Every team has its own dialect for the same concepts. Marketing calls it a lead; sales calls it a prospect; RevOps calls it an MQL. Meanwhile, someone in the first week of their SDR role is nodding along and quietly googling "what is BANT" under the table.

This glossary cuts through it. Fifty terms, plain English, operationally grounded — not just what the term means in theory, but what it means when you're actually running pipeline. Use the sidebar navigation to jump to any letter section.

A

Annual Contract Value ACV
The normalised annual revenue of a customer contract, stripping out one-time fees and multi-year discounts. If a customer signs a $90k, 3-year deal with $10k in setup fees, ACV is $80k / 3 = ~$26.7k. ACV is the most useful metric for comparing deal sizes across different contract structures. It's what sales comp plans are typically built around.
Account Executive AE
The salesperson responsible for closing deals — typically taking over from an SDR after a qualified demo or discovery call. AEs own the full sales cycle from first meeting through contract signature. In most B2B orgs, AEs carry a quota and are compensated on closed-won revenue. The boundary between SDR and AE handoff is one of the most important process decisions a sales team makes.
Annual Recurring Revenue ARR
The total annualised value of all active subscriptions at a point in time. ARR is the core health metric for SaaS businesses. Net new ARR = new customer ARR + expansion ARR – churn ARR – contraction ARR. If you're growing ARR but churning fast, your net new ARR will hide the problem until it's very expensive.
Account-Based Marketing ABM
A GTM approach where marketing and sales align on a specific list of target accounts and run coordinated campaigns to those accounts — rather than casting a wide net and scoring leads. ABM requires tight ICP definition, account selection criteria, and sales-marketing alignment on messaging. It typically improves pipeline quality at the cost of volume.

B

Business Development Representative BDR
In most orgs, a BDR and an SDR are the same role. When the distinction matters, BDRs focus on outbound prospecting into net-new accounts (enterprise, strategic), while SDRs handle inbound qualification or smaller segments. The title varies by company — don't read too much into it when evaluating candidates.
BANT Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline
A classic framework for qualifying whether a prospect is worth pursuing. Budget: can they afford it? Authority: are you talking to the decision-maker? Need: do they have a real problem your product solves? Timeline: when are they buying? BANT is useful as a checklist but shouldn't be used as a script — real discovery is a conversation, not a questionnaire.
Booked Demo Rate
The percentage of outreach contacts (or MQLs) who actually book a demo or discovery call. If you send 500 cold emails and 20 people book a call, your booked demo rate is 4%. This metric sits between reply rate and pipeline creation, making it the sharpest signal of whether your targeting and messaging are working together.
Brownfield Account
An existing customer account where there is opportunity to expand, upsell, or cross-sell — as opposed to a greenfield account where you're starting from zero. Brownfield selling is generally higher win-rate because you already have a relationship, but it requires account management discipline to identify expansion signals before the renewal window.

C

Customer Acquisition Cost CAC
The total cost to acquire one new customer — including sales salaries, marketing spend, tools, and overhead — divided by the number of new customers acquired in the period. A healthy SaaS business typically targets a CAC payback period of 12–18 months. CAC:LTV ratio of at least 3:1 is the benchmark most investors and CFOs use.
Cold Email Sequence
A pre-planned series of emails sent to a prospect who hasn't opted in — typically 3–7 steps over 10–21 days, alternating between value-led messages and softer follow-ups. A well-built sequence does not feel like a drip — each email should be useful and short enough to read in 30 seconds. The sequence ends when a prospect replies, books, or opts out.
Conversion Rate (Top of Funnel)
The percentage of contacts who move from one stage to the next — most commonly measured at email open → reply, reply → booked call, or booked call → qualified opportunity. Top-of-funnel conversion rates below benchmarks usually point to targeting or messaging failures, not process failures. Fix those before adding more volume.
Coverage Ratio
Pipeline value divided by quota. A 3x coverage ratio means you have $300k in pipeline against a $100k quota. Most sales orgs target 3x–4x. Below 2x mid-quarter signals a pipeline generation problem. Above 5x often signals a definition problem — deals may be staged too loosely. See also: Pipeline Coverage.
Champion (Sales)
The internal advocate at a prospect company who wants your product to win. Champions surface objections before they become blockers, influence the buying committee, and facilitate access to the economic buyer. Losing your champion mid-deal (through job change, internal politics, or neglect) is the most common reason deals die at late stage.

