BEC精听（四）

第二辑 TEST 4
PART ONE
      OK...well，thank you very much everyone. First of all, I'd like to introduce myself and my company. I'm Paula Shandling from Praxis（实践） Academic Recruitment Fairs. And I'm here today to tell you a little about our operations（业务，经营，运转） in various parts of the world and the specialist services we offer to make our exhibitions well known for being cost and time effective - reaching your target audience with the minimum of effort on your part.
     Now, firstly, I should explain that the main geographical area we serve is Central America. But, and I understand this is the area of interest for most of the audience here today, we are currently expanding into South-East Asia. Right, regarding our exhibition package, we believe we offer a very comprehensive（全面的） deal to the prospective（未来，预期，可能的） exhibitor（参展商）. We have found over the years, the clients prefer to have a self-contained（独立的） package（一揽子交易） rather than spending time negotiating add-ons（附加内容）. And because of this, we have been able to keep the cost to a minimum. And what that includes is, as you can see, the exhibition stand（展览摊位）. Of course, you can't get very far in an exhibition without one of those - and also full materials delivery（完整的材料交付）. We'll get everything to the venue for you safely. And a very popular recent addition to the package has been a local trade guide. This is proved very successful beacause it includes lots of specific information about local conditions - hours of work, past patterns of enrolment in situ, etc, etc.
      Now, as well as the full package on site, as it were, we are well aware that one of the most wasteful and demotivating（令人泄气的） aspects of fairs from your point of view is the time spent dealing with casual enquirers（漫不经心的咨询者）. For this reason, we have been developing over the past two years, what we call, a filtering system（过滤系统）. By this we mean our set of strategies developed to virtually guarantee that enquirers at your stand are genuine potential customers i.e. mature individuals with the appropriate means（具有适当手段的成熟人士）. And all this means you maximise quality contact（高质量的联系） with potential customers.
      Now, how our filtering system works is through our targeted advertising, and what this essentially means in the case of academic recruitment is to run adverts in academic journals, which of course, we researched thoroughly to keep up to date, and secondly through our own website. A recent development has been the service we offer to put your business information onto our website a month in advance of the fair and retain on the site for six months.
      Right now, there are other features of our fairs which we adapt to local conditions - what we call 'context-sensitive' features. They are, as you can see, suitable opening times, that means you have access when needed and that can make a lot of difference to the number of people attending, plus, our interpreter service, particularly useful for undergraduate enquirers wishing to take advantage of language support services in your institutions.
      A few practical details now, you can get more information from the publicity leaflet which I distributed at the beginning of the talk. This will tell you about venues and about special services and finally, about costs. Thank you.

specialist services 专业服务
cost and time effective 成本效益和时间效益
exhibition package 展览计划
in situ 是一个拉丁文词组，字面上的意思是指「在原本位置」
In situ (/ɪn ˈsɪtjuː/ or /ɪn ˈsaɪtʃuː/; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position". It means "locally", "on site", "on the premises" or "in place" to describe an event where it takes place, and is used in many different contexts.
on site 现场

PART TWO

1.   It's a shame（遗憾） in many ways because Andrew was doing an excellent job and was a very useful memeber of the team. The truth is he has probably contributed more than anyone else in terms of sheer energy and ideas to the projects he's worked on. Certainly, he was a lot more popular with the team than his predecessor（前任， 前辈）. In fact, he is so good with people from different backgrounds and different countries. He used to make me sick sometimes. But having said that（话虽如此）, he was less good at getting on with superiors, I mean you can't keep disagreeing with your line manager over quite basic matters. It's just not on（这样是不行的，不起作用的，没意义的）. There was too much conflict. The company had to choose between the two of them. So, he's paid the price, but he won't have any problems getting a new job.
       Anyway, Margaret won't be doing anything urgent, until they decide what to do about a new appointment. She had planned a two-week break starting yesterday, but now that's all been put off for two or three months.
sheer a. （用于强调）完全的，纯粹的，十足的

2.  Well, we knew she was a high-flyer（志存高远之人） from her previous company and she's impressed the Board with her results, especially in the last six months. She can extract the main arguments from long documents in no time（like 朴炯植 in SUITS）. Other people have to study them for hours. Certainly, we need more people like her at the top. I did't think it'd be this quick, but it's true that she's the person to make an impact.

      However, it does create a few headaches for us, because the MD（managing director 总经理，总裁） wants her to start at Head Office almost straight away（立刻，马上）. What's happening is we are putting back the dates（日期推迟） for the Canada Report, and for the big meeting on the new training programme for four weeks by which time we hope to have somebody in the post. 

3.   Remember that working practices（工作习惯，工作实践）, systems, the management structure, the whole culture of the company have changed a great deal just in the last five years. Then there's been all the pressure and worry of the takeover, and the longer working day we've had since that time.
      It was a shock when I first heard he'd handed his notice in（上交通知，辞呈）, but then when I think about it I'm not really surprised. I don't really know, but I should think he now regrets not taking early retirement when it was a possibility. And don't forget there's the issue of his wife's health, too. So I think John wants to sort of  bring forward some of the plans that have made for retirement, like travling to South America and China.
      The immediate concequence will be quite a few late evenings for his two deputies（副手） plus a lot of weekend work, because the annual report has got to be sorted out by the end of the month（年报要在月底前整理好）and there are quite a few other outstanding matters（未解决的事情） on the contract side（合同方面）.
outstanding a. 未偿付的, 未解决的

4.   Martin has had quite a bit of overseas experience, mainly on sites in South America. Nobody's better at getting on with local managers and resolving conflicts between the various parties working on a project. In the situation we've got out there, he'll be just the right man for the job. I've been very impressed with everything he's done since he came to us. I think he's got the perfect mix of expertise（专业知识） and track record（过往履历，业绩）, but we're going to miss him at this end（在这一点上）.

