TEST 4

This is the Business English Certificate Higher 2, Listening Test 4.

Part One. Questions 1 to 12.

You will hear a representative of a company which organises trade fairs for academic recruitment. She is talking to a group of prospective clients.

As you listen, for questions 1 to 12, complete the notes, using up to three words or a number.

After you have listened once, replay the recording.

You now have forty-five seconds to read through the notes.

[pause]

Now listen, and complete the notes.

[pause]

Woman: 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 Academic Recruitment Fairs and I’m here today to tell you a little about our operations 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 deal to the prospective exhibitor. We have found over the years that clients prefer to have a self- contained package rather than spending time negotiating add-ons. 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. Of course, you can’t get very far in an exhibition without one of those – and also full materials delivery. We’ll get everything to the venue for you safely. And a very popular recent addition to the package has been the local trade guide. This has proved very successful because it includes lots of specific information about local conditions - hours of work, past patterns of enrolment in situ, etcetera, etcetera.

Now, as well as the full package on site, as it were, we are well aware that one of the most wasteful and demotivating aspects of fairs from your point of view is the time spent dealing with casual enquirers. For this reason we have been developing over the past two years what we call a ‘filtering system’. 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, and all this means that you maximise quality contact 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 research 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.

[pause]

Now listen to the recording again.

[pause]

That is the end of Part One. You now have twenty seconds to check your answers.

[pause]

Part Two. Questions 13 to 22.

You will bear five different people speaking about changes in personnel in their place of work.

For each extract there are two tasks. Look at Task One. For each question 13-17, choose the reason for the change in personnel from the list A-H.

Now look at Task Two. For each question 18-22, choose the action that has been taken as a result, from the list A-H.

After you have listened once, replay the recording.

You now have thirty seconds to read the two lists.

[pause]

Now listen, and do the two tasks.

[pause]

Man: It’s a shame in many ways because Andrew was doing an excellent job and was a very useful member of the team. The truth is he’s 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, in fact he’s so good with people from different backgounds and different countries, he used to make me sick sometimes. But having said that, 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. 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.

Woman: Well, we knew she was a high-flyer 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. Other people have to study them for hours. Certainly, we need more people like her at the top. I didn’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 wants her to start at Head Office almost straight away. What’s happening is we’re putting back the dates 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.

Man: Remember that working practices, 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, 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 he’d made for retirement, like travelling to South America and China. The immediate consequence will be quite a few late evenings for his two deputies plus a lot of weekend work, because the annual report has got to be sorted out by the end of the month and there are quite a few other outstanding matters on the contract side.

Woman: 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 and track record, but we’re going to miss him at this end. 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’s just been taken over by a German 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 work on development projects.

Woman: She’s a total workaholic - always the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave - but she spends a lot of time at the leisure centre as well. Mind you, we’ve all been under pressure with the re-organisation, so it’s doubtless been even worse for her in Human Resources, having to cope with so many redundancies and resignations. It’s something you only expect to happen to older employees, isn’t it? Anyway it actually happened during a Finance Committee 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. They’re going to do more of her work at Head Office, it seems, with weekly visits. Everybody’s assuming it isn’t too serious.

[pause]

Now listen to the recording again.

[pause]

That is the end of Part Two.

[pause]

Part Three. Questions 23 to 30.

You will hear part of a radio interview with Paul Jefferson, who set up his own import business.

For each question 23-30, mark one letter, A, B or C, for the correct answer.

After you have listened once, replay the recording.

You have forty-five seconds to read through the questions.

[pause]

Now listen, and mark A, B or C.

[pause]

Woman: Today in our series on 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?

Man: 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.

Woman: Did you set yourself a financial target?

Man: 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, and something to plough back into the business.

Woman: And are you making enough to live on yet?

Man: 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 future 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.

Woman: Is that because of competition?

Man: I’m not quite sure what the competition is, really. Actually I have to admit I’m hopeless at driving a hard bargain, and I know some of my suppliers are taking advantage of that. So I have to pay a lot, which makes it difficult to sell to customers at a profit.

Woman: Are margins the only problem?

Man: Well 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. So then I considered supermarkets. I managed to see a product development manager, who seemed interested in my range of specialist food products. 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.

Woman: What happened next?

Man: Out of the blue, a restaurant chain placed a large order for food products. There was some difficulty about the price, but that was settled.

Woman: It sounds like a turning point.

Man: Unfortunately it wasn’t. The first consignment arrived from my supplier, I called the restaurant chain to fix delivery dates, only to be told they’d stopped trading. That was quite a blow.

Woman: I can imagine.

Man: Then I persuaded the food buyer of a major department store to meet me. When I looked around their food hall I could see they were already selling everything I hoped to supply them with, and my heart sank. But then the buyer said that they felt they were over- dependent on their existing supplier, and had decided to do something about it. So that’s where I came in.

Woman: It seems your original strategy, of offering everything from toys to jewellery, didn’t produce the volume of sales, or profit, you needed.

Man: I’d imagined that by selling lots of different lines I’d get a good spread of customers, but it didn’t really work out like that. Now I’m increasing my turnover by concentrating on just a few lines that I can sell to customers in the same sector. And with food, there are plenty of retailers out there, of all sizes, just waiting for me to come and sell to them, so I’ve dropped everything else.

Woman: How do you see the next twelve months?

Man: I’d like to say I’ll be hiring someone to handle existing customers, while I concentrate on drumming up 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.

Woman: Paul, how do you feel about your first year?

Man: It’s been great. I wish I’d started years ago!

[pause]

Now listen to the recording again.

[pause]

That is the end of Part Three. You now have ten minutes to transfer your answers to your Answer Sheet.

[pause]

Note: Teacher, stop the recording here and time ten minutes. Remind students when there is one minute remaining.

[pause]

That is the end of the test