مکالمه ی اول

Conversation 1 - Advertise the printing business

Narrator: Listen to a conversation between a student and a university print shop employee.

Student: Hi. I saw your ad in the campus newspaper.

Employee: Oh. We don’t have any job opening right now.

Student: Oh, no. I meant the other ad, about the services you provide for students.

You see, I have been working at the campus tutoring center as a math tutor. But things have changed, including my schedule. And now I want to start doing tutoring work independently. But in order to, basically, start my own business, I need to get the word out.

Employee: Ok.

Student: I was thinking I should get something printed up that I can hand out to people.

Employee: Ah. Well, actually, I just printed up some great-looking flyers for someone doing the same thing.

Student: Flyers. Yeah, that’s an idea. I guess then I could post them around the campus.

Employee: Yeah. And you can hand them out too. But, oh, you know what? I did something really neat for someone last week. She didn’t want to go the traditional route, you know, business cards, flyers, so we customized pencils for her.

Student: Pencils?

Employee: Yeah. You know, a little message printed on the pencil.

Student: Oh, that’s cool.

Employee: Yeah. But you should know, it’s not our cheapest option. Oh, and you know those little sticky notes?

Student: You do those too?

Employee: Well, we did once. I think those bright pieces of paper would be real attention getters. You know, student use them all the time, so they should be good for business. I don’t know why we haven’t done more.

Student: Wow.

Employee: So you’ve got some options.

Student: Right. Well, what about business cards? My friend has these business cards. She does tutoring too. And she got them at this place in town, but they were kind of expensive.

Employee: For business card? Well, I don’t know what your friend paid. But we could do something real simple and it wouldn’t be much. Like for a batch of 250 for one of our standard designs, 20 dollars maybe.

Student: 20 dollars sounds okay.

Employee: Now, there are some other choices that’ll affect the cost. You know, like different background patterns, using color ink, that sort of thing.And it also depends on how many words you want to include.

Student: Ok. Well, I know what I want them to say. But I am just thinking, I kind of like that pencil idea.

Employee: Yeah. I thought it was neat. Now, of course you can only fit your name and phone number, and like, in your case, math tutoring on it.

Student: Right. Well, I could custom design the business cards though, right?

That’s what my friend did. She said she designed them at the computer right there at the print shop.

Employee: Well, you can do that here too. But a custom design would be a bigger investment for your business than one of our standard designs.

Student: Well, I don’t know. I am interested in business cards, so can I look at the standard designs?