122 terms from sales, RevOps & GTM.
Not a copy-pasted dictionary. Definitions from B2B sales, RevOps and GTM engineering, explained briefly and used the way we actually apply them in real client systems.
Target Audience, ICP & Buyer Persona
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
The definition of the company that buys fastest, stays longest and pays most, written as hard criteria such as industry, headcount, region and tech stack. It decides which accounts enter a list at all. Build it from won and churned customers, not from wishes. A criterion no database can filter on is not a criterion.
More in the blog: How to define your ICP →Buyer Persona
A profile of the individual who signs, approves or blocks a purchase inside an ICP account: their role, what they are measured on, the problems they own and the objections they raise. The ICP picks the company; the persona shapes the message and the job title filter. Age and hobbies are noise. Their quarterly targets are signal.
More in the blog: Building a B2B buyer persona →Target Audience Analysis
The groundwork that finds out which companies and roles actually buy an offer, before an ICP or persona is written down. It combines CRM data on won and lost deals, customer interviews and market data on how many similar companies exist. Starting from a market report instead of the customer list yields an audience nobody has ever sold to.
More in the blog: B2B target audience analysis →Firmographics
The structural facts about a company, such as industry, headcount, revenue, legal form and location, that place an account in a segment. They are the first filter in every list build and the base layer of an ICP. Treat them as dated: headcount and revenue in data tools often trail reality by months, so recheck fast-growing accounts before routing them.
Technographics
Data on the software a company runs, such as its CRM, marketing automation, ERP or the competitor product you want to replace. It shows fit, whether your tool integrates, and timing, whether they sit on a system you displace. Detection relies on website scripts, job ads and DNS records, so internal tools stay hidden. No signal is not proof.
TAM (Total Addressable Market)
The total revenue available if every company that could use an offer bought it, usually the number of fitting accounts times the average annual contract value. Investors read it as the ceiling. In outbound, the useful form is the TAM as a list of named accounts, because a number can't be scored, routed or sequenced and a list can.
SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market)
The slice of the TAM an offer can actually serve today, once you remove the regions, languages, segments and company sizes the product, team or contracts cannot cover. A German-speaking sales team focused on DACH has no French accounts in its SAM, however big the TAM slide looks. In outbound, the SAM is the list worth paying to enrich.
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)
The share of the SAM a company can realistically win in a set period, often the next one to three years, given its competitors, sales capacity and win rate. Build it bottom-up: reps times deals per rep per year times average contract value. When that result lands far below the top-down percentage on the pitch slide, trust the bottom-up number.
Sales Strategy & Go-to-Market
Go-to-Market Strategy
The plan that fixes who a company sells to, which problem it promises to solve, through which channels it reaches buyers, at what price, and which team owns each step. It turns a product into a repeatable way of winning customers. The test: if sales and marketing would describe different target customers, there is a slide deck but no strategy.
PLG (Product-Led Growth)
A go-to-market model in which people use the product before they talk to sales, usually through a free plan or trial, and the product converts them to paying and spreads to colleagues. Sales still exists, but works the accounts already showing usage. It breaks down when setup, data migration or a sign-off stands between the user and the first result.
SLG (Sales-Led Growth)
A go-to-market model in which salespeople carry each deal from first contact to signature: prospecting, discovery, demo, proposal and negotiation. It fits offers with high contract values, several decision makers and real implementation work, where nobody buys after a self-serve trial. The cost is fixed headcount, so pipeline per rep matters more than raw lead volume.
ABM (Account-Based Marketing)
A B2B approach in which sales and marketing agree on a fixed list of named accounts and aim coordinated outreach, ads and content at the people inside each one. Success is counted per account, in meetings and opportunities, not leads. An account list uploaded to an ad platform is not ABM. The test: can sales name each account's next step?
Land and Expand
A sales strategy that wins a customer with a small first deal, often one team, site or use case, then grows the contract to more users, departments or products. The small entry clears procurement faster and proves value internally. It works only if expansion is planned at the first deal: which team comes next, and who makes the introduction.
Outbound Sales
Sales that opens the conversation with companies who haven't asked for it, through cold email, cold calls or LinkedIn messages to an account list built in advance. Because the team picks the accounts, it controls who enters the pipeline. Volume without targeting burns sending domains and goodwill. The list and the reason to write matter more than touch count.
