2024年4月23日发(作者：)

2019商务英语BEC中级考试阅读理解练习题(1)

【BEC】

第一篇：THE ART OF PERSUASION

Let me send you our brochure’ is probably the most commonly

used phrase in business. But all too often, it can spell the

end of a customer enquiry because many brochures appear to be

produced not to clarify and to excite but to confuse. So what

goes wrong and how can it be put right? Too often, businesses

fail to ask themselves critical questions like, ’Who will

the brochure be sent to?’ ’What do we want to achieve with

it?’ The truth is that a brochure has usually been produced

for no other reason than that the competition has one.

However, with a little research, it often transpires that

what the client wants is a mixture： part mail shot, part

glossy corporate brochure and part product catalogue - a

combination rarely found. Having said that, the budget is

likely to be finite. There may not be enough money to meet

all three marketing needs, so the first task is to plan the

brochure, taking into account the most significant of these.

The other requirements will have to be met in a different way.

After all, introducing the company’s product range to new

customers by mail is a different task from selling a new

season’s collection to existing customers.

The second task is to get the content right. In 95 per cent

of cases, a company will hire a designer to oversee the

layout, so the final product looks stylish, interesting and

professional; but they don’t get a copywriter or someone

with the right expertise to produce the text, or at least

tidy it up - and this shows. A bigger failing is to produce a

brochure that is not customer focused. Your brochure should

cover areas of interest to the customer, concentrating on the

benefits of buying from you.

Instead, thousands of brochures start with a history

lesson, ’Founded in 1987, we have been selling our

products .. I can assure you that customers are never going

to say to themselves, ’They’ve been around for 20 years -

I’ll buy from them.’ It’s not how long you’ve been in

business that counts, it’s what you’ve done in that time.

The important point to get across at the beginning is that

you have a good track record. Once this has been established,

the rest of the brochure should aim to convince customers

that your products are the best on the market.

It is helpful with content to get inside the customer’s

head. If your audience is young and trendy, be creative and

colourful. As always, create a list of the benefits that

potential customers would gain from doing business with you,

for example, product quality, breadth of range, expertise of

staff and so on. But remember that it is not enough just to

state these; in order to persuade, they need to be spelt out.

One possibility is to quote recommendations from existing

customers. This also makes the brochure personal to you,

rather than it simply being a set of suppliers’ photographs

with your name on the front.

At the design stage, there are many production features that

can distinguish your brochure from the run of the mill. You

may think that things like cutouts or pop-ups will do this

for you and thus make you stand out, or you may think they

just look like designer whims that add cost. Go through all

the options in detail. One of them might be that all-

important magical ingredient.

13 What point does the writer make about brochures in the

first paragraph?

A Customer expectations of them are too high.

B They ought to be more straightforward in design.

C Insufficient thought tends to go into producing them.

D Companies should ensure they use them more widely.

14 The writer’s advice to companies in the second paragraph

is to

A produce a brochure to advertise new product lines.

B use a brochure to extend the customer base.

C accept that a brochure cannot fulfil every objective.

D aim to get a bigger budget allocation for producing

brochures.

15 In the third paragraph, which of the following does the

writer say would improve the majority of brochures?

A better language and expression

B better overall appearance

C more up-to-date content

D more product information