Questions are an important part of almost every conversation. So being able to ask good questions is critical to communication. How can we make our questioning more effective and efficient? In this two-part Business English Podcast series we’ll be looking at some answers.
The communication skills we’ll be learning can be used in any situation, but we’ll be focusing in on an area where questioning techniques are particularly important: needs analysis. This refers to analyzing the needs of a customer as part of the sales process. We’ll study a series of questioning techniques that can be used to “drill down to” – 那是, get to or uncover – the information you want.
In today’s Business English listening Brad is a sales manager for Forrest and Brown, a producer of innovative industrial coatings and glues. Coating refers to a chemical that is applied to the outside of something to protect it. 例如, paint is a type of coating. Forrest and Brown produces “conformal coatings”; this type of coating is used to protect printed circuit boards, or PCBs. PCBs are small flat boards covered with wiring and electronic parts. Almost all electronic devices – TVs, CD players, phones – have them.
Today Brad is visiting Andy, who is a production manager for Stratos, an assembler of PCBs that are used in household items. We can say that Andy is Brad’s “prospect” – the person he wants to sell to.
Let’s listen to how Brad asks Andy questions to analyze Stratos’ 需要.
聽力問題
1) What does Brad think of the Stratos facility?
2) How long has Stratos been located in its current location?
3) What kind of devices does Stratos produce circuit boards for?
Life is actually a constant exercise in persuasion, wouldn’t you say? What I mean is we don’t just need to persuade people in the meeting room; actually, we are constantly using the tools of persuasion across a wide variety of situations ranging from serious to casual. In addition to formal situations, everyday persuasions include when to meet, whether to extend a deadline, and even such common things as where to have lunch or which movie to see.
So the persuasive process we learned inBEP 59 , 60 & 62 is useful not just for formal business situations, but across all sorts of contexts that come up many times every day. You don’t always want to use the indirect approach to persuasion, but it’s often very useful.
Here’s an example of the persuasive process at work in an everyday situation: Julie is persuading her husband, 史蒂夫, to try a new vacation spot.
當你聽, see if you can identify the five steps of the Monroe sequence:
1) Getting attention
2) Establishing need
3) Satisfying that need
4) Visualizing the future
5) Asking for action
Because this is an informal situation, the language Julie uses is obviously quite casual and she doesn’t include any numbers or statistical data; 但, as always, a convincing description of the problem in the need step is the key to successful persuasion. And it’s important to state the problem from the perspective of the audience, which in this case is Julie’s husband.