      Fortunately, the woman we've signed up to fill the temporary gap is available for exactly the period that Martin's going to be away. She's been working for an electronics company in France that just been taken over by a Germam firm. Actually the boss met her quite by chance the very day she was made redundant. What could be very useful is that she's done quite a lot of budgeting worked on development projects（做过很多开发项目的预算工作）.

5.  She's a total workaholic（工作狂） - always the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave - but she spends a lot of time at the leisure center as well. Mind you, we've all been under pressure with reorganization, so it's doubtless been even worse for her in Human Resources, having to cope with so many redudancies（裁员） and resignations（辞职）. It's something you only expect to happen to older employees, isn't it? Anyway, it actually happened during a Finance Committee（财政委员会） meeting, but the medical team were very efficient. 

     Anyway, let's hope she won't be away too long! There are a couple of managers just back from secondments（有几名刚刚借调回来的经理）. They're going to do more of her work at Head Office, it seems, with weekly visits. Everybody's assuming（认为） it isn's too serious.

secondment n. 暂借,借调

PART THREE

A: Today in our series of Setting Up Your Own Business, I'm talking to Paul Jefferson, who gave up his job as a college lecturer in business studies to start an import business. Paul, what made you do it?
B: Importing, because whenever I go abroad I see things I'm sure would sell here. And working alone, because I wanted to be very hands-on, and do everything from finding suppliers to selling.
A: Did you set yourself a financial target?
B: Well, nothing specific. In the long term, it'd be great to have plenty of money: I can just see myself with a big house and a yacht. To be honest, I think I might have quite a wait, though. In the meantime, I owe a bit of money, but it's at a level I can live with, so I suppose I'll be happy when I'm earning enough to pay the bills, with a little bit over to be able to eat out from time to time（偶尔）, and something to plough（耕犁） back into the business.
A: And are you making enough to live on yet？
B: No, in a word. But I'm lucky, I've got an investor, Sarah Hall. She backs me with enough to live on each month in return for a share of my futrue profits. She's actually a successful importer herself, in a different sector, and she's given me a lot of useful advice on selling. Though I've mostly done things my own way, but making a profit is incredibly difficult. 
A: Is that because of competition?
B: I'm not quite sure what the competition is, really. Actually I have to admit I'm hopeless at driving a hard bargain（讲价无能）, and I know some of my suppliers are taking some advantage of that. So I have to pay a lot, which makes it difficult to sell to customers at a profit.
A: Are margins（利润） the only problem?
B: Not the only one. You see, at first I tried selling lots of different products to a variety of small shops, toyshops, jewellers, and so on. But I got very few actual sales（销售额）. So then I considered supermarkets. I managed to see a product development manager（产品开发经理）, who seemed interested in my range of specialist food products（一系列特定食品）. But then I heard from the company that they weren't going to order anything - a new buyer had been appointed, and if I contacted them again in due course, they'd reconsider.
A: What happened next?
B: Out of the blue（突然; 出乎意料地）, a restaurant chain placed a large order for food products. There was some difficulty about the price, but that was settled.
A: It sounds like a turning point.
B: Unfortunately, it wasn't. The first consignment（n. 托付货物;托卖货物） arrived from my supplier, I called the restaurant chain to fix delivery dates, only to be told that they'd stopped trading. That was quite a blow（打击）.

A: I can imagine.
B: Then I persuaded the food buyer of a major department store（大型百货公司的食品采购员） to meet me. When I looked around their food hall（大厅）, I could see they were already selling everything I hoped to supply them with, nad my heart sank. But then the buyer said that they felt they were overdependent on their existing supplier, and had decided to do something about it. So that's where I came in.
A: It seems your original strategy of offering everything from toys to jewellery, didn't produce the volume of sales or profit you needed.
B: I'd imagined that by selling lots of different lines（产品，系列，生产线）, I'd got a good spread of customers（将顾客分散开）, but it did't really work out like that. Now I'm increasing my turnover（营业额） by concentrating on just a few lines（产品，生产线） that I can sell to customers in the same sector（同一行业的客户）. And with food, there are plenty of retailers out there, all sizes, just waiting for me to come and sell to them, so I've dropped everything else.
A: How do you see the next twelve months?
B: I'd like to say I'll be hiring someone to handle existing customers, while I concentrate on drumming up（兜揽生意；竭力争取支持） new business, and that I want to move into export as well as import. To be realistic, that'll have to wait until I've built up my customer base and turnover quite significantly（相当可观的营业额）.
A: Paul, how do you feel about your first year?
B: It's been great. I wish I'd started years ago.
hands-on adj. 亲自动手的;躬亲的

undercut v. 削(价)竞争

drive down the price 压低价格

overcharge v. 多收(某人的)钱

outgoings n. 开支;经常性费用