Business English Phrases and Idioms Every Businessperson Should Know
Hi, I’m Savannah.
Welcome to Oxford Online English!
In this lesson, you can learn some
common vocabulary, phrases and
idioms for office life. This class will
help you understand English speakers at
work and use a wider range of English
vocabulary in your office conversations.
Before we start, you should check out our website:
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So, how are things looking?
Not good, to be honest… We’re way
behind our forecasts. We missed our
targets for Q1 and it’s not looking
positive for this quarter, either.
OK, so what’s going wrong?
We’re not really sure…
Right now, I’m afraid that’s not good enough.
You’re the sales manager –
you need to have answers.
Well, one problem is that cold calling doesn’t
seem to be working as well as it did in the past.
So? You’re in charge. If it’s not working,
change it. We may be a big company, but
we still need to be quick on our feet.
I take your point, but I can’t turn
everything around overnight. A case
in point is our high staff turnover. Many of
our sales team are relatively inexperienced.
But we have a good product…
Of course, but inexperienced salespeople don’t
have that deep understanding of our USP that
comes from working here for a while. And, in
B2B sales, buyers can smell that inexperience.
Either way, this is your domain. You
need to come up with some answers.
Here, you heard some words and
phrases to talk about sales.
You’re going to see some
sentences from the dialogue, but
the highlighted phrases all have a mistake.
Can you correct the mistakes? Let’s look.
Think about your ideas. Can you
remember the correct phrases?
Pause the video and find your answers now.
Could you do it? Let’s see the correct phrases.
How did you do? Did you get all the right answers?
And, do you know what these
words and phrases mean?
‘Cold calling’ is a sales technique. It means
calling someone you’ve never spoken to before
and trying to convince them to
buy whatever you’re selling.
‘Quick on your feet’ means flexible
– if you’re quick on your feet,
you can adapt to new situations easily.
‘Turnover’ in this dialogue means how
often staff arrive and leave. If staff
often leave your company and need to be
replaced, then you have high turnover. If
employees tend to stay at your company for
a long time, then you have low turnover.
‘Turnover’ also has other meanings. In particular,
it can mean the total amount of money
that goes in and out of a business.
Finally, what about USP? What does this stand for?
USP stands for ‘unique selling proposition’,
or sometimes ‘unique selling point’.
This is about what makes your product
or service different from competitors.
Maybe your product is higher
quality, or maybe it’s cheaper,
or maybe it has features that competing
products don’t. These could all be USPs.
USP is an abbreviation. You heard two other
abbreviations in the dialogue. Do you remember?
You heard ‘Q1’ and ‘B2B’. The ‘Q’ in ‘Q1’ stands
for ‘quarter’, meaning a three-month period.
Generally, Q1 means January to March.
B2B stands for ‘business to business’.
You can also talk about ‘B2C
sales’ – business to customer.
Everything clear? Remember that you can
always review a section if you need to.
Turn on subtitles or adjust the playback speed to
make it slower if you find it difficult to follow.
For now, let’s look at our next topic.
I don’t seem to have a copy of the agenda for
next week’s meeting. Has it not been sent out yet?
What? We’re not doing the meeting.
We’re having a conference call instead,
so that the team in Singapore can be involved.
Really? No one told me.
I can forward you the details. Actually, do
you have any free time later? I’d
like to touch base with you about
some of the proposals we’ll be making.
Er… What proposals? Seems like I’m really out
of the loop here. No one’s told me anything.
I mean the new product lines we’re
launching for the East Asian market.
We talked about it at some
length in the last team meeting.
You were there, right? Anyway, if you need to
refresh your memory, you can read the minutes.
I wasn’t there – I was in Paris for
the conference that week, remember?
Ah… Right…
In that case, let’s find a time later this
week. You can catch me up so that I’m ready.
Yes, agreed. I’d like your input
on a few things. I’ll send you
the materials and we can fix a time by email.
In this dialogue, you heard some vocabulary
for talking about meetings and teamwork.
Let’s see if you can remember what you
heard. Can you complete the missing words?
If you’re stuck, you can always rewind
and listen to the dialogue again.
Either pause now, or review, and get your
answers. You’ll see the answers in a few seconds.
Ready? Let’s check together.
How many did you get? Have you heard
these words and phrases before?
‘Touch base’ means ‘talk’ or ‘have a discussion’.
It’s a conversational, idiomatic phrase.
If you’re out of the loop, then you
don’t know what’s going on. For example,
if go on vacation for two weeks and don’t check
your emails, when you get back to work, you
might be a bit out of the loop – you won’t know
what’s happening and what people are working on.
You can also use the opposite phrase – ‘in
the loop’ – meaning that you’re speaking
to your colleagues regularly and you know
everything that’s happening in your office.
‘Catch up’ is a phrasal verb. If someone says
‘You can catch me up’, this means that there
are some things which I don’t know, and which
you can tell me about. It has the idea that I’ve
missed something – there’s something I should
know, but I don’t, and you’re going to tell me.
From experience, ‘catch up’ can be
difficult to translate into other languages.
If you’re confused about this, check
an online dictionary and look for more
example sentences. Longman and Lexico
are good online dictionaries to use.
Finally, what about ‘input’? If someone says
‘I’d like your input’, it means that they want
your ideas and opinions.
Got it? Let’s move on.
