skepticism. During the shakeout that followed, the company would change, but in a different way from other companies at the time. In resisting most of the rest of the industry for values it held to be crucial, MassMutual confirmed that what set it apart was not just policies and products but an attitude.
"The industry really went into a state of revolution at that time," recalled William Clark, who was then president. "If I had been smarter it would have scared the hell out of me, because the whole life insurance and financial services industry started to change rapidly. I wasn't impressed with all these people who took a little slice out of our country's economic history, which was a slice of very high interest rates, and kind of assumed that that was the way that life was going to be forever." MassMutual chose not to pursue fleeting innovation. It paused in the midst of the storm over interest rates, planned and then prepared for a future that might contain any variety of conditions.
"I think the real planning was when we argued together over the direction in which the company would go," Clark admitted wryly. "When we said that we were a quality company, I believed it. And when I say 'quality,' I mean people. 'Quality' has other elements too, but I emphasize people because they are the ones who have given this company financial strength, and they have given it a customer orientation that is reflected in the sales force. And then you develop from that a pride in the organization. That's what it meant to me. So during all these debates about universal [life], this sense of the company's specialness was, I think, what I instinctively did not want to give up."
When the interest rates finally did drop and showed themselves to have been an anomaly after all, MassMutual was one of the few life insurance companies to come out stronger than before, not weaker. And by the time the crisis was over, the company was poised for a more productive change. It had decentralized its management, breaking the corporate structure into separate divisions in order to clarify accountability and stimulate growth. But most important, the company had affirmed high-quality service as its priority and independence as its prerogative.
Starting in 1990, a new era began. The company set a brisk pace for itself in order to meet the challenge first thrown down by those absurdly high rates of the 1980s. Leaving the firestorm debate over universal life far behind (in fact, the company would eventually develop its own versions of the policy that proved more successful than many of those of the rest of the industry), it focused on a very long-term challenge; becoming able to offer policyholders and clients a far wider array of services matched to complex needs, without sacrificing stability, come what may in the markets. The decentralized management structure introduced in the 1980s had already made room for growth. And growth was the watchword in the 1990s as acquisitions and homegrown start-ups transformed the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. It has been rechristened, with a new marketing name, MassMutual Financial Group, storehouse of expertise in a full circle of insurance, investments and financial services fields, with more than 1,100 offices and 8 million clients in the United States and overseas.
Citizen of the World
With the facility MassMutual had shown with investments of all types, and with the attention it had paid to grooming a high-caliber sales force, the company had the pieces in place for its transformation into a financial power. Its first major acquisition, of Oppenheimer Funds Inc. in 1991, proved to be a stellar success. Offered for sale by a British company in the throes of bankruptcy, the mutual-fund company cost MassMutual $150 million "at risk." Oppenheimer had $14 billion under management at the time. In 2000, after nearly a decade with MassMutual, it had $127 billion in assets and sales of $20.7 billion, up 33 percent over the prior year.
In 1996, MassMutual saw an opportunity to merge with a friendly rival, Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance, the very place where George W. Rice started out. Farther afield, it expanded into overseas countries, choosing not to start new subsidiaries, necessarily, but rather to buy well regarded, medium-size financial firms.
MassMutual's recent expansion has been built on changes the company made over the past four decades and on the "quality," as William Clark termed it, that it has mandated for the past 150 years. The growth and the constant striving for improvement dramatically accelerated once Robert O'Connell took over as president. He's pushed hard for diversification, both of the product—"what works for the Silicon Valley entrepreneur," he says, "may not work for the stay-at-home Dad"—and of how the product is distributed. "When it comes to distribution channels, to be successful, I believe, you have to have them all. To reach out to all those who can benefit from our products, MassMutual has aggressively engaged other channels. For instance, we're partnering with banks, wire houses and independent brokerages. As we build the MassMutual Financial Group brand and further reinforce our image of strength and integrity, the business that flows through these new channels is increasing dramatically."
From the start O'Connell has shown a passion for new ideas, and he has charged every employee with an obligation to innovate. Many of these employees are relative newcomers. "We've done a lot of hiring in the last few years"—in fact, 1,100 during the last year alone—"and I've spoken to a lot of people who have joined us—new college students, fifty-five-year-old veterans who have spent their careers in other companies in all types of financial-service businesses. They are people who want to work for an exciting company." He grins. "We'll keep them excited."
O'Connell has said he continues to expect at least a third of MassMutual's new sales to come from products or services that did not exist three years earlier. A good example of this new impetus is The MassMutual Trust Company, a federally chartered savings bank. He has charged the company with continuing to expand its geographic reach into countries whose economies are maturing and stabilizing. "We look for competitive, profitable business that allows us to significantly influence the areas we choose to participate in. Our focus now is on building our presence in Asia and in Latin America, to take advantage of enormous growth opportunities in those markers." In the past two years MassMutual acquired a major insurer in Hong Kong and a substantial interest in another one in Taiwan.
