What is sales jargon?
Vague sales words like "streamline" or "all-in-one" that sound impressive and say little.
What it means
Sales jargon is the vague language that creeps into sales writing: words like "streamline," "leverage," "synergy," "best-in-class," and "all-in-one platform." They sound impressive, but a reader cannot picture anything from them.
Jargon is not the same as the buyer's own industry words. If they say "load tender" or "month-end close," using their words shows you understand their work.
What it means for a sales email
Research points to plain words. Gong's cold call data, as reported by 30 Minutes to President's Club (30MPC), found that plain problem language beat buzzwords. 30MPC's coaching method names the words to cut: vague nouns like "single source of truth" and vague verbs like "automate" and "centralize."
Two psychology studies outside sales agree. Jargon made information harder to take in and made people push back on the message, and needlessly long words made the writer seem less intelligent.
A quick fix: for each buzzword, ask what the reader would actually see change on a normal Tuesday, and write that instead.
Research mentioned above: 30 Minutes to President's Club, 202430 Minutes to President's Club, 2025Public Understanding of Science (Bullock and colleagues), 2019Applied Cognitive Psychology (Daniel M. Oppenheimer), 2006
Try it on your own draft
Free tools that check this in your own writing. Nothing you type is stored.
Read more
Related terms
See where all of our guidance comes from. No statistic on this page is invented.