A; what do you thing are the most important things to do when running a business?
B: well, there are several things. Of course, you must do everything you can to keep costs down and revenues¹ high.
A: so, do you think workers should be paid as little as possible?
B: no. if you do that, the workers won’t like their jobs. They will be less efficient and you will get a high staff turnover². Those things will increase you costs.
A: how can a business maxmise revenues?
B: you need to invest in some good adverstising. You have to know where your potential customers are and target them. It’s no good trying to sell computer games to older people. The market is too small.
A; what else do you suggest?
B; find out what other companies charge for the same products or services. Price yourself near the low end. Don’t be much cheaper than everyone else, because many customers distrust very cheap things. They think that is must be poor quality if it’s that cheap.

Intermediate³
A: what do you think we need to do to get our new branch office running well?
B: first, I ‘d make sure that we have a good, local, corporate⁴ lawyer. He or she will know all the local laws and regulations.
A; that’s very important. A firend recommended a good law firm to me. We’ll need someone to hire staff.
B; I think that we should send one of our HR people to do that. I don’t think we should use an agency, because they won’t be familiar with the type of people we employ. Have we decide on the location of the branch office?
A; yes. We have. We chose the location in the northeast of the city, not too far from the airport and on the edge of the CBD.
B; why didn’t we choose an office in the CBD?
A: the offices there were too expensive. Have we negotiated⁵ any contracts yes?
B; yes. We’ve signed two contracts with companies that we already do work for in other countries. We hope to sign another three this month.
A: when will the branch office open?
B: hopefully next month. Everything is a little rushed. We should be able to set up our branch office and expand our business quickly.
A; has and advertising⁶ campaign been prepared?
B; yes, it has. We’re going to target the business community through business magazine.
A: I made plenty of business contract on my last visit and through the embassy⁷. We should be able to get plenty of customers.

Words
Market(ing) business contract subsidiary representative office branch office recruitment
office space production line service franchise parent company multinational shareholder director
manager investment warehouse capital cash flow overheads
corporate law lawyer law firm sales expense import export
public relations advertisement market leader profit invoice R&D