We do quite a bit of spreadsheet analysis and case discussions in my class, and sometimes I have students make presentations of their analysis in a way that they are “selling” their analysis to the managers with the decision rights.  They spend time fine tuning their presentations to be more convincing than other groups.

But sometimes they fall into bad habits, using stale jargon and omitting crucial assumptions.  Here’s an example from the WSJ of our friends at Goldman Sachs, making a pitch that is very similar to a famous pitch that everyone with an email account has probably seen.

Made me smile.