外教微课 | 214-如何在商业中添加乐趣原料？
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Business isn't *all* business! In reality, business and pleasure mix. Are you prepared? Learn the best phrases to make social conversation with your associates. Equally important, find out which topics to avoid! You'll also learn how to eliminate awkward silences, and how to make your clients or colleagues comfortable when speaking with them. Many business decisions and deals are made outside the office or meeting room. Whether you're going for dinner with clients, or you're on a business trip, watch this lesson to learn how to be confident in social situations!
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. What we're talking about today is mixing business with pleasure. So what does this mean? This can mean when you go for a business trip, you also have a little bit of fun while you're there. But it can also mean that when you go out with your clients, it's not all talk about work, work, work, business, business, business. You also get to know each other a bit, maybe have a few glasses of wine or something like that. I don't know what you do on your business trips. But it's not just about work. So I'm going to give you some conversational tips for your next business trip where you may decide to mix business with pleasure.
So I've broken it down into different conversation topics. So we'll just go through those, and you will get some questions that you can ask to make yourself a dazzling conversationalist when you're next with your clients.
So I was thinking: When do these kinds of business meetings happen? Often, they are in restaurants. So it could be the evening. It could be a lunch meeting. So anyway, you're in a dining situation. You get in the restaurant. What do you say? You can say, "Have you been here before?" Or you might say, "What an impressive/charming/fascinating place!" This one's an exclamation. You're making an observation about the place. If it's impressive, I would imagine that it's quite a fine dining, expensive kind of place. If it's charming, it's original, and you've not really been somewhere like that before. If it's fascinating, what could that mean? Just maybe something unusual for you that you haven't experienced before.
If you're the host, and you are taking your client to that place, maybe you want to say something about the place, and the reason why you decided to have your meeting there. You could say, "This is the best seafood restaurant in town." So you're trying to impress your client and show them that you're taking them to all the best places. So you could change seafood. It could be a Chinese restaurant --you know, whatever, wherever you're going.
So imagine you are in the restaurant situation. A really common conversation for you to have is talking about food in general, your likes and dislikes, and also making comparisons between countries and cuisine styles from different countries. So here are some questions you might ask. You can say, "Do you like English food?" Well, the joke there is that people around the world say that they don't like English food and it's really bad. So I wouldn't be that hopeful for a very positive answer if you ask that question.
When you're looking at the menu, especially if the menu is in a language that you don't understand, you could say, "Could you recommend something?" Often it's quite polite -- at least in British culture -- to let the host decide what you're eating. So you might want to make that offer and say, "Can you recommend something?" You can also ask this to the waiter in the restaurant, as well, if you really don't know what to choose.
And here's another general question you could ask about food. So let's imagine your client is from a different country and you don't know much about the food culture of that country, you could say, "What do Italian people like to eat for breakfast?"
You know, you might not know. This could start a conversation about food. Or, you know, it doesn't need to be a specific meal. It could be a particular celebration that you could talk about. Perhaps it's near Christmas -- it's in the run-up to Christmas. You could say, "What do Italian people eat for Christmas dinner? In Britain, we like to eat something called a 'roast dinner', but what do you eat?" So that could get your conversation flowing a bit. I must say that in my life, I've never had that many conversations about sports. It's not in my world, talking about sports. But I know two general questions you could ask. "Do you follow any sports?" This means, "Do you watch them on television?" Or you could say, "Do you play any sports yourself?"
So now, you've been talking about sports. Perhaps you've discovered that you share a common interest. That means that you're both interested in the same thing. So you could both be interested in football, for example. Here's a question for you. "What did you think about the latest signing at Manchester United?" I know this about football and sport, when they get a new player, it's called a "signing". So you could bring that into your conversation. "What did you think of the latest signing?" Talking about football. But perhaps you're a music fan. What would you say in that case? You've discovered that you both really like a particular music artist. You could say, "What did you think about the new album?" I found a mistake. And you could -- what if you're a fashion lover? A fashion lover, Darling! You could say, "Did you like the new collection?" "Collection" is the word we use to talk about a designer's designs for that year.
So you could say, "Did you like the new collection?" What other topics do we have now? We've got travel. This one is especially relevant if you've traveled to meet your client in a new place. Here are some general questions you could ask. "Have you visited the U.K.?" You know, just replace that for your own country, and that will get you talking. Or you could say, "Do you travel much?" And then, start talking generally about travel. What about family? Perhaps you'd like to know a little bit more about the personal life of your client. You could say, "Are you married?" You could say, "Do you have kids?" This one feels a little bit more personal than the other topics, so you'd have to be the judge if you wanted to talk about that. You may also wish to talk about news and politics. In dinner party situations in Britain, it's said that it's impolite to -- no, not impolite.
That it may not be a good idea to talk about politics or religion because people disagree, and it can get people arguing. So sometimes, politics may be a risky subject for you. But use your discretion here. Let's look at this. "Are you feeling the pinch?" A "pinch" is when you do this to your skin. But that's a phrase economically for, "Are you feeling the difficult times financially?" Or you might say, "What do you think the outcome of the election will be?" Perhaps you've got a political event coming up in your country or in the other person's country or more generally, like in the U.S. and you could just maybe start talking about that. And moving on. Once you've had a delightful discussion about all different things -- travel, family, your likes and dislikes -- now, it's time to get down to business.
What does it mean to "get down to business"? I don't think you should shout it, actually. "Let's get down to business!" I don't think you should shout it. But you know, at some point during your business meeting, discussion, maybe you do need to talk about the details or your proposal or the offer. So that's a good way to transition it to finally talking about the whole reason that you came there for. Maybe you say this at the end of the meal, for dessert. Another transition you can use is "on that note". Perhaps you were talking about this. Maybe you're talking about the economy, and then you could say, "On that note, have you considered our offer?" That means, "Let's talk now and discuss the details of my proposal."
Here's one -- these ones are a little bit more fun. I've heard them said in movies. I don't know if people actually use them. But you could say this. "Look. Let's not beat around the bush. It's time to sign the contract now." This means, "I'm just going to be very direct with you. I'm going to be very straight. I'm going to cut all that small talk. I don't care about your wife and kids. It's time to do business." If you want to get to that part where you finally strike a deal, you can say this, "So do we have a deal?" You can shake their hand? And you can say -- when they're happy, you can say, "Let's shake on it." So this can prepare you for that client meeting, that social client meeting, mixing business with pleasure. It could be in a restaurant. It could be playing golf. It could be something like that.
It could be in a karaoke bar. I don't know. Well, what I'd like you to do now is go to www.engvid.com so you can do a quiz on this lesson. Plus, I'd like you to subscribe to my channel here. And also, I'd also like you to subscribe to my personal channel because I've got two channels. So you need to subscribe in both places, really. Yeah. That would be great for me. And I hope you come back and watch me again soon here, on my EngVid channel. So I'll see you later. And now, I'm going to catch up with my clients. See you.
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