In this Business English Vocabulary lesson, we’ll look at vocabulary and collocations related to sales management. A sales force is made up of sales reps who try to identify leads with potential customers called prospects. A sales rep must qualify these prospects as they move down the sales funnel. At the end of the funnel, a rep hopes to close a sale, or make a deal.
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Welcome back to Skills 360. It’s great to be back for a new season of podcasts from Business English Pod.
For today’s lesson, we’re going to take a look at 10 key skills or characteristics that every successful business leader needs. You’ve probably heard this kind of list before, but I want to do something a bit different. I’ve matched these key skills with simple but powerful words or phrases that you can use every day. In business, competition is fierce, and you want every advantage you can get, right? So let’s find out how you can get a leg up.
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Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on attending a conference.
Conferences in English and other corporate events can be fantastic learning opportunities. They can also be good chances to connect with other people in your field. But just how good they are depends on more than just the speakers, the workshops, and the other participants. How much you get out of an event depends in large part on what you as a participant do.
You need to put your best foot forward, get engaged in the activities, and meet the people around you. In this way, you’ll learn a lot and make some good connections. But if you sit back, don’t ask questions, and just wait for others to talk to you, you’ll miss out on a great opportunity.
Today we’ll learn some techniques that can be very useful at any kind of event such as a conference, a networking social, or a fundraiser. We will learn how to ask good questions and show you’re engaged. We will also learn how to ask people about their background, give a compliment, and connect a topic to your own experience.
In the dialog, we’ll rejoin a regional HR conference of a large American company. We’ll hear Hanna, a conference attendee, during a workshop. Then we’ll hear Hanna approaching the presenter – Brent – later during lunch.
Listening Questions
1. What concept does Hanna express interest in?
2. What is the first topic of discussion between Hanna and Brent during lunch?
3. What does Hanna think Brent did well?
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In this Business English News lesson, we take a look at recent courtroom battles over technology patents.
In what some have dubbed ‘The Patent Trial of the Century’, Apple and Samsung have been fighting tooth and nail in recent weeks. Samsung was found to have infringed on 7 of Apple’s patents, in what became a $1B levy.
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PODCASTS
Learn business English with over 600 lessons to choose from. Our audio and video business English lessons cover a wide range of common topics, situations, and skills, including: presentations, telephoning, negotiating, conversation, travel, meetings, interviews, vocabulary, idioms, and more. Our goal is to teach natural and effective business English. We want our learners to be able to face different business and work situations with confidence and skill.
Every Business English Pod lesson comes with a complete PDF transcript that can be downloaded by members. The lesson transcripts include a dialog, teacher explanations, examples and speaking practice sections. You can look up the meaning of key words and idioms in the glossary and practice the target language in the review section.
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Every Business English Pod lesson comes with a set of practice quizzes to help you improve you listening, language and vocabulary skills. Learning needs to be reinforced with practice and quizzes. You need to know how much of the lesson you have understood and practice the language so you can use it.
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In this Email Tune-up lesson, we’re looking at an email from Jimmy, who is the training officer for his company. Jimmy wants to notify the various department heads of an upcoming seminar their staff will be attending. This is an internal email, which usually means it’s a bit more informal than something being sent outside the company. However, it’s being sent to managers at a higher rank than Jimmy’s, so the tone must be respectful and not too informal.
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In this Business English Pod lesson on business travel, we’ll be looking at how to deal with security checks.
In recent years getting through the security check at the airport has become a chore. In some cities, the whole process can take fifteen to twenty minutes or more. This includes standing in line, sending your bags through the X-ray machine, and walking through a metal detector, which “detects” or finds any metal you might have hidden on your body. Most security checks thus require passengers to take metal items out of their pockets and put them on a tray – or flat container – to send through the X-ray machine. Some countries – notably the United States – may even insist that passengers remove their coats and shoes.
And of course it’s not just airports that have high security – more and more tourist attractions are “beefing up” or increasing their security too. So negotiating security checks is a good skill to practice.
In this episode, Honesto and Alan are on their way home. They arrive at the airport late, so they are anxious about missing their flight. When the dialog begins, they have checked in to get their boarding passes. Now they need to go through security.
Listening Questions
1. At the beginning of the dialog, what does the security officer ask passengers to do?
2. What problem does security find with Alan’s baggage?
3. Alan has to leave an item behind at the security check. What is it?
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In this episode of Email Tune-up we’re looking at an email from Kenny, who works for a bathroom fixtures, or equipment, manufacture. He is writing to his colleague, John, to inform him about the changes he has made to the design of a shower door.
Tip: Select the “HQ” option in the YouTube menu to see a high quality version of this video.
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