The GTM & sales glossary

A 3-year deal worth 90k total has an ACV of 30k. Used to size up the average deal and to plan how many AEs and SDRs you need to hit a revenue target.

Takes the handoff from an SDR, runs the demo, scopes the deal, negotiates pricing, closes. Usually carries a quota in ARR or bookings.

Most AI SDRs scrape, enrich, and send sequences. Quality varies wildly. The good ones replace the boring repetitive parts so a human can focus on real conversations.

Marketing warms an account with ads and content, an SDR sends a sequence, an AE asks for a warm intro on LinkedIn. The point is concentration, not channel.

The headline metric for SaaS companies. ARR only counts the recurring part: one-off setup fees do not count, but a 100/month subscription contributes 1,200 in ARR.

For a CRM, activation might be importing the first 100 contacts. Teams obsess over activation because users who never activate almost always churn.

Overlaps heavily with SDR. Some teams use BDR for pure outbound and SDR for inbound, others use them interchangeably.

BOFU content is pricing pages, case studies, ROI calculators. BOFU motions are demos, proofs of concept, and procurement.

High bounce rates wreck deliverability. Verify emails before sending, warm up new domains, and rotate sending addresses if needed.

For a sales tool: "Head of Sales, 5 to 20 reps, frustrated by low reply rates, reads LinkedIn for new tactics." Used to shape messaging, ads, and qualification.

A typical cadence might be 6 to 12 touches over 2 to 3 weeks across email, phone, and LinkedIn. Tools like Outreach and Salesloft were built around this.

Different from the economic buyer (who signs) and the user (who uses it). MEDDPICC treats finding a Champion as a key part of qualification.

Gross churn = customers lost. Net churn = customers lost minus expansion revenue from those who stayed. Below-zero net churn means existing customers grow faster than you lose them.

A 25% close rate means 1 in 4 qualified opps becomes a paying customer. Used to back into how many opps you need to hit a revenue target.

Closed-lost should always have a reason logged (price, timing, competitor, no-decision) so the team can learn what is killing deals.

Cohort analysis shows whether retention is getting better or worse over time. If the May cohort churns less than the March one, something improved.

Works when it is short, specific, and clearly relevant to that one person. Stops working the moment it looks templated.

Less common than it used to be in many markets but still effective for high-ACV B2B where decision-makers pick up the phone.

The forecast usually breaks down into categories: pipeline, best case, commit, closed. Commit is the most certain bucket short of already closed.

For most B2B markets, 1% to 5% is normal. Calling within 5 minutes of a website signup pushes this much higher.

Always express it with the two stages, otherwise it is meaningless. "Our conversion rate is 8%" tells you nothing without context.

Salesforce and HubSpot are the two dominant ones. The CRM is where SDRs, AEs, and managers live every day, and where every other GTM tool eventually syncs.

In SaaS, CSMs are usually the second-biggest revenue lever after AEs, because renewals and expansion compound.

For cold email, CTR is much less meaningful than reply rate. For ads, it is one of the main optimisation targets.

Often not the person you first speak to. A big chunk of B2B sales is figuring out who the real decision-maker is and getting in front of them.

Good demos are tailored to the pains the prospect described in discovery. Bad demos are the same generic tour every time.

Usually 25 to 45 minutes, mostly questions. The output is a clear picture of pains, current solution, decision process, and timing.

Lighter touch than a sales cadence. Drips nurture warm leads over weeks or months without manual effort, often based on segments.

Driven by domain reputation, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, content, send volume, and engagement. Bad deliverability silently kills outbound results.

Enrichment turns a bare email address into something a sales rep can actually use. Tools like Clay, Apollo, and Cognism specialise in this.

Usually 1,000+ employees. Sales cycles run 6 to 18 months. ACV is high, but so is the cost of pursuing the deal.

Trades sales effort for self-serve volume. Works when the free tier converts a small but reliable share into paid.

Visitors at the top, signups, MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, customers at the bottom. Each stage has a conversion rate, and the funnel narrows as you go down.

A GTM motion combines an ICP, a pricing model, a channel mix (outbound, inbound, partnerships), and a sales process. Most early-stage companies need to find one that compounds.

Higher intent and lower cost per lead than outbound on average, but slower to scale and harder to control.

Sources include G2 reviews viewed, search terms, review-site visits, and content downloads. Used to prioritise outbound on accounts likely to convert now.

Default mode for most SaaS today. Field sales still exists at the very top of enterprise and in industries where in-person is expected.

Often used loosely. Some teams reserve "lead" for individuals and "account" for companies. MQL and SQL are stricter sub-categories.

The classic inbound trade: useful content for permission to follow up. Quality matters more than quantity, otherwise the list goes cold fast.

Fit means firmographics matching the ICP, engagement means actions taken (visited pricing, opened emails). Above a threshold, the lead becomes an MQL.

"We landed two logos this quarter" means two new customers. Often used when the brand matters more than the deal size: a marquee logo helps close future deals.