Let me tell you about my vision. Instead of having
bricks-and-mortar offices in just a few countries,
we move our sales infrastructure
100% online. This will not only…
Whoa, whoa, hold on a second. You’re talking
about your ‘vision’ and your ‘mission’,
but your branch is still losing money every
month. Don’t you think you’re overreaching?
Well, I have a comprehensive business plan.
We put together a road map for digitising our
national operations, as a first step, and…
How about you focus more on breaking even
on a month-to-month basis, and spend less
time on these pie-in-the-sky ideas? Besides,
this is way beyond your pay grade. You need to
deal with your own branch, your own team, and
your own KPIs. It’s not that you shouldn’t make
suggestions for improving things, but
you should get the basics right first.
Yes, but…
No buts! The number one priority for you right now
is making sure your branch at least breaks even.
You’re a young branch, so losing
money at the start is expected,
but we need to see a path to profitability. Right
now, I’m not sure you’re on the right track.
But in the current business environment…
Look, I don’t want to hear it. You need to
get your house in order. Put your team first,
and build a successful regional branch office.
This dialogue was about
business planning and strategy.
Let’s start with one question: did
you notice the title of this section?
It was ‘pie in the sky’? What could this mean?
You also heard it in the dialogue. Any idea?
‘Pie in the sky’ means an impossible dream.
In the dialogue, you heard this sentence.
‘Pie-in-the-sky ideas’ are ideas which
sound nice, but which aren’t realistic.
Let’s look at some more language which you heard.
Look at the highlighted words and phrases. Imagine
you want to explain them in English to someone who
doesn’t know the meaning. How would you do it?
Pause the video and think about your answers.
‘Overreaching’ means to go too
far, or to try to do too much.
For example, if you agree to do a project which
you don’t have the skills or experience for,
you could say that you overreached.
A road map is a detailed plan, showing
exactly how you will achieve something.
It’s often used for large,
complex projects and plans.
‘Beyond your pay grade’ refers to
something which is not your job.
If someone asks you to do something, and you say
‘that’s beyond my pay grade’, you mean
that you aren’t responsible for this
and you won’t do it. In the dialogue, the phrase
was used as a criticism. Telling someone else
‘that’s beyond your pay grade’ is a way to say
that they’re trying to do something which isn’t
part of their job; it suggests that the person
you’re talking to should stick to their own job.
‘On the right track’ means ‘going in the right
direction’. If you’re working on a project,
and you say ‘everything’s on the right track’,
you mean that things are going to plan.
‘Get your house in order’ means to
sort out your own responsibilities.
An alternative – with the same meaning
– is ‘put your house in order’.
It’s most often used as a criticism. For
example, if someone who is weeks behind on
their work criticises you for being slow or lazy,
you might tell them to get their house in order,
meaning that they should do their own work
on time before they start criticising others.
One more point: there is more language in
these dialogues that you might find useful.
We suggest reviewing each dialogue at least once,
and make notes of any words or
phrases you want to remember.
Now, let’s go to our last section.
So, what do you think?
About what? Is that everything?
Well, yeah… I worked all week on it.
It’s just two pages, with hardly any detail.
What about the technical infrastructure?
What about cost estimates? Look, I won’t
beat around the bush: I can’t do anything
with this. I’d get laughed out of the room.
Perhaps I have bitten off more than
I can chew… I’m not so familiar with
the technical side of things. I thought we
could fill some of those details in later.
Doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid.
Either you bring me something I can use,
or you go back to the drawing
board, or you give up.
I don’t suppose you could assign someone
to help me to work on the IT angle?
My hands are tied, I’m afraid. We’re under
a lot of pressure right now. You said that
you could make this work; now you need to put
your money where your mouth is, to be blunt.
OK, I’ll have a think about it.
Back to square one, I guess…
In this dialogue, you heard several idioms.
Do you remember the idiom from the title of the
last section? It was ‘pie in the sky’. You heard
more idioms like this here. Can you remember them?
You heard idioms with these meanings.
Can you remember the idioms which match
these meanings? For the third meaning – start
something again from the very beginning
– you heard two idioms in the dialogue.
Pause the video, or review the dialogue and
try to find the idioms with these meanings!
Try to find all six – remember
there are two answers for one point.
Did you get all six? Let’s check.
‘Beat around the bush’ means
to speak in an indirect,
unclear way. If someone’s beating around the
bush, they’re not saying what they really think.
This is often used in the negative; for example,
if you tell someone ‘don’t beat around the bush’,
you want to say ‘get to the point
and tell me what I need to know.’
‘Bite off more than you can chew’ means to
try to do something which is too difficult.
The meaning here is more direct – imagine trying
to put too much food in your mouth at one time.
For the third meaning, there were two phrases:
‘go back to the drawing board’ and ‘back to
square one’. You can use these phrases as
verbs, with ‘go’, or as a simple exclamation,
without the verb ‘go’. So, you could say
‘We need to go back to the drawing board,’
or just ‘Back to the drawing board!’
The meaning is the same either way.
‘My hands are tied’ means that I can’t help
you. If you say this, it suggests that you
aren’t free to choose. You can use it to
mean ‘I want to help you, but I can’t.’
Finally, ‘put your money where your mouth
is’ means to back up your words with actions.
If you tell someone ‘You need to
put your money where your mouth is’,
you’re telling that person to stop
talking and do something instead.
Have you heard any of these idioms before? You
can use them and hear them in many
situations, not just in the office.
That’s all for this class. Thanks for watching!
See you next time!