More in the blog: B2B customer acquisition →Inbound Sales
Sales that responds to buyers who make the first move: a demo form, a reply to content, a search that finds the company, or a referral. Intent runs higher than in outbound, but nobody chooses who shows up. Response time decides a lot here, since a demo request answered the next day may already be talking to a competitor.
Sales Cycle
The time and the sequence of steps between first contact with a lead and a signed contract, typically discovery, demo, proposal, negotiation and approval. It grows with deal size and with the number of people who must sign off. Measure it per segment from opportunity creation to close, or one slow enterprise deal hides that mid-market deals are speeding up.
Market Segmentation
Splitting a market into groups of companies that share traits which change how they buy, such as industry, size, region or the problem to solve. Each segment gets its own message, list and often offer. A segment is real only if its buyers need a different first line. If one email fits all, it is one segment with several names.
Whitespace Analysis
A comparison of what each existing customer already buys against everything they could buy, by product, department, site or subsidiary, to find untouched gaps. The same method works on a market: which ICP accounts has nobody contacted yet? The output should be a named account list with the missing product per row, not a heatmap nobody turns into outreach.
Lead Generation & Prospecting
Lead Generation
The work of finding companies and people who match the target profile and turning them into named contacts the sales team can work. Inbound waits for prospects to raise their hand, outbound goes and finds them. Count the output in qualified conversations, not in rows on a list, or the team ends up buying volume nobody calls.
Cold Prospecting
First contact with a person or company that has no relationship with you and no stated interest, by phone, email or LinkedIn. With no reason to listen, relevance has to come from targeting: the right account, the right person, a problem they plausibly have. In Germany the UWG regulates unsolicited B2B calls and emails, so check the legal basis first.
More in the blog: What is sales prospecting? →Warm Prospecting
Outreach to people who already have a link to your company: a past conversation, a referral, a webinar seat, a website visit, a mutual connection. That link gives the first message its reason to exist and usually earns more replies than a cold list. Name the connection in the opening line, otherwise the message reads like any cold email.
More in the blog: What is sales prospecting? →SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
A lead that sales has checked and accepted as worth a real sales conversation, usually the last stage before an opportunity is opened in the CRM. The criteria belong in a written definition both marketing and sales signed off, typically fit plus a confirmed need. If reps keep rejecting what arrives as SQL, fix the definition before blaming the reps.
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
A lead that marketing activity has flagged as interested enough to pass to sales, before sales has qualified it. Most systems set the status from a score built on form fills, downloads and page visits. One person downloading a whitepaper says little about whether the company will buy, so judge MQLs by how many become SQLs, not by volume.
PQL (Product Qualified Lead)
A user or account whose behavior inside the product, usually while trialing or on a free tier, signals readiness for a sales conversation. Common triggers: hitting a seat or usage cap, several colleagues invited in one week, repeated use of a paid-only feature. Set the threshold from what later paying accounts actually did, and route PQLs fast.
Lead Scoring
A points model that ranks leads by how well they fit the ideal customer and how actively they engage, so sales knows whom to call first. Fit comes from firmographics and role, engagement from visits, clicks and replies. Keep them as separate scores. One blended number puts an idle perfect-fit account level with a student downloading every whitepaper.
Lead Nurturing
Staying in useful contact with leads who fit but aren't ready to buy, so you are the obvious call when timing changes. In practice: relevant content, check-ins tied to real events and retargeting, spread over months. Every touch has to give the reader something they can use. A monthly "just checking in" email teaches them to ignore you.
Lead Qualification
Deciding whether a lead is worth sales time: does the company fit the ICP, is there a real problem, and can this contact influence a purchase? Frameworks like BANT or MEDDIC turn those questions into a checklist for the call. Disqualify early and log the reason in the CRM. A pipeline full of maybes hides which deals are real.
Trigger Event
A dated change at a target company, such as a funding round, a new executive, a job posting or a tool switch, that creates a reason to buy now. It answers the two hardest questions in outbound: why this account, and why this week. Triggers go stale fast: last quarter's funding round is trivia, not a reason to write.
Intent Data
Data suggesting a company is researching a topic or product category, inferred from content consumption, review-site visits or search behavior. First-party intent comes from your own website and product; third-party intent is bought from providers who track activity across publisher networks. Treat it as a hint about timing, never as proof of a deal, and combine it with ICP fit.
Waterfall Enrichment
A lookup that asks several data providers for the same field, one after another, until one returns a result that passes a check. It finds more emails and phone numbers than any single vendor, and the pricey sources only run on records the cheap ones missed. Skip the check and you pay to fill the CRM with wrong numbers.
