The engineering team deals with product development and production processes and not product launch and this identifies poor audience visualization (Guffey and Almonte, 2009). Poor audience visualization is also evident from the fact that the audience lacked interest in the presentation and this led to conflict at the initial stages of the presentation. Terry could have better prepared for the presentation through audience profiling and through adequate response to the profiling (Guffey and Loewy, 2010). He could have identified appropriate message to the engineering team such as the team’s previous success in products’ development and possible need for improvement, and specific features that may be successful in the market. He should have also anticipated the team’s possible negative response and used communication skills to captivate the audience.
Terry could have handled the questions by moderating them to respond to a question at a time, or by convincing the audience to wait until the end of the presentation (Krizan, Merrier and Logan, 2010). After Terry left the room, the project manager should assume the responsibility of bridging the created gap between the marketing team and the engineering team in order to foster future collectivity.
In order to get the engineering group’s buy in, I would be sensitive to possible difference between the group and my marketing group and understand strategies for overcoming challenges from the differences (Karmakar, 2012).