O'Connell also expects MassMutual to do an increasingly better job of reaching emerging categories of individuals who aspire to affluence and security. Under his leadership, the company is paying particular attention to minority investors and to executive women. Speaking of the latter group, the CEO says, "The rise of the woman in the workforce has created yet another high-growth market—with 63 million women employed today compared with less than half that number 35 years ago'. In another decade, another 20 million women will begin work'. And 38 percent of all entrepreneurs are women2. This represents the fastest growing business segment."
MassMutual today is focused on the future. O'Connell notes that although the company has doubled in size over the past five years, and by 25 percent in the last two years alone, "We recognize that the real opportunities lie head. We have set a goal for ourselves of '$500 billion assets under management and $1 billion in earnings by 2005.'"
Asked to imagine future successors looking back on his era at MassMutual 150 years from now, the CEO hopes they will regard it as "one of enormous growth and change, and one in which the company's culture took a major shift, becoming more aggressive and innovative."
Clearly this is not a backward-looking company. Yet its reach toward tomorrow is nourished by roots sunk deep in yesterday. Not long ago, Robert J. O’Connell, talking about an anniversary very few business enterprises have been privileged to reach, put it this way: “We could say we’re 150 years old. But I prefer to think of us as 150 years strong.” In that succinct summary can be heard the echo of George Rice and Caleb Rice and all the other founders in 1851, when there was nothing around but future.
(from the American Heritage, June 2001)
2. Get prepared to participate in a ‘TRADE FAIR’ as a representative of either some existing company, you know well, or the company you have ‘set up’. Decide which of the three sections of the Fair is best for the topic you have chosen:
|pany |[pic] |
|2.Product | |
|3.Project | |
|Discuss the topic and the content of your presentation with your instructor. Design and develop visual aids| |
|and hand-outs. Write and rehearse your presentation until you are happy with the outcome. Deliver your | |
|presentation at the ‘Fair’ on the appointed day. | |
Good luck!
GLOSSARY.
accommodate
account for
accountability
accountancy
accounts
accumulate
accuracy
achievement
acoustics
acquire
acquisition
activities
adjunct
administration
administrative
admit
advantage
advertising
affair
affect
afford
agency
agent
agreement
aim
alienate
ambition
amorphous
amount
analysis
annual
appendix
application
apply
appoint
appointment
approach
appropriate
approve
arguments
arrangement
article
assemble
asset
assist
assistance
association
assumption
attraction
audience
audited
auditorium
authority
authorized
autonomous
available
avoid
aware
awareness
awkward
balance sheet
bank
banking
bankrupt
bear
beforehand.
benefits
beyond
bid
bill
binding
birth
blend
board
body language
booming
borrow
boss
branch
brand
brand-new
break up into
brief
bring
budget
build
building society
burden
business
business record
buy
buy out
buyout
by definition
by means of
calamity
calculator
capital
capture
carry out
case
case-study
cash
cash flow
casual
cause
certain
chain
chair
chairman
challenge
change
channel
chaotic
charity
chart
chief
chronological
chunk
circumstances
clarity
clear
clerk
come across
command
commitment
communicative
community
company
companywide
competence
competition
competitive products
competitor
complete
complex
component
comprehension
comprehensive
conceive
concept
concerned
conclusion
condensed
conduct
confidence
confront
conglomerate
consequent
consider
consideration
consist
consistent
consortium
constituent
constrain
consult
consumer
contact
contagious
contain
content
context
contingency
continue
continuity
contradict
contrast
contribute
control
controversial I
convenient
conveyance
cooperative
cope with
core
corporate
corporation
corporation
correspondence
cost
costs
cover
create
creation
creativity
credibility
cross-cultural
cue
data
date
date back
deal
deal with
debenture
debt
decentralization
decentralized
decision
decision making
declare
dedication
define
definition
delegate
delicious
delivery
deny
department
departmental
describe
design policies
desk
destroy
determine
detract
devise
devote
diary
diffusion
director
disadvantage
disdain
dispiriting
disposal
dispose of
disposition
disposition
dispute
dissolution
dissolve
distinct
distinctly
diverse
diversify
divert
divide
dividend
division
domestic
double
downword
dozen
dramatic
drawback
drop
duration
dynamic
earnings.
easygoing
economy
effect
effective
effectiveness
elaborate
elect
eloquently
emerge
emergency
emphasis
emphasise
employ
employee
employer
enable
encapsulating
encounter
endure
engineering
enjoy
enlist
ensure
enter
enterprise
entertain
enthusiastic
entirely
entitled
entity
entrepreneur
enumerate
equal
equation
equipment
essential
establish
estate
estimate
excess
exchange
executive
exist
existence
expand
expert
expertise
explicitly
extemporaneously
extensive funding
extremely
eye contact
facial expression
factor
factory hands
fail
failure rate
fall
fall into
false
farmland
fiduciary
figures
fill out
finance
financial
find
finished products
firm
fit into
flexibility
flexible
float
floatation
flock
flourish
flow
forecast
formal
formality
former
fortune
found
founder
franchise
franchisee
franchiser
fringe benefits
functional
funds
gain
gather
general
generate
gesture
glamorous.
global
glory
go far beyond
goods
group
growth
guide
half
hammer
hazard
headquarters
heart of a corporation
heritage
hesitate
hide.
