BEC高级口语presentation的材料
口语具体的考试形式就不多说了，相信大家都知道，这里主要说一下presentation部分经常考的内容。由于很多同学的专业并不是和商务有关的，因此积累一定的商务知识和素材就十分必要。
首先是Marketing，一般presentation部分考官会给三个题目供你选择，可以说必有一道是关于Marketing的，所以这方面的材料要好好准备。
I. Pricing Strategy
1. the product itself: the cost of producing plus your expecting profit
2. similar products, the rival firms: What are their prices? What are your product’s competitive advantages? In what aspect does your product superior to others? This can add extra value to your product.
3. target customer: Whether they are wealthy or not? Can they afford the price?
Ex: How to ensure that price levels for new products are set appropriately?
○1 The first problem is who your target customers are. Their income, occupation, preference.
○2 Do market research to make sure whether your target customers can afford the price level. There are mainly four ways of doing market research: survey, telephone interview, observation and questionnaire.
○3 Test your product in a small region. Find out how it sells, get the feedbacks of the customers. Decide whether to make any adjustment.
II. Product Package
Ex: The importance of packaging products appropriately
○1 Traditionally, the purpose of packaging a product is to protect the product or to make it convenient for carrying, as some products are liquid or sticky.
○2 Today, the package add value to the product, especially to the consumer goods. The package is the product’s first impression to the customer. They may judge the quality of the product by its package and decide whether to buy it or not. Sometimes, a gorgeous package is a symbol of identity, especially when the product serves as a gift or present.
○3 You have to packaging your products appropriately so that your products can stand out from the crowd and be bought by the customers.
III. Diversification
Ex: The importance of product diversification to the success of a business.
这时你可能对product diversification并不是很熟悉，可以举一些案例，比如, the case of coca-cola: despite of its regular cola, it produce diet cola for people who get diabetes or adiposity problems. 然后借以说明product diversification的作用。
○1 Meet the needs of different customers.
○2 Increase the company’s market shares/market penetration.
○3 Marketing segmentation: the division of potential buyers according to age, sex, lifestyle, etc with the aim of designing and promoting goods and services to meet their specific need.(此定义引自《牛津英汉双解商务英语辞典》，我认为很不错的一本商务英语词典，每个词汇都有在商务方面的中英两种解释和例句)
IV. Advertising
1. Media
○1 The types of media: TV and radio commercial, newspapers and magazine, poster and bill board, direct mail, the Internet, etc
○2 Advantages and disadvantages of the major types
TV: high attention, combination of sight, sound and motion; high cost and less audience selectivity.
Newspaper: flexibility, good local market coverage, broad acceptance; short life, poor reproduction quality.
Magazine: high geographic and demographic selectivity, credibility, long life, good pass-along readership; having rivals in the same magazine.
Direct mail: audience selectivity, flexibility, no ad competition within the same medium; relatively high cost, junk mail image.
Internet: high reach of international audience, similar effect as TV commercial, interactive; the users of Internet are limited, compared with TV.
○3 Consider your target audience and your budget to make a wise decision.
2. Agency
○1 Select a suitable agency
A. Consider the reputation and past performances of the agency. Agencies provide the client with the services of highly skilled individuals who are specialists in their chosen field.
B. Same compensation philosophies. Different compensation systems may result in disagreement.
C. Stability in agency’s policies. Mergers and acquisitions may lead to policy changes. This will have negative effect on the performance of the agency.
○2 Ensure that agencies maintain a high level of effectiveness.
A. Regular reviews: financial and qualitative assessments.
B. Financial audit: It is designed to verify costs and expenses, salaries for the employees, and payments to the media and outside suppliers.
C. Give detailed instructions or certain trainings to the agencies about how to represent a company.
D. Make full disclosure of any potential and existing conflict of interest. One agency cannot run two accounts which are indirect competition with each other. In some cases, even indirect competition will not be tolerated.
3. Trade fair and exhibition
○1 Types of exhibition. What are exhibited? Whether it is related to your field? Whether you can find potential customers, suppliers, or partners?
○2 Scale of exhibition. How many participants are listed? Whether it is local or national or international?
