Business Jargon 101 ~9/16

This is the annoying Business Jargon entry. We’ll start with a phrase I loved until I heard a sales exec use it to death.

Get after it:  This is the tenacious spirit of sales and/or a business. The idea is that this is a person or an organization that immediately acts on an opportunity and sticks with it.

Democratize (insert noun here) i.e. democratize technology: the idea here is that you’re giving power back to the workers or underlings, and allowing them to surge in productivity by not having unnecessary hierarchy.

This is an admirable idea, but drives me insane due to the word choice. I’m not even sure a democracy (well the kind we’re used to) even gives this power back to the people. Also I’m not a huge fan of taking a word from a different context and then peppering it throughout your marketing materials in the hope that you can use the goodwill of that word to push your own agenda.

and finally……

Crowd Sourcing: This is one of those Web 2.0 type of ideas. rather then having a centralized source pushing out you have external or crowd sources pushing content in, which then drives a better service out to consumers.

This is another interesting and useful approach in how to create a unique business offering. I just think that when something becomes such a  ubiquitous approach it can be a bit grating.