Starting a business meeting in English. On this page, we will look at some of the language used to start a business meeting in English. Keep in mind that the language you use will depend on how formal or informal the meeting is. Before we being, let’s just take a quick look at some of the common vocabulary used in business meetings:
- An agenda – the list of topics for the meeting and they order in which they will be discussed
- Minutes – the notes that are taken during the meeting
- A product range – different variations of the same or similar products
- A strategy – a plan of how to achieve a goal or aim
- Redundancies – to get ride of some people that work for a company because they are no longer needed
OK, now let’s look at some of the phrases commonly used to signal the start of a meeting:
- David, would you like begin?
- Firstly, I’d like to begin by…
- Emily, would you like to kick off?
- Right, shall we begin?
- Let’s get the ball rolling with the first item on the agenda.
- OK, let’s get down to business.
- Let’s get right into it.
- Now, to start I’d like to introduce the topic of…
Here are some complete examples:
Example 1: Good morning everyone, and thanks for being here. As you know, we have a number of items on the agenda, so let’s get right into it. Firstly, I’d like to begin by talking about our new product range.
Example 2: Hello and welcome back after the holidays. We don’t have too much to discuss today, so let’s make this meeting as short as possible. David, would you like to begin? I think you were going to talk about our advertising strategy – is that right?
Example 3: Sorry to interrupt your workday with this meeting, but there are some serious issues that we need to discuss. Let’s get the ball rolling with the first item on the agenda – staff redundancies.
Example 4: Hello everyone and thanks for being on time. We have a lot to cover today, and John has agreed to take the minutes for today’s meeting, so Emily, would you like to kick off with the first item to discuss?
Now we’ve look at the language for starting a business meeting in English, let’s move on to useful expressions for keeping on topic during the meeting.