Signal-Based Selling
Prospecting that starts from an observed event, such as a new hire, a funding round or a pricing-page visit, instead of a static list. The signal decides who gets contacted and when, and gives the first line its reason. The craft is in the reply: address the problem the signal implies rather than announcing that you noticed it.
Demand Generation
Marketing work that makes the right buyers aware of a problem, and of you, before they start shopping, so pipeline exists later. It spans content, events, podcasts, paid social and community, paying off over quarters. Judge it by pipeline from target accounts and by how often buyers name you unprompted, not by the number of gated downloads.
Inbound-Led Outbound
Outbound to accounts whose interest is already visible, through site visits, webinar attendance or content engagement, though nobody filled in a form. Sales contacts them, often reaching a different person than the visitor. Never open with "I saw you on our pricing page". Let the topic they read pick the angle.
Website Visitor Identification
Matching anonymous website traffic to the companies behind it, sometimes to people, mostly via reverse IP lookup or identity graphs. Pricing-page visits without a form fill become a list sales can work. Company matches hold up on office networks and get patchy on home and mobile connections. In the EU, person-level matching needs a GDPR legal basis.
Cold Outreach & Email
Cold Email
An unsolicited email to a business contact who has never heard from you, sent to start a conversation rather than close a sale. It works when the list is narrow, the reason for writing fits that one reader, and the ask is small. If the same email could go to a thousand companies unchanged, it is spam with better grammar.
Email Sequence
A planned run of emails to one prospect, with fixed gaps between steps, that stops once they reply. The first email is rarely the one that gets answered, so the follow-ups carry the sequence. Each step needs a fresh reason to respond; a step that only says "bumping this up" spends a touch and adds nothing.
Sales Personalization
Shaping a message around a fact about the recipient or their company that explains why you are writing now. It works best when the fact leads to the offer: a new sales leader, a funding round, a dropped tool. A compliment on their last LinkedIn post is decoration; if deleting the line leaves the pitch unchanged, it was never personalization.
Spintax
A bracket syntax such as {Hi|Hello|Hey} that tells the sending tool to pick one variant per recipient, so a single template produces many slightly different emails. It breaks up the identical-text pattern filters use to spot bulk mail. Spin whole phrases that mean the same thing and preview the output, because one clumsy combination goes to everyone who draws it.
Domain Warm-up
The weeks of low, slowly rising send volume a new domain or mailbox goes through before it carries a cold campaign. Mailbox providers distrust senders with no history, so warm-up tools trade emails between inboxes that open and answer them to build one. Warm-up only buys a starting reputation; send to a bad list afterwards and the domain burns anyway.
Email Deliverability
Whether a sent email reaches the inbox rather than the spam folder or a block. Providers decide based on authentication records, domain and mailbox reputation, list quality, volume and how recipients react. A "delivered" status in the sending tool only means a server accepted the mail; seed tests show where it actually landed, and that is the number to watch.
Email Authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC)
Three DNS records that let a receiving server confirm that mail claiming to come from a domain really does. SPF lists the servers allowed to send for it, DKIM adds a signature that exposes tampering, and DMARC tells receivers what to do when the checks fail. Start DMARC at p=none, read the reports, then tighten to quarantine.
Bounce Rate
The share of sent emails returned as undeliverable. Hard bounces are permanent, an address or domain that does not exist; soft bounces are temporary, such as a full mailbox or a server that is down. Providers read many hard bounces as a sign of a bought or stale list, so validate before sending and stay under 2%, a common ceiling.
Open Rate
The share of delivered emails that registered an open. Apple Mail Privacy Protection and many security filters preload tracking pixels, so the number is inflated and noisy. Use it as a deliverability smoke alarm, since a sudden drop often means the spam folder, never as the metric a cold email campaign is judged on. Reply rate is that metric.
Reply Rate
The share of contacted prospects who answered, counted per person rather than per email sent, so a five-step sequence does not dilute it. It is the clearest read on whether list, offer and copy fit together. Split it by sentiment, though: an angry "remove me" counts as a reply too, and only the positive replies say anything about pipeline.
Sender Reputation
The trust score mailbox providers such as Gmail and Outlook keep for a sending domain and IP, built from past behavior. Bounces, spam complaints, spam-trap hits and volume spikes lower it; replies and steady volume raise it. It is never shown directly and damage is slow to repair, so keep cold email off the main company domain.
