Gesprächsanlaß

Hi, am helping a German acquaintance write a presentation. We can't find a fitting English term for "Gesprächsanlaß". Reason to talk is a bit too clumsy. Any ideas? Much obliged, MajorB

Point of discussion?

or discussion points?

No. But thanks anyway. This is rather meant as "wanting to find a reason for talking to somebody else". Cheers, MajorB

introductory conversational topics/possibilities/suggestions...?

Can we have the context please? It might cause some brainwaves. Thanks.

The guy works for a bank. He works in customer relations. They are always looking for reasons to approach old customers who haven't brought a new product from the bank in a while. We have looked through our dictionaries, online etc and haven't found a nice word for it. I would like to call it harassment, but that wouldn't be constructive. I am after all trying to help him.

Something to do with opportunity?

sales opener? sales hook? new sales pitch? introductory sales pitch, would cover it for me.

Oi. He used opportunity, but an opportunity is not really a reason, is it? Sales pitch they only do AFTER having contacted their victims customers. The point is trying to find a term for finding a reason for getting into contact with the customer. It's so simple and yet so difficult. It's driving me slightly crazy here.

How about new offer for our long-standing customers?

@Nic
That would describe what they are doing, but not be a short, zippy translation for Gesprächsanlaß. Would be too long to be used as part of a sentence in a presentation. Thanks though!

Edit: it's also technically not a new offer but a reason for contact.

oh i hate it when people want that... cos sometimes they dont exsist... how about talk-starters, call excuses, conversational catalysts? god knows. how about just saying reasons for contact. or contact opportunities?

... take the opportunity of contacting you ...

I agree. I hate it though because I am too stupid to come up with a solution to this problem. This seems to be a language puzzle I cannot solve. The long description looks crap in the presentation. I am gonna think about it a bit today while running. Maybe I find a solution. Thanks all!

Edit: Sarabyrd, that would be too long. That's the point. It has to be part of a presentation header and part of sentence which shouldn't be too long. Thanks as well!

Discussion opener?
Opening gambit? (that's v. British though)
Opener?

ice-breaker ?

Sometimes there is no direct equivalent, especially in conceptual language. Don't feel bad if you can't find something that fits 100%! It's more important to get the right point across.

Thanks Angel. Thanks Katrina. I like the gambit one. I think I'll tell him to use that one. That is after all what they are doing. Cheers!

yep agree especialy with presentations.

liguistic and intellectual death by powerpoint.

We use Existing Customer Referral but I do not know if that suits this particular context.

Discussional Motivators - if there is such a phrase

Don't know if you're still looking for help or are definitely go with the gambit line (which sounds pretty good to me), but just wanted to offer one more suggestion and approach. You may have already tried this, but you could Google "sales strategies" or "existing customer relationship" and the like and look for the phrase most commonly used for the concept. Given that most modern business terms orginate in English, it seems you are trying to re-invent the wheel here, instead of drawing on the thousands or millions of sales strategies documents on the internet. It wouldn't be too surprising if the German word you look to translate was simply a close approximation of an English-language phrase.

@BennyF

Thanks for your reply Benny. I am not at all aversed to reinventing the wheel as a mental exercise, which is what we were doing. I believe one needs to reinvent the wheel now and then. This wasn't a professional job or something (where they want you to use special terms and stick to them), but simply helping someone out. I enjoy finding exact translations between English and German. It is a challenge. I love languages. My acquaintance has decided to use it like that as well which makes me happy that we got to solve the problem well enough for him. Thanks once again to everybody who helped!