BE 620: Dominate at Work With These Sports Phrases

This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 620. Dominate at work with these sports phrases. Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.

For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Aubrey coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

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One more time, go to allearsenglish.com f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Hey, Lindsay, how are you doing today? Good, Aubrey. How are you? Have you seen any of the World Cup games?

I mean, I know that this is coming out in September, but this summer was a big World Cup summer. Yeah. Yes. I felt really lucky to be able to watch a couple of games while we were in Mexico.

The first one was Mexico was playing and they won and it was really fun. We were at a taco shop and everybody was excited. It was really fun to be there with people who were supporting their team. Yeah.

And then a couple of days later, the U.S. played Paraguay. And the U.S.'s team was not the best, but a bunch of tourists were there and they played extremely well. I think the score ended up being 4-1. There were some amazing shots on goal, amazing score.

It was really fun to watch a game and cheer for the U.S., even though they're usually not the best team in the World Cup. Yeah, that's really funny to be in another country when that happens. I remember when in 2010, I was in Spain on the hiking the Camino de Santiago when Spain won the World Cup. And it was pretty crazy.

It was wild. It would be so fun, especially to have him win. Oh, man. Yeah, it was crazy. So, so fun. We know a lot of our listeners. Obviously, soccer is a huge world sport, right?

But there are other sports too. But today we're getting into sports. I'm excited. Yeah. Yes, this is part two of a series. In the first episode, we shared vocabulary for winning decisively, right?

Smoked, crushed, swept. And today we're sharing related vocabulary that we often use at work. So stay to the end. If you missed that one, you can definitely listen to these out of order.

All right. Good stuff. Yeah, guys. And go ahead and hit follow. Hit the follow button to make sure you don't miss a single episode, especially that you don't miss any of these series, right?

You want to complete the series. So hit the follow button right here on Business English. Okay? Yes. Awesome. So I'm excited to share some of this. As when you're listening to these games, World Cup, you're going to hear these phrases, of course, but also we use them at work.

We use them to talk about success in Business English as well. Exactly. So this first one, I love it. Killed it. That's a good one, Aubrey. Again, yeah, it works great for sports, but works great for work too.

This means that we perform extremely well or we achieve outstanding results. It's pretty informal, pretty positive, pretty upbeat, don't you think? Yes, exactly. We use it to praise, to compliment, right?

If someone did really well during a presentation meeting on a sales pitch or a project, be like, you killed it, right? Or we'll share about someone else. I might say, Sarah absolutely killed it during the client presentation. Yeah.

Or our marketing team killed it this quarter and exceeded every target. Yeah. I think this phrase has a lot of energy in it. That's why I like to use it.

Exactly, right? It's very complimentary. And it's really not too casual for work. A lot of you listening out there might think, I know this, I use it in my everyday life, but can I use it at work?

Yes, right? We do. We use phrases like this that are energetic, that are really positive, even at work, even though they're a little more casual. Yeah.

And then dominated is a little less colloquial, right? It's a little more literal. So this means to perform significantly better than competitors or to control a market, a discussion or a competition. There's a lot of things we can dominate, right?

We can walk in and kind of dominate a discussion, right? Sometimes there is someone who's kind of dominating the conversation, which can be intense. Yeah. Sometimes that's negative, right?

If someone's dominating a conversation, it means they're not letting anyone else speak. Yeah, which can be intense. It sounds pretty strong, right? But it does work in a professional space.

Exactly, right. So for example, you might say, our company dominated the regional market last year. So this, like in a meeting, you're just wanting to hype everyone up, share that you're doing well. You might use this verb to say that you excelled, that you did better than your competition.

Mm hmm. Or again, the sales team dominated the competition during the trade show. Another thing we could say. Yeah, this is interesting. It sounds a little more strategic than just killed it, which is a little more general term for just doing well.

So it's often used when comparing one company to another or one team to another. We use it more in comparison. Yes. And then destroyed. This means an extreme win for one side, right?

This is to outperform competitors by a huge margin. I also saw that Paraguay US game. I was in California in a bar and it was kind of sort of like i feel like the u.s kind of destroyed the other team right it was four to one is that right i was half paying attention everyone was surprised yeah and thrilled you know i was i was with some um soccer fans who were shocked and and really happy right every now and then that does happen like your country your team does better than you'd expect you'd be like oh they

destroyed them but this is interesting for both dominated and destroyed it is not used as often because it's like yes we use it at work it's just much stronger right yeah it's really strong it's kind of negative like i i would feel bad saying that to be like oh we destroyed paraguay you know what about paraguay i probably wouldn't say that i should be like yeah we did well Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like if you play tennis, it's a 6-0, 6-0, right? We call that a double bagel in tennis.

Yeah, I agree. So it's definitely for extreme situations. And you wouldn't go to the person you play to be like, I destroyed you. Unless you're like best friends and you have this really fun rivalry, but you just wouldn't.