Multichannel Outreach
Working one prospect across several channels in a planned order, such as a LinkedIn profile visit, an email, a connection request and a call, so each touch makes the next one familiar. Replies come from whichever channel the buyer actually checks. The coordination is the point: once one channel gets a reply, every other channel has to stop.
Inbox Placement Rate
The share of delivered emails that arrive in the main inbox, not in spam or a promotions tab. Seed tests measure it: the campaign also goes to test addresses at Gmail, Outlook and other providers, and the tool reports where each copy landed. Delivery rate can look near perfect while placement sinks, so this is the number to track.
Email Validation
A check, run before an address enters a campaign, that it is well formed, sits on a domain with a working mail server, and accepts mail. Tools test syntax, MX records and the mailbox over SMTP without sending anything. Catch-all domains accept every address, so their result stays "unknown"; send those in a small separate batch.
Sales Pipeline, Funnel & Deals
Sales Funnel
The stages a buyer passes through from first contact to signed contract, drawn as a shape that narrows because most prospects drop out along the way. Its value lies in the conversion rate between each pair of stages, which shows where deals leak. A funnel that only counts volume at the top tells you nothing about why revenue is short.
Sales Pipeline
Every open opportunity a sales team is working, each with a deal stage, a value and an expected close date. The funnel describes the buyer's path, while the pipeline is the live list of real deals that forecasts and capacity plans rest on. A deal with no next step and no date belongs out of it, or the numbers lie.
Pipeline Coverage
Open pipeline value for a period divided by that period's revenue target, expressed as a multiple. At 3x, the team holds three euros of open deals per euro it must close. 3x to 4x is a common target, but the right multiple is the inverse of your win rate, and only deals that can close inside the period count.
Deal Stage
The named step in the sales process where an opportunity currently sits, such as discovery, proposal or negotiation. Each stage carries a close probability and feeds pipeline reports and the forecast. Define every stage by something the buyer has done, like agreeing to a pricing call, not by what the rep did, or deals drift forward on optimism.
Sales Velocity
The revenue a pipeline produces per day, calculated as open opportunities × win rate × average deal size ÷ sales cycle length in days. The formula shows four levers at once: more deals, better conversion, bigger deals or shorter cycles. Compare it per segment or per rep over time, because a single company-wide figure hides which lever is actually moving.
Win Rate
Won deals divided by all deals that reached a final outcome, won plus lost, in a period. It shows whether a revenue gap comes from too few opportunities or from losing the ones you have. Decide up front whether silent deals count as lost, since teams that quietly leave them open report a win rate that flatters them.
Sales Cycle Length
The average number of days from opportunity creation to closed-won, measured on won deals only. It sets how far ahead pipeline has to be built and how long a new rep needs before producing revenue. Report the median next to the average, because one eighteen-month enterprise deal can stretch the mean far beyond what a typical buyer experiences.
Sales Forecasting
The estimate of how much revenue will close in a coming period, built from open pipeline, stage probabilities and historical win rates. It drives hiring, spend and board expectations. Put forecast and actual side by side every period, because a forecast built on rep gut feel instead of buyer actions misses in the same direction quarter after quarter.
Champion
The person inside the target account who wants your deal to happen and has the standing to push it when you are not in the room. A champion sells internally, explains how decisions really get made, and flags blockers early. The test: if they won't introduce you to the economic buyer, you have a friendly contact, not a champion.
Economic Buyer
The person who controls the budget and can approve the spend without asking anyone else. Users and evaluators can recommend a tool, but only this person can release the money, and they can veto a deal everyone else liked. If nobody on the deal can name them by the end of discovery, the forecast date is a guess.
Speed to Lead
The time between a prospect's action, such as a demo request, and the first meaningful reply from a qualified person. Interest cools fast, and a buyer comparing vendors often talks to whoever answers first. Start the clock at the form submit, not at CRM record creation, because enrichment and routing delays hide in that gap. Inbound only.
Mutual Action Plan (MAP)
A shared document, agreed by buyer and seller, listing every step to signed contract and go-live, each with an owner and a date. It turns vague "let's circle back" endings into commitments both sides can check, and surfaces steps the seller didn't know about, like security review or procurement. A buyer who won't co-own the plan is not yet buying.
