Buzzword Bingo

I spent most of today listening to local businessmen and women make pitches about their companies as my role as a judge for the annual Business Person of the Year awards.
It's my second year as a judge. I'm neither Simon Cowell nor Paula Abdul. But I will say me and my fellow judges can get pretty randy.
This year, we started a rousing game of buzzword bingo during the presentations, which were three-minute "elevator pitches."
The business owners and leaders have three minutes to wow us on their companies and themselves, or about the time you'd have to sell yourself and your company if you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett or Bill Gates.
Each judge selected five overused buzzwords, and if during the daylong presentations -- there were 42 of them -- all five words were spoken by the interviewees that judge "won."
My words were win-win, out of the box, paradigm, outsource and collaboration. Others in the group chose words and phrases like next level, boutique, green and transformational.
I didn't win-win.
Only one of us achieved buzzword bingo, and it came at the end of the day.
I'm not saying I'd do any better with buzzwords during a presentation, when I'd likely be nervous, but it certainly made me realize folks rely far too much on clichés.
Some of the top buzzwords spoken by today's presenters were: strategy, impact, passion, niche, innovation, value-add, expertise, virtual office, premium brand, uncharted waters, talk the talk, walk the walk, one day at a time, augmented reality, award-winning competitive advantage, bandwidth, best practices, sustainable initiatives, vertical solutions, in our space, end-to-end business platform, core values, integrity, results oriented, game changing, and best and brightest (lots of folks have been hiring the best and brightest. How many of those are there really?).
Then there was one business owner who told us running a business is like a marathon, and another who told us, twice, that his ego was in line with his ability.
There were some gaffes on our part, too. Trying to conduct a three-minute elevator pitch via conference call can prove difficult, particularly when the phone won't work.
One businessman said he was hearing an echo and suggested we mute the phone then unmute it. We asked him if he could hear us, only we still had him muted.
At the end of the day, we realized some had come very prepared, and it showed. Some had not, and it showed.
Some business owners came in and never introduced themselves, nor told us the name of their company.
Some never said what the company did. Some gave an explanation of the company using buzzwords, so that I never really knew what they did.
Some were thrown off by the three-minute time limit and squandered their time by starting out with a story that didn't help the pitch and just wasted time.
One business owner made us all laugh by stating the obvious: "It's the Don King microphone."

The Don King microphone

The whole day was being recorded for video presentations at the upcoming awards. I'm afraid of what the outtakes will look like!
But I hope the videos will also help folks improve their presentations for next year.
It will be a win-win for everyone.