by Marlin Bressi

Created on: April 21, 2009

There's a reason why you are bored out of your mind during sales meetings and business conferences; it's probably because you've been forced to hear the same old business buzzwords and expressions over and over again. Repeating overused expressions and sounding like a broken record is a surefire way to lose the attention of an audience, and when it comes to losing an audience's attention, here are a few of the worst offenders:

1. Growing the brand. What a noble-sounding concept, as if we were all farmers wholly engaged in the pursuit of growing a successful crop of profits. Unfortunately, most employees are more concerned about growing their own personal bank accounts than by busting their humps so that the CEO can buy a new Cessna. Whenever some corporate hotshot insists that we should all try our hardest to "grow the brand", most of us immediately want to know, "What's in it for me?"

2. Think outside of the box. At one time this may have been a clever piece of business advice, but today it sounds hackneyed and cliched. Also, it's a very dangerous piece of advice, since we all know that if we think too far outside of the box, we're likely to get fired for incompetence. Corporations don't like individuality; they thrive on conformity. Rebels and visionaries are much better suited to be entrepreneurs than corporate suits.

3. The customer is always right. Every trained professional knows that this oft-quoted adage is complete bunk and should never be taken literally. What if a patient walks into a doctor's office demanding heart medication to treat a toothache? What if a customer takes his car to a mechanic demanding a new oil pump when he really needs an alternator? The real saying should be "Let the customer always believe that he or she is right".

4. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. This business proverb captures the essence of sales by implying that in order to sell a product, you must also sell an experience. However, everyone in sales has been told the same adage hundreds of times in meetings and seminars.

5. The bottom line. This business term is often taken out of context and used incorrectly, even by those in the corporate world. The bottom line is a term which is used to describe the last line in an audit which displays net income after all expenses have been subtracted from total revenue. And that, my friends, is the bottom line.

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