D–F

Deal Stage
A label assigned to an opportunity in your CRM indicating how far it has progressed through the sales process. Common stages: Discovery, Demo, Evaluation, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won, Closed Lost. Deal stages should reflect what has happened (e.g. "demo completed"), not what you hope happens next. Stages that don't reflect reality produce forecasts that don't forecast.
Demand Generation Demand Gen
The function (and the campaigns) responsible for creating awareness and demand for your product — across both inbound content and outbound-assisted channels. Demand gen is broader than lead gen: it includes brand building, thought leadership, and nurture. When done well, demand gen reduces the friction your SDRs face because prospects already know who you are.
Discovery Call
The first substantive conversation between a salesperson and a qualified prospect — focused on understanding the prospect's situation, pain, timeline, and fit. Discovery is the most important call in the sales process. AEs who skip it rush to pitch and lose late-stage deals to competitors who took the time to understand the problem.
Deal Velocity
How fast a deal moves through the pipeline, typically measured in days from stage entry to stage exit. Deals that stall in a stage longer than your average are at risk. Tracking velocity by stage, AE, and segment tells you exactly where the friction in your sales process lives.
Enrichment (Data)
The process of appending additional information to a raw contact or company record — firmographics, technographics, job changes, funding data, LinkedIn URL, direct dial. Enrichment turns a name and email into a targeted, context-rich lead. Tools like Clay, Clearbit, and Apollo are commonly used. Enrichment quality directly impacts personalisation depth and reply rates.
Executive Sponsor
A senior leader (VP, C-suite) at the vendor side who has a relationship with the equivalent senior leader at the prospect. In complex enterprise deals, executive sponsorship accelerates access, reduces procurement friction, and signals deal seriousness. It should be intentional, not just a courtesy call — executive sponsors need a prepared talking track.
Firmographics
Demographic-style attributes of companies: industry, employee headcount, revenue, geography, funding stage, and legal structure. Firmographics are the primary filters used to build a prospect list against an ICP. Strong firmographic segmentation means you're targeting companies that structurally look like your best customers — before you even look at intent signals.
Forecast Category
A classification applied to open opportunities indicating how likely they are to close in the period. Common categories: Commit (AE would stake their rep on it closing), Best Case (could close if everything goes right), Pipeline (early or uncertain), Omitted (not expected this period). Forecast categories are separate from deal stages and give the revenue leader a confidence-weighted view of the quarter.
Funnel Velocity
A composite metric that measures how quickly revenue moves through your entire funnel — combining deal count, average deal size, win rate, and sales cycle length. Formula: (opportunities × win rate × ACV) / sales cycle days. Improving any one input increases velocity. Most teams focus on win rate; the bigger lever is often shortening sales cycle length.

G–I

Go-to-Market GTM
The strategy and execution plan a company uses to bring a product to market and acquire customers. A GTM includes: who you're targeting (ICP), what you're saying (positioning and messaging), how you're reaching them (channels and motions), and how you're closing them (sales process and enablement). GTM is not a one-time launch — it's an ongoing operating function.
GTM Motion
The primary mechanism a company uses to acquire and expand customers. The four main motions are: product-led (the product itself drives adoption), sales-led (SDRs and AEs drive acquisition), community-led (a user community generates pipeline), and partner-led (channel or reseller partners drive distribution). Most companies blend motions, but one dominates at each growth stage.
Greenfield Account
A prospect account with no prior relationship with your company — a blank slate. Greenfield selling requires more education and trust-building than brownfield expansion. Most new-logo sales motions are greenfield. High-quality ICP targeting reduces the cost of working greenfield accounts by ensuring you're spending time on accounts most likely to convert.
High-Velocity Sales
A sales model optimised for speed over customisation — short cycles, standardised demos, rapid qualification, and digital-first closing. Common in SMB SaaS where deal sizes don't justify long enterprise sales cycles. High-velocity teams compensate with volume: more sequences, more calls, faster handoffs, and tight SLAs between stages.
High-Quality Lead HQL
A lead that meets a higher qualification bar than a standard MQL — typically requiring human confirmation of interest (a real conversation or form submission with intent signals) rather than just behavioural scoring. HQLs are often used in demand gen programs where quality is prioritised over volume, particularly in enterprise ABM campaigns.
Ideal Customer Profile ICP
A detailed description of the type of company most likely to buy, use, and get value from your product. A good ICP includes firmographics (industry, size, geography), technographics (tools they use), trigger events (funding, hiring, expansion), and exclusion criteria. The ICP is the most important input to any GTM motion — everything downstream degrades if it's wrong.
Inbound SDR
An SDR who primarily works leads generated by marketing — website forms, content downloads, webinar sign-ups, or inbound demo requests. Inbound SDRs tend to have faster conversations because prospects have already self-selected. Their primary job is rapid qualification and handoff to AEs. SLA management (responding within minutes, not hours) is the critical variable.
Intent Data
Signals that indicate a company or individual is actively researching a problem or category — typically from third-party data providers tracking content consumption across the web. Examples include G2 page views, Bombora topic surges, or LinkedIn engagement patterns. Intent data is most valuable when layered on top of ICP filters, not used in isolation.
Inbound Qualified IQS
A lead that arrived inbound and has been confirmed as meeting your ICP criteria through a qualification conversation or scoring model. Different orgs use different terminology — some call this an SAL (Sales Accepted Lead). The key distinction from an MQL is that IQS requires active validation, not just scoring thresholds.

