"Wait — you're trying to sell us an application written in a scripting language?!"
"I'm trying to sell you an application written with the same language as the applications that do Amazon.com's front-end and run Slashdot." (Most of my Perl is for web applications these days).
People who care about buzzwords are followers by nature. So, all you have to do to sell them something that isn't buzzwordy is show them that big, successful organizations are using it. Any PHB who said to me "but customers might complain that it's Perl, and we'll lose business" gets the response "then you need better salespeople".
Yeah, I know -- some people will never wrap their head around it. See, these same people will never listen to anything you have to say about Perl not being a scripting language, either. I find that it's much easier to sell the idea that the scripting/programming dichotomy is a red herring than to argue that Perl is on the programming side. Especially to non-technical people.
Most importantly, I think trying to pitch Perl as though it's buzzwordy is, IMO, selling it far short. Worse, trying to make the argument that "really, Perl is a real langauge" gives credibility to the debate, and so serves nothing but to make the advocate seem mildly pathetic.
Truth be told, Perl is both a scripting and programming language. You can write anything from a tiny, inscrutable one-liner to a full, buzzword-compliant application. For that reason, the debate can never be fully resolved anyhow, and getting into the argument is a lot like fighting the vi vs. emacs war. Then again, I'm one of those people who uses vi and emacs, so maybe I'm just an odd duck…
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