hierarchical
highway
hire
hit
hold shares
holder
holding company
home-office
hometown
honesty
hostile
hub
hypermarket
identification
identify
imagine
immediate
imply
improve
in addition
in detail
in favour of
in good spirits
in note form
in order to
in terms of
inadequate
inappropriate
income
incorporation
increase
indication
individual
industrial
industry
inevitable
infant
influence
influential
infrequently
in-house
initial capital
initiate
innovativeness
inside
insincere
insolvent
insurance
insurer
integrated
intensively
interact
interchangeable
interest
interlock
interlocutor
interminably
internally
interview
intimate
introduce
invest
investment
investor
involve
irascible
irrespective
issue
item
jack of all trades,
job
job losses
job security.
join
joint venture
jointly
judge
judicial
keen
keep track of
key
laborer
lack
large-scale enterprise
last
launch
lawsuit
lawyer
layer
leader
lectern
legal
legally
lender
level
liable
lifetime
lightness
limit
limited company
limited partnership
limitless
line authority
listed company
literally
litigation
loan
local
location
longevity
long-term
look for
losses
machinery
maintain
major
managing director
mandate
manifest
manner
manufacture
manufacturer
manufacturing facilities
manufacturing sector
margin
marine
market place
market research
marketing
marketing director
marketing people
materials
matrix management
matter
meager
medical coverage
mediocre
medium-sized business
meet objectives
meeting
member
memorise
merchandise
merger
message
minor
mock
modify
module
momentous
mortgage
multinational
multinational corporation
multiply
municipality
muskets
mutual
national market
negotiation
neighborhood
network
non-executive
non-profit
notwithstanding
objections
objectives
obligation
oblige
observation
obtain
obvious
occur
officer
online
opening courtesies,
operate
operating unit
ordinary
ordinary shareholders
organization
outbreak
outline
outright
outside
outsider
overestimate
overly
overshadow
own
owner
ownership
pace
pamphlet.
parent company
part time
participant
particular
partner
partnership
party
pass on
past employment
patent
peculiarity
pension
percent
perception
performance
personal
personality
personnel
persuasive
persuasiveness
pick
plant
plant engineering
point
policy
policyholder
poor
position
positioning
posses
possible
post
posture
precisely
predominating
premises
presentation
pretend
price
primarily
primary
principle
private
private limited company
private sector
probate
problem
procedure
produce
product
product range
production
production line
profile
profit
profit sharing plan
program
progress
progression
project
project sincerity
promotion
prompting
proper
properly
property
proportion
propose
prospects
protect
provide
public
public delivery
public limited company
public sector
purchase
purpose
pursue
pursuit
push aside
pyramid
quality assurance
quantity
quarterly
questionnaire
quotation
raise
range
rapidly
rapport
rate
raw materials
reassign
records
recreation
recruitment
refer
reference
regard
regardless
rehearse
related
relationship
relatively
relevant
remain
replacement
report to smb
represent
representative
reputation
require
requirement
rescue.
research and development (R&D)
resident
resources
respect
respond
response
responsibility
restructuring
retail sector
retail trade
retailing
retirement
return
rich
right
risk
rivalry
ruin
run company
run down
run short of cash
sales
sales people
sales pitch
sales reps
salesmen
savings
scheduling
screen
script
sector
secure
security.
segmentation
select
selection
self-concept
sell policies
senior executive
senior official
separate
sequence
serve
service
service sector
set up
setting
settle
several
shake
share
share capital
shareholders
shortage
shrink
simulate
sincere
single
size
skill
skillfulness
smattering
smoothly
so forth
socializing
software
sole proprietorship
sole trader
solely
solemn
solicitor
solution
solve
soundness.
source
specialist
specialize in
specific
speculation
sphere
split
spot
stability
staff
staff position
stand the chance of
stand to lose one’s original stake
standardization
start
start out
start up
start-up capital
state
state legislature
statement
stating the rules.
stating the target,
status
stay
steadily
step
step up
stewardship
stipulation
stock
stock company
stock market
stockholders
store
storehouse
stress
strict
strive
strong management
structure
subject matter
subordinate
subsidiary
substantial
subtle
succeed
success
success rate
successful
successive
sudden
sufficient
suggestion
suitable
sum up
superficial
superior
supplier
support
surplus
survey
survive
sustain
tactical
take orders
take over
takeover
take risks
target
task
tax
team
technical
technician
telecommunications
telephoning
telex
temporary
tend
tension.
terms
timely information
topic
touch
trade credit
tradition
traditional
traffic
training
training course
trainmen
transfer
transmit
transportation
trend
trick
true
truly
trust
trustworthy
turn of the century
type
umbrella organization
unable
uncertain.
undertake
unique
unit
unity
unlikely
unlimited liability
unlimited personal liability
upword
validity
value
vanguard
variation
variety
vendor
venture capital
venture capitalist
verbal message
vibrant
view
view upon
vigorous
visitor
vocal
volume
vote
voting rights
wealth
wealthy
wholesale trade
wholly
widespread
win
winner
work long hours
workforce
working relationships
worry
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