What they really mean
I posted a while back about a proposal-related question on LinkedIn’s Answers area. Another interesting 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
We’d love to hear any of your own examples!
This article was written by Jon on 29 January, 2008 and filed under Word play & writing. If you found it useful, you can with others. To receive automatic updates, subscribe to The Proposal Guys via 
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“We developed the first proprietary web-based solution” = Our software is really out-of-date and won’t work with your browser
“We provide Service of Unequalled Excellence”=You don’t want to know what we mean by unequalled
And my personal favorite:
“Our senior management team has more than 200 years combined experience”=Wow, those guys are really old
Great list, Barbara. I think my own favourite is:
“We’ll discuss this in detail in a detailed design workshop at the start of the project”
=
“We haven’t got a clue about your requirements, or how we’ll meet them, and we’re praying that you won’t notice until after you’ve given us the contract”
My Offerings:
Further information is available on request:
“We couldn’t pull the client references together on time, and we are hoping against hope that they come through before you demand to see them”
Vendor has three million man years of experience in technology X :
“We have lots of people who have done a weeks training in X, and we’re hoping our figures are misleading enough that you won’t notice we are making it up as we go along”
Hi, Roisin
Love them! My alternative take on “Further information is available on request” would be:
“We did request further information from our experts to include in the proposal, as we know the answer’s inadequate as it stands – but they didn’t give us anything in time.”
One more…
“We would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this further to reach a mutually acceptable agreement.”
Really Means:
“We either don’t want to or don’t know how to answer this question right now, but think this response might buy us some time without getting our proposal disqualified.”
Lesa – love it!
The depressing things with all of these is how easily buyers see through them!