RevOps, CRM & Data Quality
RevOps (Revenue Operations)
The function that owns the systems, data and rules behind the whole revenue process, from first touch to renewal, across marketing, sales and customer success. RevOps defines lifecycle stages, keeps the CRM clean, runs the forecast and builds the reports all three teams read. If each team still quotes its own pipeline number, the RevOps job has not started.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
The system of record for every account, contact, deal and activity with customers and prospects, such as Salesforce or HubSpot. Reps log calls and emails there, managers forecast from its pipeline, and automations read its fields to route and score. A CRM that reps update from memory on Friday produces a forecast nobody trusts, so capture activity automatically.
Data Enrichment
Adding missing fields to contact and company records from outside sources: verified email, direct dial, job title, headcount, industry, tech stack. Segmentation, scoring and routing rules only work when those fields exist. Enrich right before the data gets used, not once a year, and store the source and date next to every value so you know what to re-check.
Data Hygiene
The routine upkeep that keeps CRM and contact data accurate: merging duplicates, standardizing formats, flagging bounced emails and job changers, filling required fields. Reports, routing and every automation read these records, so bad data spreads quietly into wrong forecasts and misrouted leads. Run it as a scheduled job with a named owner, not a cleanup sprint before the board meeting.
Deduplication
Finding records that describe the same contact or company and merging them into one, keeping the best value for each field. Duplicates split the activity history, put one prospect into two sequences and count the same pipeline twice. Match companies on a normalized domain rather than the name, because "Müller GmbH" and "Mueller GmbH & Co. KG" share one website.
Single Source of Truth
The one system that holds the official value for a given piece of data, so every report and tool reads it from the same place. For customer and pipeline data that is usually the CRM, and other tools sync into it, not around it. The test: when two dashboards disagree on revenue, everyone knows which number wins.
Attribution Modeling
The rules that split credit for a won deal across the touchpoints before it: first touch, last touch, or weighted across all of them. The chosen model decides which channel looks profitable and where next quarter's budget goes. Software only sees trackable clicks, so add a "How did you hear about us?" field to the demo form.
Lead Routing
The rules that hand every new lead to an owner without manual triage, by territory, segment, account ownership or rep capacity. A lead left overnight in a shared queue often never hears back. Most routing errors start one step earlier: the lead was never matched to its account, so it lands with a stranger instead of the account owner.
Sales-Marketing Alignment
The state where sales and marketing share one definition of a qualified lead, one funnel report and one agreed handoff with a response deadline. Without it, marketing reports rising MQL counts while sales complains about lead quality, and both are right by their own numbers. The fix is a written SLA covering delivery, follow-up speed and rejected leads.
Funnel Metrics
The volumes and stage-to-stage conversion rates that show how leads move from first contact to closed deal, such as MQL to SQL and SQL to opportunity, plus time spent in each stage. One overall rate says something is broken; the stage rates say where. Compare by cohort, since a lead created in March may close in June.
Data Decay
The steady loss of accuracy in contact and company records as people change jobs and companies move, merge or rename. Nobody edits the record, yet the email bounces, the title is wrong and the account belongs in another segment. Plan for it: stamp each field with a last-verified date and re-verify emails before every send, not after bounces spike.
Identity Resolution
Deciding which records across CRM, product database, web tracking and data providers describe one actual person or company, then merging them into a single profile. Matching runs on keys like email, domain and LinkedIn URL, plus rules for which source wins a conflict. Subsidiaries, rebrands and personal email addresses are the hard cases, so log every merge.
Dark Funnel
The part of a B2B purchase that happens where no tracking reaches: peer conversations, Slack communities, podcasts, forwarded posts and DMs. Buyers often arrive at a demo already decided, and attribution credits the last click it could see. A free-text "How did you hear about us?" field on the booking form often contradicts the attribution report.
Lead-to-Account Matching
Linking each new lead to the company record it belongs to in the CRM, usually by email domain plus fuzzy rules on the company name. A matched lead inherits the account's owner, open deals and history, so a contact at a live customer never gets a cold sequence. Gmail addresses and subsidiary domains need their own rules.
Sales Metrics & KPIs
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the new customers won in it. Salaries, tools, agencies, ads and data all belong in the numerator, and leaving out headcount is how CAC usually gets flattered. The figure only means something next to LTV and payback period, because large contracts can justify a high CAC.
LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
The gross profit a customer is expected to bring in over the whole relationship, often estimated as ARPA × gross margin ÷ churn rate. Compared with CAC, it shows how much winning a customer may cost. Young companies with little churn history get absurdly high values from this formula, so cap the assumed lifetime at a few years.
ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
The annualized value of all active recurring contracts at a point in time, usually MRR × 12. One-off setup, onboarding or consulting fees stay out, as do unsigned contracts. Investors read ARR as the size of the business, so pilots, expiring discounts and usage spikes counted as ARR are the first things a due diligence strips back out.
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
The normalized monthly value of all active recurring contracts, with annual contracts divided by twelve. Splitting it into new, expansion, contraction and churned MRR shows what actually moved the number this month. A flat total can hide strong new sales canceled out by churn, which is why the components matter more than the headline figure.
ACV (Annual Contract Value)
The average annualized value of a customer contract: total contract value ÷ contract years, averaged across deals. A three-year €90,000 deal has an ACV of €30,000. It decides which sales motion pays off, since low ACV needs volume with little human touch while high ACV justifies discovery calls, champions and long cycles. One-off fees stay out.
NRR (Net Revenue Retention)
Recurring revenue from a customer cohort today, including expansion and minus churn and downgrades, divided by that cohort's recurring revenue twelve months earlier. Above 100% means existing customers alone grow revenue without a single new deal. Read it next to GRR, because large upsells to a handful of accounts can push NRR above 100% while many smaller customers quietly leave.
Churn Rate
Customers lost in a period divided by customers at the start of that period, while revenue churn uses recurring revenue instead of customer count. Logo churn and revenue churn can tell opposite stories when one large account leaves. Customers won during the period don't belong in the denominator, a mistake that makes churn look lower in fast-growing companies.
Conversion Rate
The share of records at one stage that reach the next, calculated as records that converted ÷ records that entered the stage. Lead to meeting, meeting to opportunity and opportunity to won are separate rates, and the weakest is where effort pays most. Fix a time window and cohort, or this month's leads get divided into last month's deals.
CPL (Cost per Lead)
Campaign spend divided by the leads it produced. It is easy to measure and easy to game, since a webinar can deliver leads far cheaper than outbound and still produce zero pipeline. Judge channels on cost per opportunity or per won customer, and use CPL only to compare campaigns with the same ICP and lead definition.
ROI (Return on Investment)
The gain from an investment relative to its cost, calculated as (return − cost) ÷ cost and shown as a percentage. For sales or marketing work, the return is usually gross profit from attributed deals, not revenue. Fix the attribution window and full cost base, team time included, before launch, or the window gets picked later to flatter the number.
GRR (Gross Revenue Retention)
The share of starting recurring revenue still in place at period end, counting churn and downgrades but ignoring any expansion. Calculated as (starting recurring revenue − churn − contraction) ÷ starting recurring revenue, it can never exceed 100%. That ceiling makes it the honest counterpart to NRR, since upsells can't hide customers walking away.
Expansion Revenue
Additional recurring revenue that existing customers bring through upsell, cross-sell, extra seats or higher usage. It pushes NRR above 100% and usually costs far less to win than a new logo, since trust and access already exist. Track it by trigger, like a new hire on the buyer's team or a usage threshold, not by renewal date.
AI & Automation in Sales
AI Agent
Software that pursues a goal by running a language model in a loop: it picks the next step, calls a tool such as web search or the CRM, checks the result and repeats until done. Researching an account and drafting a first line is a typical sales job. Give an agent a narrow task and log every action.
Sales Automation
Software that performs repeatable sales tasks without a person clicking through them: logging emails and calls to the CRM, sending follow-ups on schedule, creating tasks when a deal changes stage, booking meetings from a link. Automate a step only after it works by hand, because automation multiplies a bad process as fast as a good one.
Workflow Automation
A chain of steps across several tools that runs on its own once a trigger fires, for example a new CRM lead that gets enriched, scored, assigned and posted to Slack. Platforms like Make, Zapier or n8n connect the systems through APIs. Every workflow needs an error path and an owner, because a silent failure looks like a quiet week.
No-Code / Low-Code
Platforms for building automations, databases and simple apps by connecting visual blocks instead of writing code; low-code adds custom scripts where the blocks run out. Ops and sales teams ship a working process in days without waiting for IT. The catch shows up a year later: business logic spread across dozens of undocumented scenarios that only the original builder understands.
Prompt Engineering
Writing and testing the instructions given to a language model so it returns usable output every time, not just once. A solid prompt states the task, the input fields, the output format, examples of good and bad answers, and what to return when data is missing. Test on a sample of real, messy rows before running the full list.
