Glossary

The vocabulary of governed revenue.

The terms we operate by — short, sharp, on-thesis. If we don't define something the same way as the rest of the industry, this page tells you why.

ABC: It is a sales strategy made famous by the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” and is rooted behind the idea that every step a sales rep takes throughout the sales process should be aimed towards closing a sa…
ABM: Account Based Marketing, or ABM, is a strategic framework that engages qualified customer accounts in a more holistic way and treats them as unique markets in themselves, worthy of focused, hyperpers…
Active Listening: Term used to describe higher levels of listening activities, involves actively seeking to understand how the customer or prospect feels and what are their personal and business issues to be addressed…
Added Value: the element(s) of service or product that a salesperson or selling organization provides, that a customer is prepared to pay for because of the benefit(s) obtained.
Appointment Setting: Often confused with lead generation, appointment setting is a process where reps or an outsourced service provider are tasked with setting appointments for a sales team.
B2B: B2B is a common acronym for BusinesstoBusiness, which is used to describe businesses that sell to other businesses vs businesses that sell to consumers.
B2C: B2C is a common acronym for BusinesstoConsumer, which is used to describe businesses that sell to consumers vs businesses that sell to other businesses.
B2G: B2G is a common acronym used for BusinesstoGovernment.
Bad Data: The bane of most salespeople’s existence, bad data typically describes most marketing provided “lead list.” More accurately, “bad data” is typically used to describe company or contact data that is w…
BANT: A methodology for qualifying leads in which a sales rep confirms that a prospect has the Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline to buy.
BDR: Business Development Representative (or SDR, Sales Development Representative) are typically responsible for outbound prospecting.
Blue Bird: Guaranteed to put you in a cheerful mood (and alienate your peers), a bluebird is a lucrative sales opportunity that drops into your lap unexpectedly and without much effort.
BOFU: BOFU is an acronym for Bottom of the Funnel.
BQLs: (BDR Qualified Leads) – A qualified lead that has been generated by a Business Development Rep but not yet accepted by sales.
Brag Book: A collection of testimonials, case studies, or pictures collected from satisfied customers.
Buyer’s Journey: The Buyer’s Journey is the process that a buyer (corporate or consumers) goes through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service.
Buying Committee: According to a recent Harvard Business Review study, the number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today, and these stakeholders com…
Buying Signal: Cues from a prospect that they are ready to buy.
CAC: Customer acquisition cost is the total cost related to acquiring a new customer.
Cadence: A cadence is a common term used in marketing and sales to describe a simple sequence of marketing or sales activities that are followed to generate leads.
Call Flow: Call Flow or a Call Flow document is a term that describes a sales prospecting enablement tool that is designed to support a lead generation effort by providing Talk Tracks, key questioning strategie…
CAN-SPAM: The CANSPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them (opt out or unsubscribe), …
Challenger: The Challenger Sales model is a sales methodology that was made famous by the book The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.
Channel Conflict: Channel conflict is as any dispute, difference or discord arising between two or more sales channels or channel partners, where one channel’s activities are in competition with the business, sales, p…
Chargeback: Chargebacks are exactly what they sound like.
Churn Rate: Churn rate is the rate at which a company loses customers annually.
Claw Back: Claw backs are exactly what they sound like.
Closed Lost: A closed lost opportunity is when a deal closes without the prospect converting into a buyer.
Closed Question: The opposite of an openended question, a closed question is typically a yesorno question that directs a prospect toward making a choice or providing a simple oneword answer.
Closed Won: Closed Won is the status of an opportunity where the deal has been closed with the prospect/lead who is now considered a customer.
CLTV: CLTV is the acronym for Customer Lifetime Value.
Cold Calling: Cold calling is a form of sales prospecting in which a salesperson attempts to develop business from potential customers who have not previously expressed interest in the seller’s product or solution.
Commission: Commission is the amount of money a sales professional earns for reaching a specific sales volume or for executing one or more business transactions.
Conversion: Conversion can be used in several different contexts.
Conversion Rate: Conversion Rate is a sales performance metric that measures the success in converting leads from one step in the process to another.
Cost of Sales: The cost of sales is all costs associated with acquiring a new customer, including compensation of field sellers, demonstration and other related product cost, and other technology expense.
Coverage gap: The difference between your true market and what's currently sized, tiered, and accurate in your CRM.
CRM: Customer Resource Management is a technology that was originally developed to help sale reps manage sales opportunities but has evolved into a doall system that that handles everything from prospecti…
Customer Buying Journey: The Customer Buyer Journey is like the Customer Buying Process but includes more aspects of what the buyer is feeling, thinking and doing along the way.
Customer Buying Process: A customer buying process is a series of steps that a company employs when it is making decisions about and following through with making a purchase.
Customer Suppression: The engineered guarantee that outreach never targets a company you already serve.
Data Decay: The steady rot of B2B contact and account data — roughly 30% per year — as people change jobs and companies change shape.
Deal Flow: The rate at which sales teams or individual reps obtain new leads and sales opportunities.
