Try these phrases if you want to excel. We will discuss10 useful business English phrases. While working in 2022 can be tough if English is not your mother language so you should know at least these business English phrases like let’s get the ball rolling, to call the shots, bring somebody up to speed, pain point, To cut corners., Ahead of the curve, keep someone in the loop, Circle back, C-level, and Drill down into.
Why learn business english phrases
Am doing business with us since and believe me am still learning different business English phrases but there are so many phrases that I heard for the first time when I was interacting about business matters with Americans. I was at first kind of confused by them because I heard them for the first time.
That’s why I want you to learn from my mistakes. I want you to know all of these business English phrases before you actually come to do business in us or any country. Maybe you’re doing business with native speakers already so now I’m gonna add some phrases in your vocabulary that you can use to sound more like a native speaker.
If you don’t want to sound like a native speaker you would just know those business English phrases and recognize them. when your business partners or your managers or your future employers use them and you’ll be like oh Pakistan opinion team taught us those business English phrases.
Let’s talk about those phrases they’re widely used in emails and business conversations and just remember business peoples are very relaxed when it comes to doing business.
Don’t expect something very formal like oh today we gathered here to discuss this business opportunity now most especially here in California they’d be like oh yeah how are you doing let’s talk how can I be helpful. This would be the vibe of an English language business conversation.
List of Business English Phrases
- Let’s get the ball rolling.
- To call the shots.
- Bring somebody up to speed.
- Pain point.
- To cut corners.
- Ahead of the curve.
- Keep someone in the loop.
- Circle back.
- C-level.
- Drill down into.
Let’s get the ball rolling
instead of let’s do it you can say let’s get the ball rolling. For example, you were on a Zoom meeting with a partner potential partner and you want to make something together, and if you decide that they’re a good fit and you decide to sign the contract. They would say okay I’m gonna get the ball rolling my assistant is gonna send you the contract tomorrow so let’s get the ball rolling means we agreed on everything now we need to start acting.
“Excuse me can I get the ball rolling”
To call the shots
The next business English phrase is to call the shots. It means that in every project every situation you have a person who’s responsible for making decisions for example if I’m the CEO of the company. I call the shots somebody you know if my colleague comes to me and says you know I think this person is underperforming and we should fire him but I can’t fire. It’s you the CEO who calls the shots so it’s you the CEO who makes a decision.
Let’s look at another example I hate that he’s already calling the shots despite being a junior. Here like we have several levels of positions here in us in the corporate structure we have junior middle or mid-level and we have senior. A junior is basically someone who just started and normally you would not expect a junior to call the shots. In this example, somebody hates the junior for calling the shots for making decisions. He was not supposed to make it because they were junior they just started they need to learn.
“I think the bigger question for this body to consider is who do you want calling the shots in space”
Bring somebody up to speed
The next Business English Phrase is to bring somebody up to speed. This means to get someone the most recent information about something. For example, you’re in the meeting and your boss says uh can you please bring me up to speed with your tick-tock project. This means can you please update me on what’s going on with the tick-tock project.
“For now, bring her up to speed up”
Pain point.
The next term that a lot of investors use is a pain point. The pain point is basically a difficulty that you or your customer has. The example will be in order to come up with a great product you need to identify your customer’s pain points and create a product that solves those problems.
“The pedophile facing nature of the app would present marketing pain points yes”
To cut corners
To cut corners means to do something in a way that’s fast. Without paying too much attention to detail and sometimes this is necessary. This normally happens when you have a tight deadline and you think I need to get this done no matter what so you cut corners. For example, if you need to create a pitch deck for your project and you have a day left you would just create it using PowerPoint like the very basic design very basic phrase instead of hiring a designer or like working with a branding agency or whatever. You just cut corners you make it as fast as possible.
Let’s look at another example that would allow us to learn another term. The only way she can accomplish this action item and meet the deadline is if she cuts corners. Pay attention to the action item if you have a list of tasks
- Open a bank account
- Deposit money
- You file a report with the IRS with the tax authority
Every line is called an action item and then you cross it out from your list.
“You do it you don’t cut corners you do it the right way”
Ahead of the curve
Ahead of the curve to stay ahead of the curve means to be more advanced or have more information than your competitors. Now for example you can say again talking about social media. Tick-Tock is ahead of the curve with its algorithm compared to other social media platforms and by that, I mean that ticktock’s algorithm is better compared to other social networks.
“Don’t worry I can fill the walls with some new la artists and people will think we’re ahead of the curve instead of going broke”
Keep someone in the loop
keep someone in the loop now I use this phrase very often. I have a team who helps me create courses and helps me do different projects and when we have a meeting with them and they start something as I tell them Hey uh let’s start writing new content out of my long videos on YouTube and post them on google in text form and you can do that yourself guys just keep me in the loop by sharing analytics every two days something like that. Keeping me in the loop means I want to be involved by receiving information so please let me know if anything major happens.
“Well keep me in the loop on that”
Circle back
Circle back oh this is the phrase that I hear a hundred times every single day. I don’t want to call someone and ask them a specific question and they wouldn’t know the answer uh immediately. They would tell me to let me circle back to you on this because I need to double-check or let me circle back to you with the analytics. Basically, means you follow up with something and it’s not only used for information that you have immediately. It’s also used for situations when you need additional time to discuss like you’ve been discussing analytics and uh the meeting is over everybody else has other calls and you’ll be like okay, let’s jump on a call tomorrow and circle back to this uh and discuss this. Deeper a lot of people hate this phrase because it means more work.
“But we can circle back to that later”
C-level
Okay, the last but not least is called C-level. C-level positions are very easy to explain so basically the top remembers junior middle senior top positions start with a c. CEO chief executive officer. CMO chief marketing officer. CTO chief technology officer and there are many c level positions. By the way, in Silicon Valley, people don’t like these formalities and they like to call themselves different words like some people would call them like they would be the CEO and the founder of the company but they would call themselves hackers at some company or they would use the chief part but their title would be like something chief magic officer at something.
They just like to make it fun. I think Silicon Valley is one of the most informal environments in business but anyway when we talk about c-level positions that means we’re talking about the highest positions in the company. Sometimes it takes years for people to reach c-level positions. Sometimes they just start their own thing and call themselves a CEO a one-person company. It’s up to you what you decide to do with your career. I just want you to know that the world is open to you there are lots of opportunities and I hope that the English language and especially business English would be your instrument to reaching your goals in your career.
Drill down into
To drill down into mean something is to explore it in more depth or explain it in more depth. Suppose you are running an online business your employee finds a new product and asks for permission to lunch it in your store you just ask him to drill down into it and get back to me with complete detail.
“I think we can drill down into this further when we meet with the Product team”
I hope you like it you can read more about profitable business ideas then visit our website.