○3 Publicity of exhibition. How far is the organizer willing to increase public awareness? Whether they are able to attract public attention and the leading companies of the field?
○4 Cost of admission. Some of the exhibitions are relatively high, because they wish to attract only the professionals of their own field. Some are admission free, because their target market is the entire population.
○5 Other points: Location, transportation, accommodation and time.
Ex: The importance of selecting appropriate members of staff to attend exhibitions.
○1 The exhibition is a stage for a company to exhibit its product, capacity and credibility.
○2 The members need to know every aspect of the product and the company, and what the company wants in the exhibition.
○3 They should have eloquence to promote the product and the flexibility to adapt to the changes.
○4 Because they represent the image of the company, they should also have a good physical appearance.
V. Market Research
The definition of market research: study carried out by a company before launching a new product, into the needs, lifestyle, income, etc of potential buyers and to measure the success of similar products that are already available. It may involve interviewing people in the street or giving away sample product.
○1 Market research can be done for both a product and a company. As for a product, it is the first step when promoting a new product. It can find out whether the market accept the product or not. As for the company, market research can find out the customers’ opinion about the after-sales services and corporate image.
○2 There are generally four ways of doing market research, observation, survey, questionnaire and telephone interview.
○3 There are four procedures while doing market research. First, represent suitable questions. Second, record the customers’ feedbacks. Third, gather these statistics. Forth, analyse them and draw a conclusion.
VI. Sales
Ex: How to sell a product effectively in international markets.
○1 Advertising. Choose a media to advertise your products in a foreign country, TV commercials, magazines, bill board, or etc. Make sure it suits the local tastes. Maybe you can try to sell on the net; it will receive the world-wide attention.
○2 Do market research. Find out whether the products are accepted by foreign customers. It can be carried out as surveys, observations, and questionnaires.
○3 Adjust your product to the local tastes. Although the case of your products are the same, you can change some details. Take IKEA, the largest furniture retailer, for example, is doing well in suiting the local taste.
○4 What I want to put emphasis on is franchising. Franchising is a good way to sell your prosuct in a foreign country. As local businessmen understand their own culture best.
其次是HR Management，这一部分也很重要，而且这些材料在写作时都可以派上用场
I. Recruitment
Ex: How to ensure that the best candidate for a post is selected.
How to organise an effective recruitment drive.
○1 Hiring a new employee is an investment. Getting a niche person for a niche role will add value to an organization. Organization can never be sure that they have selected the right person until he or she starts working, but an efficient recruitment and selection process can reduce the risk.
○2 Produce an accurate job description, a list of skills, experience, attitudes and so on.
○3 Choose the best recruitment method: internal recruitment, job advertisements, recruitment agencies and headhunting/executive search.
○4 A shortlist of candidates will then be draw up to be put through the company’s recruitment processes, usually interviews. This will produce the ideal candidate.
○5 Negotiate terms with this candidate. It should be both affordable for the company and attractive enough to get the ideal candidate.
II. Motivation
Ex: How to achieve and maintain high motivation among a workforce.
The importance to a company of having well motivated staffs.
○1 Well motivated staffs can add value to the company. They are enthusiastic, creative and loyal. They increase the productivity and quality.
○2 Spiritual motivation.
A. Give employees guidance when they are just recruited.
B. Demonstrate a commitment to career development and promotion from within.
C. Forster a sense of team spirit.
D. Publicly recognize and congratulate employees for good work.
○3 Material motivation.
A. Set incentive schemes: profit sharing, bonus scheme.
B. Fringe benefits: company car, contribution to pension/health scheme, relation allowance.
C. Establish the incentive-based compensation system.
III. Career development
Ex: The importance of having a career plan in order to achieve high levels of success at work.
The importance of acquiring a range of skills throughout your career.
How to assess the career opportunities provided by different types of companies.
○1 When people first entering a company, many dream that they will one day be running a major business, wielding power and influencing market. But only a few of them succeed. For the rest, compromise, mediocrity and alternative career will be their lot.