J–L

Job to Be Done (Sales)
The underlying goal a buyer is trying to accomplish — distinct from the features or product they're evaluating. "Jobs to be done" thinking pushes salespeople to understand the outcome the prospect wants (e.g. "reduce time-to-hire by 40%") rather than pitching product capabilities. The best discovery calls are built around uncovering the real job, not the stated RFP requirement.
Lead
A person or company that has shown some form of interest or fit — the broadest term in the funnel. A lead may be inbound (form fill, demo request) or outbound (SDR-sourced contact). The term is deliberately loose; the meaningful distinction is where in the funnel a lead sits and how it's been qualified. Most pipeline debates happen because "lead" means different things to marketing and sales.
Lead Scoring
A methodology for ranking leads based on their likelihood to convert — assigning points for firmographic fit, behavioural signals, and engagement. Lead scoring models need regular calibration against actual close data, or they drift. The most common failure: scoring based on activity (page views, email opens) rather than intent and fit.
Lifetime Value LTV
The total revenue a customer is expected to generate over the entire relationship with your company. LTV = ACV × average customer lifespan (or ACV / churn rate). LTV is the denominator that makes CAC meaningful. A $10k CAC is expensive for a $15k LTV customer and cheap for a $150k LTV enterprise account.
Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate
The percentage of leads that become qualified sales opportunities — one of the most important indicators of SDR and lead quality. If your L2O rate is low, the problem is usually: leads are not ICP-fit, SDRs are accepting unqualified meetings, or the AE handoff process is broken. Fix root cause before adding lead volume.

