In this Business English Vocabulary lesson, we continue our look at English vocabulary and collocations related to sales management.
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In this Business English Vocabulary lesson, we’ll look at vocabulary and collocations related to sales management. A sales force is made up of sales reps who try to identify leads with potential customers called prospects. A sales rep must qualify these prospects as they move down the sales funnel. At the end of the funnel, a rep hopes to close a sale, or make a deal.
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Explore the impact of Big data on business in this Business English News lesson.
By now, odds are you’ve heard the term “Big Data”. The thousands upon thousands of giga, tera, and peta bytes that are collected everywhere around us has caused concern for some, and jobs and wealth for others.
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In today’s Business English Pod lesson, we continue our look at English idioms related to luck and opportunity.
What do you say to a friend who is on his way to an important job interview? If you’re like most people, you’ll say “good luck.” But does your friend really need luck to succeed? Well, it’s clear that luck is not the only factor in success, but it does seem important in some cases. It might have been good luck that your friend saw the job posting online one day. But then again, it might be bad luck that your friend trips on his way into the interview.
In any case, making the most of a good opportunity like a job interview certainly seems to involve some luck. Think back on your own career. You can probably think of your own examples of good and bad luck, and how that affected your success with certain opportunities.
In English, we have many common expressions related to luck and opportunity. In our last lesson, we learned some great idioms such as “lucky break,” “tough luck,” and “opportunity knocks.” In this lesson, we’ll learn many more.
In the dialog, we will rejoin Jim and Oscar, two colleagues riding the bus home after work. They are talking about their own opportunities and luck, and they use many useful idioms.
Listening Questions
1. What does Jim think of his chances of getting the job?
2. What does Jim think would be difficult?
3. What does Oscar say about moving into management?
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Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English idioms related to luck and opportunity.
Some people have good luck, some people have bad luck, and some people have no luck at all. But what exactly is luck? And how important is it? Some successful business people will tell you that it’s very important. Donald Trump has said that “everything in life is luck.” But other people will tell you that luck is just what happens to people who work hard. In fact, there’s an old saying that luck is what happens when “preparation meets opportunity.”
And opportunity is another word and idea we hear about a lot in business. Opportunities are the good chances that come our way. We can “seize” opportunities, which means we accept them. Or we can let them go. What we do with opportunities is completely up to us.
But whatever you think about luck and opportunity in business, they are both common ideas and words. And not just on their own, but as parts of common English idioms. And it’s these idioms of luck and opportunity that we’ll look at in today’s lesson.
You will hear a conversation between Jim and Oscar, two colleagues who are taking the bus home from work together. Jim and Oscar are chatting about their day and some recent developments in their office. In their conversation, you will notice many idioms related to luck and opportunity.
Listening Questions
1. What does Oscar suggest about buses after 5:00pm?
2. Why does their colleague Ethan have “tough luck”?
3. At the end of the dialog, what does Oscar seem to suggest to Jim?
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