Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Low hanging post

One of the things that gets my attention as a non-native English speaker is how profusely certain business terms are used, especially amongst consultants, bankers and MBA folks in general:

- "Our sales strategy will start with the low hanging fruit"
- "
Let's keep the ball rolling and proceed with the market research"
- "Costs are 40% according to preliminary back-of-the-envelope calculations"

Why all these expressions stick? My theory is that they are all very visual and visual language tends to work with a high percentage of the population. A low hanging fruit is quite a descriptive metaphor, isn't it? We can almost see and grab the opportunity with our hands... Some of the expressions are highly kinesthetic, the ball rolling or ideas bubbling up to the top, but I haven't found many purely auditory terms.

Low hanging fruit

Given their descriptive strength this expressions become usual business terms. Everybody uses them until they become cliches and loose all of their communication power.

My favorite one: "Dude, you look like you drank from the Kool-Aid"

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