Decision Theory: Decision Theory (or Prospect Theory) is an economic principle that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk.
Demo: Short for demonstration this is commonly the first step in a sales process for a software or product offering.
DM: The decision maker, or DM, is the person who ultimately approves a sale or purchase.
DNQ: This is the list of specific companies that are already engaged by a sales rep or a partner, and thus, can’t be touch by prospecting efforts.
Draw: An advance against a sales rep’s future earnings.
Emotional Sale: A selling method that attempts to appeal to a buyer’s emotions, either by generating desire and excitement around the product’s benefits or evoking negative emotions like fear and frustration – pain …
FAB: An acronym for “features, advantage, and benefits.” Sales reps use this threepart structure to communicate the value of their product and/or service, by defining its characteristics (features), the p…
Fractional RevOps: Senior revenue-operations leadership rented part-time instead of hired — typically $5K–$18K/month across the category — governance without the full-time salary.
Funnel: There are a lot of wildly different definitions for a sales funnel or just funnel.
Gatekeeper: A gatekeeper is someone who limits access to the decision maker.
GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) is a EU regulation on data protection and privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).
Governed revenue: GTM run as an engineered system — market mapped, data corrected, outreach driven by signal, every result attributable.
GTM Engineering: Building go-to-market motion as engineered systems — data pipelines, enrichment automation, AI research, orchestration — rather than as headcount and manual process.
Ideal Customer Profile: This is a description of your ideal customer… the type of company/employee that would benefit the most from your product and would likely lead to the quickest, easiest sales cycle.
Implication Question: Implication questions come from the SPIN selling methodology.
Influencer: The complexity of most business organizational structures today leads to most B2B buying decisions to evolve a wide cast of characters.
Intellectual Sale: As opposed to an emotional sale, an intellectual sale attempts to appeal to a prospect’s logic and their need for a quick, affordable solution to a problem.
Land and Expand: “Landing” a sale refers to the initial close when you bring on a new customer for the first time.
Lead: This one is complicated in that not all leads are created equal.
Lead Generation Framework: The supporting structure around which a successful lead generation program can be built.
Managed TAM: Your total addressable market as a maintained, governed asset — not a one-time research deliverable.
Marketing Automation: Is a software platform designed for marketing departments to automate marketing efforts (such as email, social media, website landing pages, etc.) and repetitive tasks.
Mirroring: Is a tactic for building rapport with a prospect by adopting their body language or speech patterns.
Month End: To most people, Month end is simply that – the end of the month.
MQL: MQLs or Marketing Qualified Leads, refer to prospects that has demonstrated enough interest or engagement, usually via online interaction, to be identified as a potential customer by the marketing de…
Need-Payoff: Need payoff questions represent the “N” in the SPIN selling methodology.
No Response: A typical lead generation effort entails a multitouch cadence that includes multiple attempts to engage a prospect through email, phone calls, voicemails and social outreach.
NSAs: Nonsalesrelated activities are things that sales reps spend time on that don’t directly lead to sales.
Nurturing: Nurturing is the process of building relationships with prospects, with the goal of earning their business once they are ready.
Objection: A question or concern a prospect raises about your product or service that could get in the way of closing the sale.
Objection Avoidance: Experienced sales professionals learn to know what objections they are likely to face and when.
Open-ended Question: Open ending questions are a form of question that can’t be answered with simple single word answers but is designed to force the recipient of the question to pause, think and reflect before they answ…
PACT: With the advent of new sales methodologies such as The Challenger Sale, many have come to regard BANT as outdated.
Pain Points: Pain or pain points are specific problems or challenges faced by current or prospective customers in the current business environment.
Persona: A persona is a profile of a person that reflects the profile of a person you intend to sell to.
Pipeline Velocity: Pipeline velocity is the speed by which qualified leads move through a sales pipeline.
Pipeline-as-a-Service (PaaS): A managed engagement where the entire pipeline engine — data, targeting, outreach, and reporting — is built and operated for you.
Plan: In a sales context, plan is short for Sales Plan is a business plan that features the development of a company’s sales activity, targets and strategy within a particular time frame.
PPC: PPC stands for payperclick, an approach to internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
Pre-call Plan: A precall plan is an important preparatory step, too often skipped by salespeople.
Predictable Revenue: Is a sales methodology made famous by the book by the same name (“Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com”) written by Aaro…
President’s Club: Commonly the pinnacle of sales achievement, President’s Club (or ProClub), is an annual tradition that recognizes top sales performers and typically includes trips to faraway lands, awards, and gener…
Prospect: A prospect is a potential client for your product or service.
Prospecting: Prospecting is typically the beginning of the sales process and refers to the activities performed by salespeople or sales development representatives (SDRs) to identify potential customers, engage t…
Public Signals: Sourced, verifiable public observations — filings, hiring, press, technology changes — used to rank who needs you now.
Puppy Dog Close: This denotes the strategy of allowing customers to try out a product with no obligation while they make their decision.
