Sales Development

terms

Account

Contains all the records of customer interactions, including contact information, preferred services, and transactions with your business. This is created after the first time a customer buys from your business.

Account Executive/AE/Closer

A sales team member in charge of closing deals by converting qualified leads into paying customers.

Account Manager/AM/Farmer

A sales team member in charge of managing and up-selling existing clients and accounts.

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

The amount of money a customer pays you every year on a subscription model.

Annual Contract Value (ACV)

The annual contract value as the average annualized revenue per customer contract. ACV is usually compared against customer lifetime value to see how long it takes to pay back the cost of acquiring a customer.

Account-Based Selling

This is a strategy where the entire company coordinates to pursue high value accounts. The departments that are most typically involved in account based selling are sales, marketing, and customer success.

Business Development Representative

Also known as a sales development representative (SDR). This representative is a sales specialist focused on finding new prospects, establishing foundational relationships, and updating the sales pipeline with new leads.

Business to Business(B2B)

Selling business to business.

Business to Consumer(B2C)

Selling business to consumer.

Business Unit

A group of people representing a specific department or product within a company such as accounting or manufacturing.

Buyer Persona

A representation of the ideal customer for your business. Companies create buyer personas based on market research and data about existing customers. Having a buyer persona in mind is important for marketers creating a target audience and for sales representatives qualifying leads.

Buying Signal

A verbal or nonverbal cues that show a customer is ready to make a purchase, such as signing up for a free trial or asking about contract specifics. Picking up on these signals can help sales reps better focus their attention on customers that are giving off more buying signals.

C-Level / C-Suite

Highest level executives

Champion

A prospect within a company that wants to purchase your product or service and is willing to do everything they can to help convince the others in the company to make the purchase.

Channel Partner

A person or company that offers services or products on behalf of another company.

Channel Sales

Focusing on different sales channels, such as an in-house sales team, retailers, referrals, dealers etc.

Churn

The percentage of clients that leave or stop using your services or products within a certain time period.

Closing Ratio

The number of deals closed compared to the number of engaged prospects. This ratio can be used to evaluate the performance of an individual sales rep and forecast sales.

Clients

Closed opportunities, paying clients and people that your account managers should take care of.

Closers

Or Account Executives, they are focused on closing deals and they only prospect a small number of strategic accounts.

Cold Call

Attempt to engage with a prospect (that you don't yet have a relationship established) on a call.

Cold Email

Attempt to engage with prospects via email; sending a sales proposal to someone that you don't yet have a relationship with.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The cost of acquiring new paying clients

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Also known as lifetime value (LTV). The total lifetime value of one client in terms of the revenue they'll bring before they churn.

Customer Relationship Management/CRM

A software or Internet-based service that helps business owners and sales professionals manage their sales pipeline; track prospects and related activities throughout the sales cycle.

Customer Success

A strategy and a proactive mindset that helps reduce churn rates, increase customer satisfaction with a service/product, and the predictability of recurring revenue.

Decision Maker

The person in charge of making the purchasing decision at a company.

Fortune 500

A list of 500 of the largest companies in the US based on revenue.

GateKeeper

The person who answers the corporate phone and decides to let you talk to the decision-maker or not.

ICP

Ideal Customer Profile is a profile of an ideal client for your business

Inbound

Interest that comes in (received cold emails, submitted forms..)

Inbound Sales

Sales that happen as a result of customers directly approaching and engaging with the brand/company.

Lead

Someone who is a potential fit to purchase your product or service

Lead Generation

All of the activities that have a goal to generate interest around a product or a service through different methods - content marketing, PPC, referrals, outbound marketing, and partnerships.

Lead Nurturing

Engaging and building a long-term relationship with existing prospects.

Lead Qualification

A process of qualifying if a lead is a good fit to purchase your product or service.

Lead Scoring

Assigning a value to every lead based on predefined criteria, in order to rank leads in terms of engaging priority

Influencer

Someone who has a strong influence over the purchase of a product or service, but isn't the final decision-maker.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A lead that will most likely become a paying client, based on what pages the lead visited, what action they took on the company website, and other online engagement.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

The amount of regular and predictable income a company expects to receive every month.

Onboarding

A set of actions or a process of introducing a new client with a service or product. Setting up an account and introducing the client with their point of contact at the company.

Opportunities

A qualified lead that is a good fit for your solution. An SDR has qualified this person as someone who has the need and ability to purchase.

Outbound Sales

Cold calling, cold emailing and social selling, with the goal of initiating contact with a prospective client and ultimately closing the deal.

Point of Contact

A person or a department within a company that the client can reach out to with questions or specific requests.

Profit margin

A ratio of profitability that reveals how much money a company actually makes. It is the amount by which revenue from sales exceeds costs. To calculate profit margin, divide your gross profit (revenue-cost of goods sold) by revenue.

Prospects

A list of names and contact information in some type of list, database or CRM.

Referral

Method of generating new sales leads, where someone refers a potential client to you.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Shows the effectiveness of the initial investment. It is a ratio between net profit and the cost of investment.

Revenue

The amount of money one business generates in the specific time period (a year, a quarter...).

SaaS

An acronym for Software as a Service

Sales Acceleration

Speeding up the sales process using different tools and technologies to boost productivity and efficiency.

Sales Automation

A process of automating sales workflow by using a software or an online tool. It can help simplify, speed up and streamline the sales process.

Sales Cadence

A determined sequence of sales activities and the frequency at which the sales team interacts with leads.

Sales Cycle

Predictable sequences and stages that a company goes through as they sell their product or service.

Sales Demo

An event that serves as a showcase of the product or service that the company is selling.

Sales Development Representative(SDR)

Or an SDR; sales representative focused on prospecting and finding new sales opportunities.

Sales Enablement

Providing sales professionals with necessary tools, technology, training, and other resources in order for them to have better performance at customer engagement.

Sales Funnel

A visual representation of sales processes with defined stages, that every potential client goes through as they are let towards a final decision - buying a product or service.

Sales Pipeline

A visual representation of a sales process and stages of each individual prospect.

Sales Prospecting

A process of finding and identifying new prospective clients using different outbound methods - cold email, social selling, advertising etc.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

A potential client that already met all the necessary criteria, and is forwarded to Account Executive to close the deal

Scraping Data

Extraction of large amounts of data from websites

Segmentation

A process of dividing a large market or a contact list into smaller segments based on different criteria - location, company size, revenue etc.

Social Selling

A sales tactic that involves using social media as a sales channel. SDRs engage and create relationships with prospects by probing their needs and providing relevant and valuable insight.

Top of the Funnel

A term that refers to the top of the sales or marketing funnel, where all prospects go through a qualification process, both from inbound and outbound efforts.

Unique Selling Point/Proposition

Unique features of a business that sets it apart from the competitors.

Vertical

A specific segment of the market where a business targets only a specific industry, sector or niche.