○2 If you want to climb up to the summit, the first thing you have to do is having a career plan. It should be a long-run plan and be set out one step after another. Maybe you can start with increasing your sales volume by 10%. Make a marvelous proposal of the problem happens to your department and draw the manager’s attention to promote you to the Manager Assistant. Then you know what you should do, work hard, be creative and wait for the next promotion. See, step by step, you will achieve high level of success at work.
IV. Training
Ex: How to monitor internal staff training scheme effectively.
The importance of a cumulous program of staff training within a company.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of company training program.
○1 Staff training is a win-win situation. It both benefit the company and the staff members. It offers opportunities to staffs who want to acquire some specialized skills and improve themselves. It also increase the efficiency which means more profit to the company. Moreover, the company can pass its corporate culture to the staffs during the training.
○2 As for the internal staff training, the training and Enterprise Councils should take this responsibility. Before the training, they first have to do a survey to find out which training course is welcomed by staff, compare it with the company’s objectives, and then make a final decision. Second, they will select a trainer and make a schedule for the course. It can be an on the job training, which means employees learn while undertaking the job, or off the job training, which means employees are trained away from the actual job. It really depends.
○3 After the training, the HR Department should arrange interviews with the employees who took part in the training and get feedbacks to improve the training in the future. The evaluation system also contains evaluate the performances of these staffs and make comparisons between the previous performances and the present ones. If the present performances are better and staffs make more profits than before, the training program can be seen as effective, especially when the company’s output is well over its input.
V. Communication
Ex: How to ensure appropriate levels of confidentiality over the long-term staffing plans of a company.
○1 We all heard about the business espionage. One company sends people to another company to gather sensitive information. The law forbids these indecent behaviors. But these behaviors are always difficult to legally identify. What the company can do is taking care of itself and make the sensitive information confidential.
○2 Firstly, the company should be aware of the recruitment process. CV or resume can sometimes tell whether a candidate is sent by its competitors.
○3 Secondly, give different rights to different levels of staff on access to the company’s important documents.
○4 Thirdly, add code to the computer and install firewall.
Ex: The importance of providing employees with clear job descriptions.
○1 It is part of the incentive schemes and communication. It improves the communication with you and your employees and motivates them. They will feel being recognized publicly and devote themselves to their work.
○2 The job descriptions include requirement of any skills, responsibility and payment.
VI. Health and Safety
Ex: The importance of a safe working environment for maintaining staff morale.
How to develop a responsible attitude among staff to the health and safety requirement of a company.
The importance to a company of having a health and safety policy.
○1 It is an essential part of laws concerning the workplace. Health and safety regulation must be followed by employers and employees to prevent accidents and protect the health of people at work. In the UK, there regulations are based on the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 and an important part of an employee’s contract of employment.
○2 The health and safety policy not only is required by law, but also benefits the company. With the health and safety policy, staff may think the company cares for them. They will devote themselves harder to the works. In other words, it helps to maintain staff morale. This will result in raising productivity and improving service quality. If, unfortunately, accidents happened, employees, as well as the company would suffer a lot.
○3 First, the company should make sure that the contract of employment contains the health and safety article. This can avoid dispute if accident happens. Second, the company should offer training courses which aim at making employees aware of the potential dangers at workplace. Third, set health and safety regulations and ensure that employees comply with all operation procedures that apply to their jobs.
再次，是finance部分，由于比较专业，这方面涉及到的题一般很少，所以在这里就只举一个例子。
Foreign Investment: The importance of foreign investment for a company.
○1 There are two kinds of foreign investment. One is called FDI, the foreign direct investment which means set up branches or build factories in a foreign country. The other is foreign indirect investment. It means buying securities, such as shares and bond in the oversea market.
○2 Both of the two ways are important when a company wants to expand internationally. It benefits a company in three ways.
First, it helps the company to seek low-price resources such as workforce. This will reduce the cost and improve the profit.
Second, it offers a way for the company to contact with the foreign advanced technologies. If a company set up branches in a high-tech country and cooperate with the natives, it will learn their up-to-date technologies.
Third, foreign investment can spread risk.
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[ 本帖最后由 霸王鱼 于 2006-8-23 19:46 编辑 ]
