Business Vocabulary: Essential Terms for Success

UNIT 9

Achieve an ambition: To successfully do something you wanted to do, especially after a lot of effort.

Buy into a franchise: To pay money for the right for your business to sell the products and services of another company.

Cash infusion: When money is added to a business to make it stronger or better.

Close down: If a business or organization closes down or someone closes it down, it stops operating.

Cope with: To deal successfully with a difficult situation.

Credit facilities: Arrangements for paying for goods or services at a later time, usually paying interest as well as the original amount.

Economic trend: A general development relating to trade, industry, and money.

Entrepreneur: Someone who makes money by starting their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity and taking risks.

Exploit a gap in the market: To use the opportunity to sell a product or service because a need or demand for it exists but no one is supplying it.

From strength to strength: Gradually becoming more successful.

International presence: When someone or something is known in more than one country.

Lay out guidelines: To give information intended to advise people on how something should be done in a clear and detailed way.

Lose one’s head: To lose control and not act in a calm way.

Make redundant: If you are made redundant, you lose your job because your employer no longer needs you.

New venture: A new business activity.

Outlet: A store that sells a particular company’s products or products of a specific type.

Premises: The buildings and land owned or used by someone, especially by a company or organization.

Replicate the core concept: To make or do the most important part of a business’s idea again in exactly the same way.

Revenue stream: The money coming into a company from a particular activity over a period of time, or the activity itself.

Roll out: To make a new product, service, or system available for the first time.

Sign a contract: To write your name on a legal document that states and explains a formal agreement between two different people or groups.

Social status: The level or position of someone in relation to others in society.

Survey: An examination of people’s opinions, behavior, etc. made, for example, by asking them questions.

Take charge of: To take control of something or of a group of people.

Take the plunge: To make a decision to do something, especially after thinking about it for a long time.

Tight lending market: When the activity of lending money to people and organizations which they pay back with interest is controlled very carefully.

Time-consuming: Taking a lot of time to do or complete.

Tone down: To make something less forceful or offensive, usually a piece of writing or a speech.

Wealthy: Rich.

UNIT 10

Build up a business: To increase the activity of buying and selling goods and services in quantity and make it stronger.

Business plan: A detailed document describing the future plans of a business.

Cold-call: To phone or visit a possible customer to try to sell them a product or service without being asked by the customer to do so.

Competitive rate: An amount or level of payment that is as good as or better than other amounts or levels of payment.

Consolidated shipments: Combinations of large amounts of goods sent together to a place.

Create employment: To make jobs exist.

Currency: The system of money that is used in a particular country at a particular time.

Debt: The amount of money that is owed by a person, company, country, etc. and that they usually have to pay interest on.

Delivery on time: The act of taking goods, letters, parcels, etc. to a place, done when it should be and is not late.

Distributor: A person or company that buys products from a manufacturer and sells them for a profit to other businesses, stores, or customers, often by transporting the goods to different places.

Encroach: To gradually cover more and more of an area.

Freight company: A business that transports goods by ship, aircraft, train, or truck.

Go about: To begin to do something or deal with something.

Guarantee the loan: If you guarantee someone’s loan, you formally promise to accept the responsibility for paying the money back if the person fails to pay it.

Invoice: A document that lists things provided or work done, gives their cost, and asks for payment.

Joint owners: Two or more people who own something.

Market sector: A part of an industry, or a group of customers, products, etc. that are similar in some way.

Meet monthly repayments: To have enough money to pay amounts you owe every month.

Partnership: An agreement between organizations, people, etc. to work together.

Principal payment: A payment made to pay back all or part of a loan, rather than to pay interest on the loan.

Profit potential: Something that is able to develop into earning money in the future when the necessary conditions exist.

Prosper: To be or become successful, especially financially.

Recession: A period, usually at least six months, of low economic activity, when investments lose value, businesses fail, and unemployment rises.

Savings: Money that you keep, usually in a bank account, instead of spending it.

Ship in: To send something, usually a large object or a large quantity of objects or people, to a place far away.

Track back: To record the progress or development of something over a period of past time.