PLAIN ENGLISH B2B SAAS SALES FOUNDATIONS THE SDR / AE MENTAL MODEL BOOK

A comprehensive set of 200 flashcards covering definitions, concepts, and formulas for aspiring SDRs and AEs in B2B SaaS sales.

What is B2B sales?

Selling a product or service from one business to another business. The purchase normally involves more people, more risk checks, and more process than a personal purchase.

What is Go-to-market (GTM)?

The coordinated way a company finds, sells to, and serves its market. It includes target customers, positioning, channels, pricing, sales, marketing, and customer success.

What is a Sales development representative (SDR)?

A seller focused on creating and qualifying early conversations, usually through inbound follow-up and/or outbound prospecting. Their typical output is a quality meeting or accepted opportunity.

What is a Business development representative (BDR)?

Often an outbound-focused version of an SDR, especially for new logo prospecting. Job titles vary by company, so learn the local split of responsibilities.

What is an Account executive (AE)?

A seller who runs qualified deals through discovery, validation, commercial process, and close. In smaller companies, the AE may prospect too.

What is an Account manager (AM)?

The commercial owner of an existing customer relationship, often responsible for renewals, expansion, and strategic account growth.

What is a Customer success manager (CSM)?

A post-sale partner who helps customers adopt the product and achieve the outcomes they bought it for. A CSM may not own renewal revenue, but they strongly influence it.

What is Revenue operations (RevOps)?

The team and operating model that connects sales, marketing, customer success, data, process, systems, and reporting.

How is the Marketing function defined?

The function that creates awareness, demand, content, positioning, and programs that help the market understand a company. Marketing and sales should share a definition of a good buyer.

What is Inbound?

A motion where a buyer raises a hand first by filling out a form, attending an event, starting a trial, or asking for information.

What is Outbound?

A motion where the seller proactively reaches people who have not asked to hear from them yet.

What is a Full-cycle seller?

A seller who owns more than one part of the process, such as prospecting, discovery, closing, and sometimes expansion.

What is a Territory?

The accounts, geography, industry, segment, or named list a seller is assigned to work.

What is a Segment?

A defined slice of the market, such as SMB, mid-market, enterprise, healthcare, or EMEA. Segments often have different buying behavior, deal sizes, and sales cycles.

What is a Sales funnel?

A model of how records move from early interest to closed business, showing the volume that drops off at each step.

What is an Ideal customer profile (ICP)?

The company characteristics most likely to need, buy, adopt, renew, and succeed with your offer. Common traits include industry, size, maturity, geography, and technology stack.

What is a Persona?

A role-based buyer archetype with recurring goals, pressures, measures, and objections, such as a CFO, VP Sales, or CTO.

What is an Account?

The company or organization you are targeting or selling to. One account can contain many contacts, stakeholders, and opportunities.

What is a Target account?

A named company selected for active pursuit because it fits your ICP and territory.

What is a Contact?

A specific person associated with an account and stored in a CRM or sales tool.

What is a Lead?

A potential contact or account with limited evidence of fit or interest.

What is a Prospect?

A lead or account you have selected and researched because there is a credible reason to contact them.

What are Firmographics?

Company attributes such as industry, employee count, location, revenue, ownership, and growth stage.

What are Technographics?

The technologies a company uses or is likely to use, such as CRM, cloud provider, data warehouse, or help desk.

What is Account tiering?

Prioritizing accounts into groups, usually based on fit, potential value, and timing. Higher tiers receive deeper research and more tailored outreach.

What is Total addressable market (TAM)?

The broadest possible market for a solution if every potential buyer that could use it became a customer.

What is Serviceable available market (SAM)?

The portion of TAM your product and current route to market can actually serve.

What is Serviceable obtainable market (SOM)?

The realistic share of SAM a company can win in a defined period, given competition and capacity.

What is a Trigger event?

A recent or upcoming change that may create a reason to act, such as funding, hiring, new leadership, a regulation, a launch, or a contract renewal.

What is an Intent signal?

Behavior or evidence suggesting a company may be researching or considering a category, such as product usage, content engagement, review-site activity, or hiring.

What is a Buying signal?

A direct sign of interest or readiness, such as asking a specific question, inviting a stakeholder, sharing a deadline, or requesting a proposal.

What is Whitespace?

Untapped potential inside an account or customer, such as another department, region, use case, product, or business unit.

What is Account research?

Learning enough about an account, its priorities, people, and likely constraints to form a useful outreach hypothesis.

What is Data enrichment?

Adding or improving account and contact information, such as job title, company size, technology stack, or verified email address.

What is List building?

Creating a prioritized set of target accounts and contacts that match a defined segment, ICP, and campaign.

What is a Cold call?

Calling someone with no established relationship to earn a short, relevant conversation.

What is a Cold email?

A concise unsolicited email that connects a relevant observation to a possible outcome and a simple next step.

What is Personalization?

A specific, meaningful reference to the buyer, their role, their company, or a current initiative.

What is Relevance?

The clear link between your message and a priority, risk, or outcome the recipient is likely to own.

What is a Value proposition?

The outcome a specific buyer can gain and the credible reason your solution can help create it.

What is Positioning?

The way you frame what your product is, who it is for, the problem it solves, and why it is meaningfully different.

What is a Feature?

A product capability or characteristic, such as dashboarding, SSO, workflow automation, or an API.

What is a Benefit?

The practical advantage created by a feature, such as fewer manual steps, faster reporting, or easier governance.

What is an Outcome?

A measurable or meaningful result the customer wants, such as reducing onboarding time, improving conversion, or lowering risk.

What is Differentiation?

A meaningful difference from alternatives that the buyer actually values, tied to their decision criteria.

What is an Elevator pitch?

A brief explanation of who you help, what problem you help solve, and the outcome you enable.

