Are Your Sales People Speaking the Right Language?

While working on a recent project with one of our expansion-stage portfolio companies in the life sciences space, I found myself floating in a sea of acronyms. One sales call that I sat in on sounded as if it were being conducted in a completely different language. It seemed like every other word that came out of the prospect’s mouth was a three or four-letter acronym. For sales and marketing professionals in any industry, understanding the language of the buyer is critical to their success. In order to get myself up to speed fast, and to help the company at the same time, I put together this acronym guide.

I was amazed at how many acronyms I was able to think of off the top of my head, after just having worked with the company for a few weeks. With a bit of additional research I put together this list of the acronyms I felt were most relevant to the company and their buyers in life sciences:

As I was doing this I thought about some of our other portfolio companies and the acronyms that would be relevant to them. For sales people working for technology companies there are a few “core” acronyms that are used in conjunction with other acronyms across a wide range of industries, products, and services. Understanding these can help sales and marketing professionals get up to speed faster in any industry:

Do you know of any additional acronyms that are used in the fields of technology or life sciences that are helpful to know? Please feel free to contribute in the comments section below. This is obviously not a comprehensive list, and new ones pop up all the time.

What acronyms are important to your buyers?