M–P

Marketing Qualified Lead MQL
A lead that marketing has scored as ready to pass to sales — typically based on a combination of firmographic fit and behavioural engagement (content downloads, form fills, email clicks). The MQL threshold should be set collaboratively between marketing and sales. If AEs are rejecting too many MQLs, the threshold is too low. If SDRs can't convert MQLs, the ICP needs revisiting.
Monthly Recurring Revenue MRR
The monthly normalised value of all active subscriptions. MRR = ARR / 12 for annual contracts, or the sum of monthly plan values for month-to-month customers. Net MRR growth = new MRR + expansion MRR – churned MRR – contraction MRR. For early-stage companies, MRR is watched weekly — it's the closest real-time signal of business health.
Multi-Threading (Sales)
Building relationships with multiple stakeholders at a prospect account — not just the primary contact — to reduce the risk of deal loss when a single champion leaves, loses authority, or goes cold. A well multi-threaded deal has economic buyer access, a champion, and at least one technical or user-side contact. Single-threaded deals lose late without warning.
Net New ARR
The actual ARR added in a period after accounting for churn and contraction. Net new ARR = new logo ARR + expansion ARR – churned ARR – contraction ARR. It's the most honest growth metric for a SaaS business because it captures both what you won and what you lost. Boards and investors look at net new ARR trends more than gross new logo numbers.
Net Promoter Score NPS
A customer satisfaction metric based on a single question: "How likely are you to recommend us to a colleague?" Scores 9–10 = Promoters, 7–8 = Passives, 0–6 = Detractors. NPS = % Promoters – % Detractors. As a standalone metric NPS is noisy — it's most valuable when tracked over time and correlated with retention, expansion, and churn data.
Outbound SDR
An SDR whose primary job is cold prospecting — identifying and reaching out to ICP-fit contacts who have not expressed prior interest. Outbound SDRs work from lead lists, intent data, and sequencing tools. Their metric is SQLs sourced from outbound. The best outbound SDRs spend more time on research and personalisation than on sending volume.
Open Rate (Email)
The percentage of sent emails that were opened. Due to Apple Mail Privacy Protection and similar changes, open rate data is increasingly unreliable for cold email — many "opens" are auto-tracked by email clients. Use reply rate and booked demo rate as your primary cold email metrics instead. Open rate is still useful for subject line A/B testing in controlled conditions.
Opportunity (Pipeline Stage)
A qualified prospect that has been accepted by sales and entered the pipeline as an active deal. Creating an opportunity in the CRM is a commitment that the account is worth pursuing — it should require a minimum qualification bar (ICP fit + confirmed interest). Opportunities that don't meet this bar inflate pipeline and corrupt forecasting.
Pipeline
The total value of all open sales opportunities in your CRM at a given point in time. Pipeline is a leading indicator of future revenue — but only if deal stages are accurate and weighted realistically. Raw pipeline number without coverage ratio or stage-weighted probability is a vanity metric. "We have $2M in pipeline" is meaningless without the close rate and timeline context.
Pipeline Coverage
See: Coverage Ratio. The multiple of pipeline value versus quota. Standard target is 3x–4x. Pipeline coverage is the most important early-warning metric for a revenue leader — it tells you weeks before quarter-end whether you have a pipeline problem or a closing problem.
Persona
A semi-fictional representation of a specific buyer type — their role, goals, pain points, objections, and buying behaviour. Personas are most useful when built from real customer interviews, not assumed archetypes. Common B2B personas in outbound: economic buyer (CFO/VP level), champion (Director/Manager level), technical evaluator (IT or ops). Each needs different messaging.
Product-Led Growth PLG
A GTM motion where the product itself drives user acquisition, expansion, and retention — through freemium, free trial, or self-serve onboarding flows. PLG reduces CAC by letting the product do the selling, but requires exceptional product experience and strong in-app engagement hooks. Many PLG companies layer a sales motion on top once free users hit a usage threshold.
Proof of Concept POC
A limited, time-boxed deployment of your product within a prospect's environment to validate that it solves their specific problem before full purchase. POCs can accelerate enterprise deals but add sales cycle length if not scoped and time-limited. A good POC has defined success criteria agreed upfront — otherwise it becomes an open-ended evaluation that drags on.