What is a Call to action (CTA)?

The single, specific action you ask the prospect to take, such as a 15-minute comparison or a reply to a question.

What is a Sequence?

A planned series of outreach touches, often across channels and messages, designed to create a conversation over time.

What is Cadence?

The timing, order, and rhythm of touches inside a sequence.

What is a Touchpoint?

Any meaningful interaction or attempted interaction, including an email, call, social message, event conversation, or meeting.

What is Multichannel outreach?

Coordinated outreach through more than one channel, such as phone, email, LinkedIn, events, or partner introductions.

What is Email deliverability?

The ability of legitimate sales email to reach the inbox rather than bounce or land in spam.

What is Opt-out / unsubscribe?

A buyer's request not to receive further marketing or sales communication, and the process for honoring it promptly.

What is Discovery?

A structured conversation to understand the buyer's current situation, problems, goals, impact, stakeholders, and buying path before recommending a solution.

What is an Agenda?

A shared plan for a meeting: what you will cover, what the buyer wants to get from it, and what decision or next step will follow.

What is an Open-ended question?

A question that invites explanation rather than a yes/no answer, such as 'How are you handling that today?'

What is a Probing question?

A respectful follow-up that explores root cause, consequence, priority, or urgency.

What is Active listening?

Paying close attention, reflecting the buyer's language, and following up on what they mean rather than waiting to pitch.

What is a Recap?

A concise summary of what you heard, used to confirm understanding and align on what matters before moving forward.

What is Current state?

How the buyer works today: their tools, process, people, limitations, and measurable consequences.

What is Desired state?

The future process, capability, or result the buyer wants after making a change.

What is a Pain point?

A problem, friction, risk, or missed outcome the customer wants to change.

What is Root cause?

The underlying reason a problem keeps happening, not just its visible symptom.

What is Business impact?

The measurable consequence of a problem or the value of solving it, expressed in time, money, risk, growth, or strategic execution.

What are Metrics?

The numbers a buyer uses to measure performance, such as conversion rate, cost, time, retention, risk exposure, or output.

What is Cost of inaction?

What the customer loses, risks, delays, or continues to spend if they do nothing.

What is a Compelling event?

A specific deadline, consequence, or business event that makes delaying the purchase costly or risky.

What is a Use case?

The specific job, workflow, or situation in which the customer would use the product.

What is a Desired outcome?

The result the buyer wants after solving the problem, such as faster reporting, lower risk, or more revenue.

What is Social proof?

Credible evidence that similar customers achieved a relevant result, such as a case study, reference, benchmark, or peer story.

What is a Business case?

The evidence for why the customer should invest, including impact, cost of inaction, expected return, risks, and alternatives.

What is Return on investment (ROI)?

The value expected from an investment relative to its cost. It can be financial or tied to time, productivity, or strategic capacity.

What is Total cost of ownership (TCO)?

The full cost of choosing and operating a solution, including price, implementation, training, maintenance, risk, and internal effort.

What is Qualification?

Deciding whether an account has fit, meaningful pain, a viable path to buy, and a reason to act now.

What is Fit vs. intent?

Fit means the customer could benefit from the product; intent means they are willing and able to take action now.

What is a Marketing-qualified lead (MQL)?

A lead that marketing believes meets a fit or engagement threshold for sales follow-up.

What is a Sales-qualified lead (SQL)?

A lead sales has accepted as worthy of active pursuit after validating enough fit, interest, or business reason to talk.

What is a Sales-accepted lead (SAL)?

A lead that sales has formally accepted from marketing for follow-up, often before it is fully qualified as an SQL.

What is an Opportunity?

A sufficiently qualified potential transaction tracked in the CRM, normally with a problem, value hypothesis, stage, stakeholders, and next step.

What is BANT?

A basic qualification lens: Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline.

What is MEDDPICC?

An enterprise qualification framework: Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identify Pain, Champion, and Competition.

What is Budget?

Allocated money or a credible route to funding the purchase. 'No budget' can mean no line item yet, not necessarily no deal.

What is Authority?

The ability to influence or approve a decision. A senior title is not proof of authority; learn who can actually move the decision.

What is Need?

A buyer-confirmed problem or desired outcome important enough to solve.

What is Timeline?

The expected decision and start date, tied to a business reason or event.

What are Decision criteria?

The factors the buyer will use to compare options, such as impact, integration, security, usability, support, price, or vendor stability.

What is Decision process?

The people, steps, evaluations, approvals, and documents required to make a choice.

What is Paper process?

The procurement, legal, security, privacy, vendor setup, and contract steps after a preferred solution is selected.

What is a Sales stage?

A defined point in the sales process that should reflect buyer progress and evidence gathered.

What are Exit criteria?

The observable evidence required before moving an opportunity to its next stage.

What is a Next step?

A specific agreed action with an owner and date that advances the buyer's decision.

What is Disqualification?

Intentionally pausing or removing a deal because fit, priority, timing, or a viable buying path is missing.

What is Recycle / nurture?

Moving a not-now prospect into a structured follow-up path until a future trigger or priority makes sense.

What is a Buying committee?

The people who influence, approve, use, evaluate, or block a purchase.

What is a Champion?

An influential internal person who wants the purchase to happen and actively helps you navigate and advocate when you are absent.

What is a Coach?

A trusted insider who gives candid context about politics, process, people, and how to win.

Who is the Economic buyer?

The person with authority over the relevant budget or business priority, often able to say yes despite objections below them.

Who is the Decision maker?

The person or group that chooses the solution. They may differ from the person who owns the budget.

Who is the User buyer?

The person or team that will use the solution or benefit directly from it.

Who is the Technical buyer?

The stakeholder who evaluates architecture, integration, implementation, security, or technical fit.