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Considered 'racy' by some in the company he will drive a BMW and regularly use the golf club to schmooze people he thinks can further his career. Has probably never made a bona fide sale in his life but come into the position via the old boy's network or by default through mergers or management buy outs.
His female counterpart has probably come up through the ranks via a combination of sales success, team leadership skills and actual 'hands-on' performance. Well dressed and chic, she uses intuition to evaluate management consultants and their formulaic recommendations. She is probably sharper than her male counterpart and more open to new ideas from within her team.
Doctor - Unless a medical qualification, this indicates the possessor was unclear what to do after university so decided to stay on until his mind cleared and do some further exams. (See also Professor)
Determined - When caught out and in a corner, fights as viciously as a rat.
Difference - Watch out! You may be seen as a bad team player.
Disagree - You are a bad team player. You must agree, or at least seem to be agreeing.
Disaster Recovery - Covering your tracks well.
Disclosure - Coughing up; admitting to the truth.
Downsize - The sack.
Drive - What you do in the company car.
Dynamic - Someone else.
Engage - Something to do with marriage.
Focus group - Tame customers who will provide answers to back up the latest management theory.
Graduate Trainee - Nice bloke/girl but clueless about realities of selling.
Gross Misconduct - Fat spinster working in accounts.
Guru - Fakir (pronounce as you feel best). A con-man selling rubbish to fools without ideas of their own.
Head Hunter - Fantasy knight in shining armour who never calls you.
Heads up - How Risk Management use their own backsides.
Honesty - What?
Human Resources (HR) - Staffed by what already seems to run into the dozens, HR frequently employs management consultants and other outside experts to help them cope. Moving paper and issuing shed loads of uninteresting and irrelevant emails helps them feel useful. It is also a ploy to protect their jobs. As a department, which does not earn revenue, they are keen to demonstrate value to the company.
Initiative - Sales idea (from non-sales personnel = often not very good).
Innovative thinking - (by member of the sales force) - Concept too dangerous. Must be stifled immediately.
Innovative thinking - (by management consultant/sales trainer/director). Laudable, which should be embraced with enthusiasm by all, especially the sales force who will have to abandon what works well, in order to use this latest nonsense by those who don't work to actually produce business revenue.
Integrity - A good buzz word but meaningless unless you are beating sales targets.
Irony - Not what you press your pants with.
Irony - Something alien to Risk Management, Management Consultants and the Sales Director.
Leadership Potential - Consummate brown-noser.
Legal department - Responsible for overly duplicitous and convoluted Terms and Conditions plus contractual bumf, which the customer has to sign. Fail to realise that without sales, there is no job for them but can never be relied upon to act swiftly when asked to assist in negotiations to win new customers. Lunch frequently and long. Favourite TV programme must be This Life. At company functions will sit with Risk Management and Compliance.
Leverage - What to do when the laptop won't open.
Management Consultant - A know-all charlatan from outside your organisation. He or she gets paid a lot to make mischief at your expense/time/effort. This will increase pressure on your targets to meet his/her fees. Rarely attends company shindigs in case gets offered outside by drunk salesman.
MBA - A way out of sales and into Management Consultancy.
Mission Statement - Outdated management fad. Usually a flyblown sheet of paper, framed and hanging on the wall in reception. Another example of 'guru' or 'new thinker's' babble being embraced by management.
Motivation - How much do you want to keep your job?
Motivational Speaker - Idol worshipped by the desperate and tragic. Last resort of the incompetent and ineffectual who leave sales before they are kicked out.
Moving forward - I've heard enough of your ideas.
Ms - Meant to be socially non-discriminatory. This in fact has the opposite effect. When a woman insists on being known as Ms, it immediately translates to a man in the following ways:
- She was disappointed to discover that she is female and wishes she was a man.
- She is a lesbian and hates men.
- She is a divorcee and hates men.
- She is a spinster and hates men.
New Initiative - Desperate attempt to cover one's backside.
Newsletter - It is from HR that the company newsletter will originate, filled with exciting titbits about Brian from accounts who did a charity parachute jump or the girls from the Bognor office who dressed up as naughty schoolgirls for a day. Little if anything in this publication is of value. Sprinkled with 'in' jokes that only three or four people in the whole company may understand, this is deemed to be communication and an aid to making the employees feel part of one big family.
The authors and most enthusiastic supporters of the newsletter fail to understand that no one really cares what Brian or the girls did. It is another example of a bright idea in theory having no real practical use. Large companies are especially keen to maximise use of such things as they believe it puts them at the forefront of surveys such as Top Ten Companies To Work For - they feel this will give them the edge over the competition when recruiting.
Offering - What you sell.
Performance Monitoring - Big brother is watching.
Proactive - Get off your butt and do something!
