Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 784, Socializing with Clients.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 784.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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I'm fine.
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This episode is a dialogue between Georgia and Dan about socializing with your clients going out with your customers on a social occasion.
Let's get started.
Do you know what the best part is of my new promotion?
The expense account.
I can't wait to wine and dine our clients.
The purpose of the expense account is to win over new clients and to keep our current clients happy.
It's not a personal slush fund, you know.
I know.
The point is to network and to build client relationships.
Blah, blah, blah.
Schmoozing is part of our job, and it's not something to be taken lightly.
Of course not.
But I'm looking forward to attending charity events to rub elbows with the business elite.
Free food, free booze, and free entertainment.
What more could I ask for?
Talk to me in three months after you've had a few too many plates of rubber chicken.
Georgia begins our dialogue by saying do you know what the best part is of my new promotion?
A promotion can mean a couple of different things.
Here, it means when you get a better job at your company.
You get more money usually and more responsibility.
That's a promotion.
A promotion can also be something like a sale on an item in a store.
But here, it means getting a better job in your company.
Going from vice president to president, that would be a promotion.
Well, Georgia got a promotion, and the best part of it is the expense account.
An expense is money that you have to pay for something, for your work.
An account is a way of keeping track of or a way of knowing how much you are spending.
Here, we put the two together, expense, account.
We're talking about the money that a company will give you to spend on things that are related to company business.
When you travel, for example, you need to eat.
You need to go to a restaurant.
The company will pay for that.
It's part of your expense account.
It's part of the money they give you for buying things related to your job.
Georgia says To wine w-i-n-e and dine d-i-n-e means to go and entertain someone with wine, alcohol and food.
To dine means to eat in this case.
So to wine and dine usually means taking someone one of your customers, one of your clients to a nice restaurant as part of your sales approach or to thank them for buying things from your company.
A client, C-L-I-E-N-T, is, as I said, another word for a customer.
Usually in a big company, or when you have a customer who buys a lot of things from your company, we call those customers clients.
Dan says the purpose of the expense account is to win over new clients.
To win someone over or to win over someone is a two-word, say it with me, phrasal verb.
Meaning to persuade or convince someone, to get someone, in this case, to agree with you to buy something from your company.
Well, Dan says the purpose of the company has for giving Georgia an expense account is to get new clients, to win over new clients and to keep the current clients happy.
The current clients are the customers that you have right now.
Dan says the expense account is not a personal slush fund.
A slush S-L-U-S-H fund is money that you can spend for any purpose and and often don't have to tell anyone about it.
Slush funds can sometimes be used for illegal purposes.
A slush fund is any money the company spends that it doesn't keep track of.
Usually that's not allowed.
You have to say where all of your money is going, but a slush fund would be money that the company doesn't keep track of.
Dan says that an expense account is definitely not a slush fund.
Georgia says, I know.
The point is to network and to build client relationships.
Blah blah, blah.
To network N-E-T-W-O-R-K means to create business partnerships, to get to know other people who might be clients in the future or who might help you or your company.
It's a verb that has become popular in the last 20, 30 years or so.
One of those words you will hear in the business world, to network.
Another common business expression is to build client relationships.
Well, a relationship is some connection you have with another person.
Client relationships would be the communication and connection you have with your clients, with your customers.
But Georgia at the end says, blah, blah, blah.
What does that mean?
Blah, blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah, spelled B-L-A-H, hyphen B-L-A-H, hyphen B-L-A-H. is an informal expression we use when we don't want to provide all of the details.
We don't want to give a full description of something, because you understand it or it's boring and complex and we don't really need to repeat it.
Often it's used sort of to dismiss or to say that these things aren't very important.
Your children may say, for example, to their friends oh, my parents want me to clean my room and do my homework blah blah, blah.
You see, they don't think it's very important.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's the way Georgia feels that, yes, of course, the expense account is to help the business.
But she doesn't really believe that when she says blah, blah, blah.
Dan says schmoozing is part of our job and it's not something to be taken lightly.
To schmooze S-C-H-M-O-O-Z-E means to have informal conversations with people designed to make them feel comfortable.
They're not about often, the business itself.
When you're talking to one of your clients, you may be schmoozing them by talking about the weather or a baseball game, or how you both love bicycling, or your last vacation to Mexico, whatever it is.
You're talking about informal topics, usually not even related to your business, for the purpose of becoming friendly, perhaps of making them feel welcome or making them feel important.
Dan says schmoozing is part of our job, and it's not something to be taken lightly.
The expression to take something lightly, or to be taken lightly means to be unimportant, not to be taken seriously.
Dan says that schmoozing is something that's serious.
It's not something to be taken lightly, to be considered not important, because it is important.
Georgia says of course not.
But I'm looking forward to attending charity events to rub elbows with the business elite.
A charity.
C-H-A-R-I-T-Y is a group that gives money to other groups, usually to help them, to help poor people or people who need help.
They often have events.
They have a party to help raise money, to get more money for their organization.
That would be a charity event is an informal expression meaning to spend time with someone or to work closely with someone, especially if that person is an important person.
The elite E-L-I-T-E are a group of people who are considered the best in their field or the most important people in their field.
Georgia says free food, free booze, and free entertainment.
Booze, B-O-O-Z-E, is another word for alcohol, beer, wine, and so forth.
Georgia says what more could I ask for?
That expression means, I have everything that I need.
I don't need anything more if I have this.
Dan says, talk to me in three months after you've had a few too many plates of rubber chicken.
The expression a few too many means too many.
It's emphasizing that you will have too many of this thing.
A few too many.
Plates of rubber chicken means eating chicken.
A plate would just be a meal or something that's served to you at a dinner.
Why do we say rubber chicken?
Well, when you go to a big party, a big event, and they have a meal, chicken is a very popular dish because most people will eat chicken.
Rubber chicken means the chicken is overcooked or it doesn't taste very good.
When you try to cook for, say, 500 people, it's difficult to make each meal good tasting.
And what you often have is food that doesn't taste very good.
And that's why we have the expression rubber chicken.
When chicken is overcooked, of course, It gets hard and a little difficult to eat.
Now let's listen to our dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Do you know what the best part is of my new promotion?
The expense account.
I can't wait to wine and dine our clients.
The purpose of the expense account is to win over new clients and to keep our current clients happy.
It's not a personal slush fund, you know.
Schmoozing is part of our job, and it's not something to be taken lightly.
Of course not.
But I'm looking forward to attending charity events to rub elbows with the business elite.
Free food, free booze, and free entertainment.
What more could I ask for?
Talk to me in three months after you've had a few too many plates of rubber chicken.
When you have one of the elite scriptwriters on the Internet, Dr Lucy Saye, What more could you ask for?
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
