Small Business Glossary: P

partnership; firm: A business owned by more than one person in which each partner in the business is equally liable for the activities of the business.

patent: 1. (noun) An official document that grants the exclusive right to produce, sell, or get profit from an invention or process for a certain number of years. 2. (verb) To obtain this official document.

performance appraisal: A meeting with an employee in which you review that employee's performance over the past period (usually a year) and give feedback.

pickup rate: A discounted rate for ad placement in a newspaper, which newspapers give in return for running the same ad two or more times in the same week.

profit: Sales revenue (and other sources of income) minus expenses (and losses) for a period.

proxemics: The study of how people use and structure space or spatial arrangements.

public relations; PR: All the activities — including employee, community, industry, and government relations; customer and prospect communications; publicity; and even crisis management — that marketers use to build and develop a favorable image of a brand.

pyramid scheme: A fraudulent direct-selling organization which only recruits distributors — and collects fees from them — without also selling products so that the creators can unlawfully take all the distributors' money.