It's very strong. No, for sure. So in a business context, we might say we destroyed our sales forecast and finished 40% above target, meaning we exceeded by a very large margin our sales forecast, right? Exactly.

This is how I would say it. Or our proposal destroyed the competition and we won the contract, right? So this is just strong language you're using in order to express excitement or to like maybe hype up your teammates. Yeah.

Yeah. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about how do we say it when it's just a slight, winning by a slight margin, right? Yes. A small margin.

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Take the quiz now at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash F-L-U-E-N-C-Y-S-C-O-R-E. Okay, Aubrey, the phrase edged out, I don't really use this much, but I like it. This is to beat someone or something by a very small margin.

Yeah, so this is very different from destroyed and these others, right? It emphasizes how close the competition actually was. So if a soccer game is like one to one until the very end, and then someone scores, you would say they edged out their competition. They just barely beat them.

Exactly. So you could say we edged out our competitor and won the bid. Right. Just slightly. Or we can say it was close. Yeah, really close. Or you could say the team edged out three other vendors for the project.

So, you know, there were three finalists and they really couldn't quite decide. And then that team won. That team got the project. Exactly, right. This is useful, because this is often more the case in business, right?

Yeah, victories are often close, like a lot of people are in the running. It's usually, you know, anyone's game, right? Yeah. So but even if you don't dominate, you want to have a way to say that you won just barely.

Exactly. So let's do a role play, Aubrey. So here, Aubrey, and you and I are discussing quarterly results after a major industry conference. All right.

All right. I'll start us out. Okay. Did you see the final numbers? I did. Our sales team absolutely killed it. I know. They booked nearly twice as many meetings as we expected.

We also dominated the event in terms of booth traffic. It seemed like everyone stopped by our display. That is awesome. Oh, hey, did you hear about the government contract?

Yeah, we edged out two other companies to win it. That team deserves a lot of credit. Their presentation completely destroyed the competition. Wow. It seems like this company is on fire.

Yeah. They're doing really well. Doing great. Going gangbusters. Gangbusters. Totally. So just to recap here, you asked me, did I see the final numbers?

And I said, I did. Our sales team absolutely killed it. Meaning they did a great job. Yeah, this is more general, right? This does mean they did extremely well, but it's not about competition necessarily.

It's just a good way to say they were successful, very, very successful. Yeah. And then you said we also dominated the event in terms of booth traffic. So yeah, when you have a booth at one of these sales conferences, you could imagine people saying this to each other, like commenting on the crowds and how many people came to our booth and did they seem to like it?

And you could be like, yeah, we absolutely dominated. Yeah. It's okay to say it with your teammates because you're on the same team, right? Yeah. You might not go to the next booth and brag about it.

No, we dominated the event. But you can say it to your own team, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that's a good point. And then you changed the subject.

You said, oh, hey, did you hear about the government contracts? And I said, yeah, we edged out two other companies to win it. So we slightly won it by a slight margin. Maybe there were follow-up questions and the company let us know there were other options they had.

So that's a different story. You might say this if you were hired and you know there were a lot of candidates and there were multiple interviews. You might say, I edged out the competition, right? Mm-hmm.

For sure. And then lastly, yeah, I said their presentation completely destroyed the competition, right? So I'm impressed by this presentation that was come up by a team. This is really interesting how things like this you can say as a compliment, you're sharing that you think someone else did well, at least in American culture.

When we say these things about ourselves and our own performance, that's when it feels uncomfortable because this is like full on bragging. You're like, I destroyed the competition. Yeah. Yeah, we don't want to full on brag.

We want to avoid that. We can do other episodes about I mean, I know that in American culture, we do a lot of self promotion, right? Yeah, but there's a fine line. And maybe we'll explore that Aubrey as a cultural topic on the podcast someday soon.

There's a fine line. And so we need to know the difference here. Aubrey, what's our final takeaway for Connection? Yeah, this is really important to celebrate others wins, right?

If you're on the team or co workers, you do want to share, you know, say to them, Oh, you killed it. You destroyed the competition, right? If they someone especially if someone comes and tells you, they landed a sales contract, they got a promotion, you want to have the language to be able to celebrate with them. Yes, for sure.

Guys, go and check out part one in the series. That was 2675, Smoked, Crushed, or Swept. How to Talk About Clear Victories in English. So don't miss that episode.

And that was over on Allers English. So be sure to follow both the Allers English podcast and Business English. We often will do a series where we're sharing the vocabulary and how we use it in everyday life and then also at work. And you need both.

So be sure to follow both podcasts. Exactly. You want to have both shows in your queue, your listening queue on a daily basis. Okay, Aubrey, good stuff today.

I'll see you back here very soon. All right. Have a good day. See you guys next time. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.

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