I posted a while back about a proposal-related question on LinkedIn’s Answers area. Anotherinteresting question there wondered about words that are used daily in sales and business development that “immediately put us in a ‘one-down’ position”.
One Sales VP posted a lovely humorous reply which you might enjoy, about his organisation’s “‘Vendor to English’ dictionary”. Here are a few of my favourites:
“We are not a vendor, but a partner” = we are a Vendor
“This is cutting edge” = Beta Version
“Wow, that’s really thinking outside the box” = You are an idiot
“Our RFP Response is Pretty Comprehensive, It tells you who we are as a company” = I have no clue what you are trying to pull off so I threw the kitchen sink into our response
“We provide a platform” = we have two products