Compared to CAC: LTV/CAC above 3 is usually healthy for SaaS. Below 1 means you are losing money on every customer.

Triggered by a combination of ICP fit and engagement score. The handoff from MQL to SQL is one of the most argued-about transitions in GTM.

Sweet spot for many SaaS businesses: deals are big enough to justify a sales team, but cycles are short enough to scale.

Reduces single-point-of-failure risk: if your contact leaves or goes quiet, the deal does not die. Required in enterprise, smart in mid-market.

Same idea as ARR but at monthly granularity. ARR = MRR x 12. Used more by month-to-month SaaS and PLG companies.

Best-in-class SaaS sits at 120%+ NRR: existing customers spend more this year than last year despite churn. Below 90% is a real problem.

Normal at low rates. High no-show rates are usually a sign of weak qualification, bad reminders, or low intent on the prospect side.

Usually done with low-touch email content (newsletter, product updates, useful guides) until a signal triggers a sales reach-out.

An opportunity has been qualified beyond a lead: there is a real pain, a real budget potential, and a path to closing.

Cold email, cold call, cold LinkedIn. Lower intent than inbound but you control volume and targeting. Works when ICP and message are sharp.

Lower case: any kind of cold contact. Upper case: Outreach.io, a major tool for managing cadences alongside Salesloft.

Pipeline is to sales what inventory is to retail: nothing moves without it. Most teams track total pipeline value and pipeline coverage.

A common target is 3x to 4x: to close 1M, you want 3M to 4M in open pipeline. Below 2x, the rep is probably going to miss.

Usually owned by SDRs and marketing. Some teams now treat pipegen as a shared metric across the whole GTM org.

Slack, Notion, Figma. Sales still exists at PLG companies but kicks in higher up the curve, after users already love the product.

Common in enterprise, especially anything technical. Risky if not scoped: an open-ended POC can drag for months. Always agree success criteria up front.

For an SDR: how to handle a cold reply, how to research an account, what to send on day 1. Reduces ramp time for new hires and stops every rep from reinventing the wheel.

A lead becomes a prospect once you start working them. A prospect becomes an opportunity once they engage and qualify.

Includes researching accounts, finding the right contacts, writing the first message, following up. The unglamorous engine of outbound sales.

A rep is "at quota" when they hit 100%. Compensation is structured so reps above quota make significantly more than reps below.

Owned by CSMs or dedicated renewal managers. A renewal that includes an upsell is called expansion.

CRM admin, reporting, forecasting, territory design, comp plans, tool stack. The bigger the GTM org, the more leverage RevOps has.

In sales pitches, ROI is the language buyers want to hear: not "this is cool" but "this saves you X hours or makes you Y revenue".

Driven by territory, ICP segment, account ownership, or round-robin. Bad routing kills speed-to-lead and creates ownership fights.

SMB cycles can be days, mid-market a few weeks, enterprise many months. Knowing your average cycle is required to forecast and to staff correctly.

In big orgs, a full team. In small orgs, the founder or a head of sales doing it on the side. Either way the goal is shorter ramp and higher win rates.

Big, customisable, complex, expensive. Almost every mid-market or enterprise GTM org runs on it. The competing default at smaller scale is HubSpot.

Does not close deals. Quota is usually meetings booked or qualified opportunities created. Often a first sales job, with promotion to AE as the goal.

By size (SMB, mid-market, enterprise), by industry, by use case. Segmentation drives messaging, pricing, and sales motion.

The traditional B2B model: AEs, SDRs, demos, contracts. Opposite end of the spectrum from PLG, though many companies now combine both.

Short cycles, smaller deals, high volume. Won via simple pricing, fast onboarding, and good self-serve, often paired with light inside sales.

Common in services and in enterprise SaaS with implementation projects. Used alongside or inside an MSA (Master Service Agreement).

One step beyond MQL. The handoff usually requires the rep to confirm fit and intent in a quick first conversation.

Conversion drops sharply after the first 5 minutes. For high-intent inbound, automated meeting links and routing are the cheapest wins available.

Most teams pile up too many tools. The interesting question is not "what is in your stack" but "what would you remove if you had to".

Each stage should have clear entry and exit criteria. Without that, reps push deals to the next stage to look good in the forecast.

Velocity = (Opps x Win rate x Deal size) / Cycle length. Useful because it forces you to argue about which lever to pull, not vague "we need more sales".

Designing territories badly creates either starved reps or rep-on-rep fights. Most companies redesign territories once a year.

TOFU content is blog posts, ads, organic social, podcasts. The job is not to sell but to be remembered when the buyer is ready.

Multi-touch attribution tries to figure out which touchpoints actually moved the deal. Imperfect, but more useful than crediting only the last one.

Trials work when activation is fast and value is obvious. Long trials with no activation are just a delay before churn.

Strong messaging is built around concrete use cases ("warm up cold accounts before SDR outreach") not generic ones ("save time").

Lives inside CRMs, engagement platforms, and tools like Clay or Zapier. The pattern that lets one ops person do the work of ten.