Read-Back Verification: Confirming a write or send actually landed by reading it back from the destination system.
Retargeting: Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that is used to help a company keep their brand in front of a web user after they have left the company’s website.
Revenue Intelligence: The reporting-and-signal layer of a revenue system: pipeline health, forecast confidence, and buying signals — only as trustworthy as the data underneath it.
RevOps (Revenue Operations): The discipline of running sales, marketing, and customer success on one governed data and process foundation — one market, one dataset, one operating cadence.
RevOps-as-code: Revenue operations expressed as engineered, repeatable pipelines — enrichment, scoring, research, orchestration — instead of meetings, spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge.
ROI: Return on investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency or profitability of an investment or purchase, or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments or pu…
Run Ledger: The accountability log that ties every automated action to what it cost and whether it verifiably happened.
SAL: SAL is short for Sales Accepted Lead.
Sales Channel: Sales channels are different ways a business uses to sell their product or service.
Sales Funnel: There are a lot of wildly different defections for a sales funnel.
Sales Methodology / Sales Methodologies: A sales methodology is a framework that outlines how your sellers approach each sales engagement and phase of the sales process.
Sales Metrics: Sales metrics or sales performance metrics key data points that represent individual, team or organizational sales or lead generation performance.
Sales Pipeline: A sales pipeline is a set of stages that a prospect moves through as they progress from a “prospect” to a customer.
Sales Prevention Department: A term of nonaffection used to commonly describe your company’s legal department or sales administration.
Sales Process: A sales process is a series of steps a salesperson goes through to guide a prospective buyer towards a purchase.
Sales Quota: A sales quota is the performance or production expectation that sellers must achieve during a set time period to earn their target variable incentive compensation (VIC).
SAM: SAM is the acronym for Serviceable Addressable Market.
Sandbagging: Top sales performers are commonly accused of sandbagging – delaying closing active deals when they are close to hitting their quota for the month, so they can more easily hit their number in the subs…
Sandler: Sandler is a sales training methodology developed by David Sandler in the 1960s.
Script: A Sales Script or Cold Calling Script is a written transcript of what you want your salespeople to say.
SDR: A Sales Development Representative (or BDR, Business Development Representative) is typically responsible for outbound prospecting.
Selling ROI: In many selling opportunities today your biggest competitor is not another company bidding on the same project.
SEO: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of modifying your website and its relevance to the web to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic…
Side Selling: Selling a complementary product or service to a prospect who is using a competitor for your main product.
Signal Scoring: Ranking accounts by observable evidence that they need you now, instead of by instinct or list order.
Skill pack: Codified domain expertise — what we already know about a specific buyer, packaged so the platform arrives understanding them.
Slamming a Lead: This describes when a SDR or BDR presses a prospect into accepting a meeting without the prospect being truly qualified.
Smile and Dial: Cold calling with a cheerful, positive tone of voice—and yes, a smile.
Social Selling: Social selling is the act of leveraging your social network to find and engage prospects.
SOM: SOM stands for Serviceable Obtainable Market.
Spamming: Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of promoting a product or service for any prohibited purpose (espe…
SPIFF: The term spiff can stand for a few different things, but they’re often all related to sales incentives.
SPIN Selling: SPIN Selling is one of the most wellknown — not to mention oldest — selling systems.
SQL: A SQL, or Sales Qualified Lead, is typically the next step a lead achieves from a MQL (or Marketing Qualified Lead).
Stack Rationalization: Auditing the revenue tool stack against what each layer actually produces — then cutting redundancy, closing gaps, and integrating what remains.
Suspect: A term to describe a company or person that is believed to be a potential prospect.
Talk Track: A Talk Track is not a script, but rather a tool or guide to help with a sales conversation.
TAM: TAM or Total Addressable Market is the total market opportunity for a product or service.
Target Account List: While the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is hypothetical, a Target Account List includes the actual, real companies and contact information a salesperson or marketing effort intends to engage.
Territory: A sales territory is typically defined as a geographical area or a particular group of customers and prospects, which is assigned to an individual Salesperson creating their sales territory.
The harness: AI inside an operating system — clean data underneath, expertise codified around, methodology governing what it does.
Time Kills all Deals: Simply put, a sale is less likely to happen as more time passes—so the quicker you can knock down objections and move prospects through your funnel, the better.
Tire-kicker: A prospect who has no intention or ability to buy.
TOFU: The start of the buying process is often described as being Top of the Funnel.
Unconsidered Needs: Problems, challenges, or shortcomings that your prospect doesn’t yet know about, or doesn’t fully understand but are holding them back from moving forward with a new strategic buying initiative.
Upselling: Making a sale more profitable by convincing a customer to purchase a more expensive product that the one they were initially interested in buying or selling additional services or complementary produ…
Whale: A prospect that has the potential to bring tremendous sales revenue to an organization.
Zeroed Out: When a sales rep earns enough commission to make their draw balance equal to zero, they have zeroed out their account and can start earning commissions again.