LLM (Large Language Model)
A neural network trained on huge amounts of text to predict the next word, which lets it write, summarize, classify and extract information. Models such as GPT, Claude or Gemini sit behind most AI agents and sales assistants. An LLM produces plausible text, not verified facts, so every claim it makes about a prospect needs a source it was given.
AI SDR
Software built from AI agents that handles parts of a sales development rep's job: finding accounts, researching contacts, writing outreach, following up and qualifying replies. It never skips a follow-up step and works through a list overnight. Its weak point is judgment, so let the AI research and draft while a person approves messages and takes every positive reply.
Conversational AI / Chatbot
Software that holds a text or voice conversation with a user, answering questions and collecting details, usually as the first contact point on a website or in a messenger. Newer versions pair a language model with company documents; older ones follow fixed decision trees. In B2B it should qualify and book meetings. Pricing questions go to a human.
Predictive Lead Scoring
Lead scoring where a machine learning model, not a person assigning points, learns from past won and lost deals which attributes and behaviors predict a purchase. It finds patterns nobody would write as a rule, such as headcount growth combined with a specific tech stack. With only a handful of closed deals, a rules-based score is more honest.
Enrichment API
An interface that returns data about a person or company when your system sends an identifier such as an email, domain or LinkedIn URL, so enrichment runs inside a workflow instead of through CSV uploads. Providers usually bill per successful lookup. Cache responses and check match confidence, or you pay twice and still write the wrong person into the CRM.
GTM Engineering
Building a company's go-to-market as a technical system: data sources, enrichment waterfalls, scoring, routing, sequencing and CRM sync, wired together with code, APIs and tools like Clay. A GTM engineer turns a targeting idea into a pipeline that runs daily with no CSV exports. The test: if nobody can explain why an account got contacted, nothing was engineered.
Human-in-the-Loop
A setup where an AI system stops at defined points so a person can approve, correct or reject its output before it takes effect. In outbound, a human typically reviews the target list, the first batch of AI-written emails and every reply that is not a plain no. Put checkpoints where a mistake is expensive or public.
Sales Enablement & Methodology
Sales Enablement
The function that gives sellers the material, training and tooling to win deals: playbooks, battle cards, case studies, call recordings, onboarding. When it works, a new rep finds the answer to a pricing objection in seconds instead of asking in Slack. Measure it by ramp time and win rate, not by how many documents sit in the content library.
MEDDIC
A qualification framework for complex B2B deals built on six checks: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion. Each letter is a question the rep has to answer with evidence from the buyer, not a guess. The extension MEDDPICC adds Paper Process and Competition. A blank letter in a late-stage deal is a forecast risk.
BANT
A qualification framework that checks four things: Budget, Authority, Need and Timing. IBM introduced it, and it still works as a quick filter on a first call. Its weakness is the order. Few buyers have money set aside for a need they haven't recognized yet, so ask about the need first and treat budget as something the deal can create.
SPIN Selling
A questioning method from Neil Rackham's research that moves a sales call through four question types: Situation, Problem, Implication and Need-Payoff. The buyer, not the seller, ends up stating what the problem costs and what fixing it is worth. The common mistake is spending half the call on situation questions the rep could have answered from LinkedIn beforehand.
Challenger Sale
A sales approach, described by CEB researchers Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, in which the seller teaches the buyer something new about their business, tailors it to each stakeholder and takes control of the conversation. The insight has to be specific and may be uncomfortable. Challenging a buyer without evidence from their own numbers just sounds arrogant.
Solution Selling
A sales approach that starts from a diagnosed customer problem and shapes the offer around it, instead of walking through product features. Early calls go to what the problem costs and who feels it. It breaks down when the seller diagnoses too fast and pitches a fix for a problem the buyer has not yet admitted to having.
Value Proposition
A statement of what a specific buyer gets from an offer, in their own terms, and why that beats the alternatives they already have, including doing nothing. A strong one names the audience, the outcome and the proof. The test: put a competitor's logo above it. If it still reads true, it says nothing about you.
Elevator Pitch
A spoken summary of what you do, for whom and with what result, short enough to finish in about thirty seconds. Its job is to earn a follow-up question, not to close. Build it around one customer problem the listener recognizes. If it needs your internal jargon to make sense, the listener tunes out after the first sentence.
Objection Handling
Responding to a prospect's concern in a sales conversation by finding out what sits behind it before answering. "Too expensive" can mean no budget, no visible value or a cheaper quote on the desk, and each needs a different reply. Ask one clarifying question first. A rep who jumps straight to a discount answers an objection the buyer never raised.
