BEC听力考试作为评估商务英语能力的国际权威标准，旨在模拟真实商务场景，如商务会议、客户交流、电话谈判等，全面考察您对商务信息的捕捉、理解和分析能力。本栏目将为您带来BEC中级听力难度的材料，供各个水平的英语学子学习。

听力原文及翻译

A: Bookstore has certainly been very successful, why do you think that is?

A：Bookstore确实非常成功，你认为原因何在？

B: Well, it's not been easy. For the first five years, it was a struggle raising funds and developing the right software. The ideas weren't the difficult bit, if you and I sat down here for an hour, we'd come up with 100 good idea, the hard bit is making those ideas work. There are several key elements, which for me were research, recruiting the right stuff and prioritizing.

B：嗯，这并不容易。在最初的五年里，筹集资金和开发合适的软件是一场斗争。创意并不难，如果你和我坐在这里一个小时，我们会想出 100 个好主意，难的是让这些想法发挥作用。有几个关键因素，对我来说是研究、招募合适的人才和确定优先次序。

A: And you're satisfied with your customer growth.

A：你对客户增长感到满意。

B: Well, it was a bit slow at first. But then it picked up, and from May 97, we started to see our greatest growth. We went from $120 million annual sales revenue to $230 million by the end of that year, and from 340,000 customers to 15 million. 58% of them were repeat customers, by 98, sales had reached almost $310 million.

B：嗯，一开始有点慢。但后来又加快了速度，从 97 年 5 月开始，我们开始看到最大的增长。到那年年底，我们的年销售收入从 1.2 亿美元增加到 2.3 亿美元，客户从 34 万增加到 1500 万。其中 58% 是回头客，到 98 年，销售额已达到近 3.1 亿美元。

A: And is Bookstore's success reflected in its profits.

A：Bookstore 的成功是否反映在利润上？

B: Well, at the moment, we're focusing on introducing ourselves to customers, and we spend a lot on advertising, anything else would be a poor management decision. But, of course it's reflected in our final figures, it's not unusual for a four year old company like ours to be in an investment cycle, what is more unusual is for a young company like bookstore to be sold on the stock market, which happened in July 97.

B：嗯，目前，我们专注于向客户介绍自己，我们在广告上投入了大量资金，否则，任何其它决策都是糟糕的管理决策。但是，这当然反映在我们的最终数字上，像我们这样一家成立四年的公司处于投资周期并不罕见，更不寻常的是像书店这样的年轻公司在股票市场上出售，这发生在 97 年 7 月。

BEC听力不仅是对商务英语技能的测试，更是未来职业生涯中不可或缺的一项能力。我们每日都会为您带来BEC听力材料的分享，您也可以访问网站主页，获取最新的英语学习资料，全方位提升英语水平。