Q–S

Quota
The revenue target assigned to a salesperson (or team) for a given period — most commonly quarterly or annual. Quota is the primary variable around which sales compensation is built. Quota setting is both a math problem (what growth does the business need?) and a human problem (is the number motivating or demoralising?). Quota attainment below 60% across a team usually signals a quota-setting or territory design problem, not an individual performance problem.
Quota Attainment
The percentage of quota achieved by a rep or team in a period. Healthy teams typically see 60–70% of reps hitting quota. If attainment is too low, investigate: is the quota realistic given territory and pipeline? If attainment is too high (90%+), quota may be set too conservatively — you're leaving growth on the table.
Quarterly Business Review QBR
A structured review meeting between a vendor's account team and a customer's stakeholders — held quarterly — to review performance, share results, discuss challenges, and align on the next quarter's priorities. QBRs are a retention and expansion play. Teams that do them well tend to have higher NRR (net revenue retention) because they catch problems before they become churn.
Ramp Period
The time it takes a new salesperson to become fully productive — typically 3–6 months for an SDR and 4–9 months for an AE, depending on deal complexity. During ramp, quota is often prorated. Ramp length should factor into revenue planning: if you hire 4 AEs in January, don't model their full quota contribution until Q3.
Reply Rate
The percentage of sent cold emails that received a reply — including out-of-office, unsubscribes, and negative responses. The most honest top-of-funnel metric for cold outbound. A good benchmark for cold email is 2–5% reply rate; best-in-class personalised campaigns can hit 8–12%. If reply rate is below 2%, fix targeting and copy before adding send volume.
Revenue Operations RevOps
The function responsible for aligning sales, marketing, and customer success around shared data, processes, and tooling — with the goal of making the revenue engine more efficient and predictable. RevOps owns CRM hygiene, reporting, tech stack management, and process design. A strong RevOps function is the difference between a revenue team that has data and one that acts on it.
Revenue Cadence
The structured rhythm of meetings and reviews that a revenue team runs to manage pipeline, performance, and forecasting — typically: daily standups, weekly pipeline reviews, monthly forecast calls, and quarterly business reviews. The cadence is the operating system of the revenue org. Teams without a cadence make decisions reactively; teams with one make them proactively.
Sales Development Representative SDR
The role responsible for top-of-funnel pipeline generation — qualifying inbound leads or prospecting outbound contacts and booking meetings for AEs. SDRs are measured on SQLs or meetings booked. The SDR function is the highest-leverage investment in outbound-led GTM: one great SDR can feed two to three AEs if the motion is set up correctly.
Service Level Agreement SLA
A documented commitment between two functions or teams on response times and quality standards. In GTM, the most important SLA is between marketing (MQL delivery) and sales (MQL follow-up speed). A typical SLA: sales must attempt first contact within 5 minutes of an inbound form fill. Speed-to-lead is one of the highest-impact variables in inbound conversion.
Sequencer (Tool)
A sales engagement platform that automates multi-step outreach sequences — email, LinkedIn, and sometimes calls — across a list of prospects. Common tools: Instantly, Smartlead, Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo. Sequencers are infrastructure, not strategy. They amplify the quality of your targeting and copy — and also amplify the damage if either is wrong.
Spiff
A short-term cash incentive paid to sales reps for hitting a specific goal — closing a particular product, reaching a threshold in a week, or selling into a new vertical. Spiffs are effective for driving short bursts of behaviour change. They should be used sparingly — too many and they become expected, which raises base cost without changing behaviour.
Sales Qualified Lead SQL
A lead that has been contacted by sales and confirmed as meeting ICP criteria and having genuine buying intent. SQLs become opportunities in the CRM. The SQL conversion rate (MQLs → SQLs) is the cleanest measure of lead quality from marketing. If AEs are rejecting SQLs created by SDRs, you have a qualification process misalignment.
Sales Cycle
The total elapsed time from first meaningful contact to closed deal. Sales cycle length varies widely by deal size and complexity: SMB SaaS might close in 2–4 weeks, mid-market in 6–12 weeks, enterprise in 3–12+ months. Shortening the sales cycle (through better discovery, POC structure, and champion development) is one of the highest-leverage operational improvements a B2B company can make.

T–Z

TAM / SAM / SOM
Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the full market if you won 100% — a theoretical ceiling. Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) is the portion you can actually target with your current product and motion. Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is the realistic share you can win given your resources and competitive position. Investors scrutinise SAM and SOM — TAM alone is not a GTM argument.
Total Contract Value TCV
The full value of a contract over its entire term — including one-time fees, implementation, and all recurring revenue. TCV on a 3-year $100k/year contract with $20k setup = $320k. TCV is most relevant for understanding the full financial commitment of a deal, particularly in enterprise sales where finance teams compare TCV against budget cycles.
Tech Stack
The collection of software tools a company uses to run its GTM and revenue operations — CRM, sequencer, data enrichment, intent data, analytics, communication, and more. A clean, well-integrated tech stack reduces data fragmentation and manual work. The most common tech stack problem is tool sprawl: too many tools doing overlapping jobs, with no single source of truth.
Touchpoint
Any interaction between your company and a prospect or customer — email, call, LinkedIn message, ad impression, webinar attendance, or in-person meeting. Multi-touchpoint attribution tries to credit the right touchpoints for a conversion. In practice, most B2B deals require 8–12 touchpoints before a meaningful conversation. Tracking touchpoints in CRM is how you measure what's actually working.
Deal Velocity
How quickly opportunities move through the pipeline — measured in average days per stage. Low velocity in a specific stage (e.g. Evaluation → Proposal) pinpoints where deals stall. High velocity across all stages indicates a healthy, well-executed sales process. See also: Funnel Velocity for the end-to-end composite metric.
Value Proposition Value Prop
The clear statement of how your product or service solves a specific problem better than alternatives — and the specific outcomes a customer gets as a result. A strong value prop is quantified (time saved, revenue increased, cost reduced), specific to a persona, and grounded in proof. "We help teams collaborate better" is a feature description. "We reduce time-to-hire by 35% for high-growth engineering teams" is a value prop.
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This glossary is updated as terms evolve and new ones enter common use. If you're building a GTM function and want a second opinion on your ICP, pipeline process, or RevOps setup, book a 30-minute call — no pitch, just useful direction.

GTM Glossary RevOps Outbound Sales Terms B2B Sales