Discovery Call
An early sales conversation where the seller learns the prospect's situation, problem, priorities and buying process before proposing anything. The prospect should do most of the talking, and the seller leaves with a dated next step and the names of others involved. A discovery call that turns into a product demo usually means the hard questions were skipped.
Buying Committee
The group of people at the target company who shape a purchase: the economic buyer who signs, future users, the technical evaluator, procurement, and often legal or the works council. Each can stall a deal, and most never see the first email. Multithread early, because a deal with one contact dies when that person leaves or loses the internal vote.
SDR (Sales Development Representative)
A sales role at the top of the funnel: researching accounts, prospecting by phone, email and LinkedIn, qualifying responses and booking meetings for account executives. In many teams SDRs also work inbound leads while BDRs focus on outbound, though companies use the titles inconsistently. Measure SDRs on qualified meetings the AE accepts, not on call or email counts.
BDR (Business Development Representative)
A sales role that creates new pipeline by prospecting into target accounts, mostly through outbound calls, emails and LinkedIn, then handing qualified meetings to account executives. Many companies use BDR for the outbound side and SDR for inbound, some the reverse, so read the job description, not the title. A BDR's real output is opportunities the AE accepts.
Multi-Threading
Working a deal through several people at the target company in parallel, such as the user, their manager, finance and IT, rather than one contact. When a lone contact goes quiet, changes jobs or loses the internal argument, the deal dies with nobody left to ask. Open the second thread before the proposal, not after the silence.
Tools & Tech Stack
Sales Engagement Platform
Software that runs a rep's outreach day: sequences across email, phone and LinkedIn, task queues for manual steps, and a log of every touch written to the CRM. The CRM stores the record; this layer sends and reminds. Judge one by its CRM sync before its features, because activity that never reaches the CRM leaves reporting blind.
Sales Intelligence Tool
Software that tells a sales team who to contact and when: company and contact data, org charts, technographics and buying signals such as hiring, funding or job changes. It turns a market into a filtered account list with a reason per row. Coverage varies by region, so test a vendor on your own target accounts before signing.
Data Provider
A vendor of B2B contact and company records, such as emails, direct dials, job titles and firmographics, that teams buy to build lists and fill the CRM. Each one sources its data differently, so coverage swings by country and industry. No single provider covers a whole market, which is why teams chain several in a waterfall.
Sequencer (Outbound Tool)
The tool that sends outbound sequences: it takes a list, a set of steps and a schedule, sends each step from connected mailboxes, rotates inboxes, and stops a contact once they reply. Its rules matter more than its templates. Before launch, test reply detection, since a missed reply means a prospect who already answered still gets the next follow-up.
Auto-Dialer
Software that dials a list of numbers and puts a rep on the line only when someone picks up, skipping busy signals, voicemail and dead numbers. Power dialers call one number per rep at a time; parallel dialers ring several at once. That means more conversations per hour, but often a short silence after "hello" that makes people hang up.
Inbox Rotation
Spreading outbound volume across many mailboxes, often on several secondary domains, so each stays under a safe daily cap while together they carry the campaign. The sequencer picks the sending inbox per message and keeps each thread on one sender. When an inbox degrades, swap in a warmed spare rather than raising caps on the rest.
API Integration
A connection where one system reads from or writes to another through its programming interface, so records move without a CSV export. A form fill can create a HubSpot contact and trigger enrichment within seconds. The real work is the edge cases: rate limits, duplicates and failed calls need retries and an alert, or data quietly goes missing.
iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service)
A platform for building integrations between business tools from ready-made connectors, triggers and steps instead of custom code. Make, Zapier and n8n are common examples: a new deal in the CRM can create a project, a contract and an invoice draft. Each workflow still needs an owner and error alerts, or a broken step fails silently for weeks.
Reverse ETL
A sync that copies modeled data from the warehouse back into the tools teams work in, such as the CRM, ad platforms or a sequencer. Classic ETL feeds the warehouse; reverse ETL ships its results, like account scores or product usage, to where reps act. Sync only fields someone will use, or the CRM fills with noise.
GTM Stack
The tools a company runs its go-to-market on: CRM, data providers, enrichment, sequencer, LinkedIn tooling, dialer and the automation that connects them. Its value sits in the connections, since a lead should move from list to CRM to sequence without a CSV in between. Audit it once a year: every tool, its owner, what breaks without it.
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