Professor - As in Doctor above, but more undecided, so stayed on even longer than the Doctor.
NB. When Doctors or Professors grace the board of a company it is usually because they discovered and patented some fabulously, potentially, lucrative device, drug or thingy while mucking around in the laboratory at university as they tried to decide what to do next.
Product/Service - What you have to try and sell.
Prospect (1) - Anyone who might conceivably buy from you.
Prospects (2) - Promise made by your Sales Manager when he hired you. (You will learn the truth very quickly).
Prospects (3) - Potential for climbing up the ladder (usually very small indeed).
Qualifications - What are you doing here?
Raise the flag - Mumble something vaguely boastful.
Radar Screen - (As in it's on the radar screen) Management waffle which saves the manager from having to admit you've broacught up something he didn't think of.
Reactive - I was caught out and had to respond quickly.
Rear Echelon Motherxxxxxx (REM) - All non-sales departments (except payroll!).
Recognition - Bad; The MD remembers you from the Christmas 'do'.
Responsive - Backside covering activity.
Restructuring - The sack.
Revenue - Money in; a concept which Risk Management have failed to grasp.
Risk Management - Also called the Business Prevention Office. The worms that wriggle ceaselessly in this department operate to completely different sets of criteria from the sales department. Very often, the staff of this business unit will have a background in accountancy or law. Parsimonious in the extreme, humourless and stubborn they will clutch at any and every opportunity to shed customers. If a sale, no matter how potentially lucrative, can possibly be snuffed out, Risk Management will find a way.
Where the sales force is trying to expand profit, customer base and revenue streams into company coffers, Risk Management will be analysing and worrying over every real or imagined possibility that a couple of quid may go astray. Cover your backside is their battle cry.
They have an inordinate influence upon the product or service the company sells. Any request for adjusting that product or tweaking to win new orders is met by a sharp intake of breath and a sagely shaken head. Their view is that the product is perfect as it is (even though feedback from customers is that it most certainly isn't) and that the expense of changing it in anyway will bankrupt the company. Credit checks add to their armoury, allowing them to assess whether the customer can pay. The slightest hint of a cash flow problem or a bad debt will set their alarm bells ringing and another customer is lost. With no sales targets to achieve, they have no incentive to assist the sales force by being flexible.
Sales Manager - The conduit between the directors and the sales force, the Sales Manager treads a fine line of loyalties. He is close enough to remember what life at the sharp end is like but also would like to break into the boardroom. He realises that if the sales force is to maximise its performance, the directives from the sales director have to be watered down, changed or tweaked enough to prevent mutiny from his staff. He does this through negotiation and on occasion, duplicity or massaging of figures. Resentment features high in his world. He knows he could be a top Sales Director given half a chance but also knows that he depends upon his staff for his success. The Sales Manager measures success in a number of ways. The following might be high on his list:
- Accuracy in forecasting revenues/sales.
- Ability to complete allocated tasks on time.
- Consistently on or, over-target performance.
- Willingness to follow directives unquestioningly and with enthusiasm.
Probably drives a Vectra or Mondeo. If he knew anything he might be one of the callers into Crime Watch.
Sales Meeting - Whinge fest.
Sales Trainer - Someone who couldn't hack the actual job of selling but claims to have the answers.
Self starter - What training?
Service/Product - Second rate thing you have to try and sell.
Service (post sale) - Follow up which the customer wants and Risk Management would like to abandon as it may transgress their rules or cost money.
Sing from the same hymn sheet - Get our stories right before compliance interview.
Sir - Sharp operator who's made a fortune and supported loads of charities or knows the right people.
Stretching - (e.g. targets) Fantasy land.
Suspicion - Normal atmosphere that exists between Sales and the REMs.
Synergies - Surprisingly, another part of your company is doing the same as you.
Take on board - Throw away phrase means 'I hear what you say but I'm not listening' or 'You will now do what I've said' - depends upon seniority of person speaking.
Team - Guilt device to make you keep your trap shut and stop rocking the boat. i.e. Not a team player indicates you should, from now on, defer to superiors at all times even though your revolutionary viewpoint and ideas may save the business from going down the pan.
Team Dynamic - Atmosphere of distrust and resentment.
Thinking outside of the box - You're being original again. Stop it!
Time Management - Fitting in a trip to the supermarket while visiting customers.
Total Quality Management (TQM) - What your company doesn't have.
Unacceptable - Has degrees of meaning.
- Failure to achieve target - The sack.
- Particularly bad behaviour at the Christmas bash - The sack.
- Also used in response to your suggestion, which will mean that Risk Management will have to be more flexible in order to help you win a new customer.
Valuable Contribution - Phrase saved for retirement party.
Values (Company) - Pretentious and fanciful notion that your company is important enough to have such things.
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