The Largest Sales Glossary
A comprehensive glossary of sales and marketing. Over 300 terms A-Z. Do you speak business?
A
ABC – Always Be Connecting.
A modern interpretation of a somewhat abandoned concept Always Be Closing which implied that everything a sales rep did throughout the sales process should lead to closing a deal. This pushy strategy has been replaced with a more contemporary approach that it’s essential to get in touch with your prospects, thought leaders, industry influencers, speakers, or potential business partners and build meaningful relationships with them. As we’re in an age of social selling, the larger your network is, the more successful you’ll be, so this ABC 2.0 will naturally result in closing more deals faster.
Above-the-Fold
A marketing term referring to the portion of the text that appears on the top half of a landing page, website, or even printed publication. It’s usually the place where the most important information is provided so that if a website visitor or a prospect doesn’t scroll down, you’ll still be able to grab their attention and get them to take action.
A/B Testing
Also known as split testing, this is a method of comparing two different versions of the same web page, email copy, subject line, or anything else that you want to test. It helps you determine which variant performs better, based on your audience’s response, and improve your marketing and sales results.
Account
The sum of all the background information about a client, be it an individual or a corporation, together with contact details, preferences, behavioral patterns, and purchasing history.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
A highly targeted and personalized marketing approach, which perceives individual accounts as markets per se, instead of trying to appeal to an entire market. Besides that, ABM takes into consideration different people who constitute each account and participate in the decision-making process as well as their perspectives, all of which makes this strategy excellent for enterprise accounts.
Account-Based Selling (ABS)
A comprehensive, hyper-personalized strategy that treats every account as a market (audience) in its own right. In other words, it’s a concept that takes the 1-on-1 approach to the next level, by targeting an entire account, rather than single contacts within an organization, and assigning an entire sales team dedicated to targeting multiple decision-makers within the company.
Account Development Representative (ADR)
A sales specialist whose main task is to generate new leads and accounts and qualify them. The purpose of hiring an ADR is to allow other sales reps to focus on closing deals.
Account Executive (AE)
A sales professional who takes over the sales process from an ADR and works towards closing a deal. Their responsibility is to nurture the accounts from the portfolio by uncovering their pain points, presenting solutions, doing demos, and negotiating contracts.
Accounts Payable
The amount of money a company owes to different creditors such as suppliers, vendors, and service providers. This money is shown on a company’s balance sheet in the form of liabilities.
Accounts Receivable
The amount of money owed to a company by its customers for the goods or services provided. So, the customers purchased the goods and services in question, but haven’t yet paid for them.
AIDA
An acronym that stands for Attraction, Interest, Desire, and Action. The AIDA model describes the stages through which a prospective customer goes through in the purchasing process.
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
A metric expressing the annualized subscription revenue of a SaaS or a subscription-based company, that is the money such a business makes from its subscribers during a calendar year.
API
An Application Program Interface is a set of protocols and tools which allows two applications to interact and communicate. In other words, an API is a software intermediary and it’s what makes it possible for developers to integrate different tools and apps seamlessly.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
A computer, system, or software’s ability to interpret and process complex external data sets and learn from them. The term is used to refer to building smart systems that can develop the intellectual processes similar to those that are characteristic of humans. AI is used in business to increase productivity, streamline different processes, and help analyze huge data volumes, and thus make better decisions.
Average Contract Value (ACV)
The average revenue a company earns from a single customer contract within a predefined time frame. Similarly, Annual Contract Value (ACV) refers to the same metric when annualized, while Average Purchase Value (APV) is used to express the revenue which isn’t based on subscriptions, but individual purchases.
Autoklose
You’ll be hearing this name a lot. It’s a sales automation platform with a number of useful features such as email campaign manager, template analyzer and millions of B2B contacts that can help you klose more sales faster.
Autodialer
It’s a system programmed to dial random numbers from a database and configured to leave messages on answering machines and request information.
Autoresponder
A tool programmed to send automatic messages triggered after a new user subscribes or takes action. These automatic messages can be simple or complex, and there are different triggers that can initiate them. For example, a new subscriber will be sent a welcome email the minute they join the list. Or, when a subscriber unsubscribes they will be sent a message asking them why they decided to opt out and encouraging them to reconsider their decision.
B
B2B
Business-to-business, a sales model according to which businesses build relationships with and sell goods and services to other businesses. The B2B sales process is usually longer and more complex than the B2C sales process, as the very products and services are more expensive and require the education and training of customers.
B2C
Business-to-consumer, a sales model according to which businesses build relationships with and sell goods and services to individual consumers directly.
B2C2B
Business-to-consumer-to-business is a comparatively new sales strategy, mainly used by B2B tech and SaaS companies. It consists of targeting individual customers and offering them a free basic plan of the service, in an attempt to get them to see its value and benefits, and decide to recommend the premium business subscription of the service in question to their employer.
BAB Formula
Before-after-bridge is a storytelling formula used in marketing, sales, and advertising to show prospects their situation and pain points before your solution and how things will improve after using a particular solution that is being promoted. This tactic works great in cold emails.
BANT
An acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, Timing, which is a lead qualification methodology based on determining whether a potential customer has the right budget, authority, and need to make a purchase as well as whether there’s urgency.
Big Data
Huge, diverse data sets consisting of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, which can, when properly processed and analyzed with the help of big data analytics, provide companies with accurate insights on their customers and boost their sales.
Black Hat
A set of illegal SEO practices used in order to boost website rankings. These unlawful tactics are used to manipulate or trick Google and other search engines into believing a website is well-optimized and relevant.
Blacklisting
The practice of blocking messages from so-called unauthorized senders by an ISP, ESP, organization, or an individual recipient. It’s usually the result of being identified as a spammer.
Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu)
The final stage of the sales funnel. When a prospect reaches the bottom of the funnel, they will soon be ready to make a purchasing decision.
Bounce Rate
A metric used to measure the percentage of visitors who enter a website and leave without taking any further action such as visiting another page, clicking on a CTA or an internal link. In email marketing, the bounce rate refers to the percentage of email addresses in your contact list that didn’t receive your email. In both cases, a high bounce rate is a signal that you should 1) audit and improve your website 2) clean and update your contact list.
Brag Book
A portfolio consisting of testimonials, reviews, case studies, success stories and other social proof collected from happy customers. A sales rep can use a brag book to demonstrate how their product or service meets and exceeds their customers’ expectations as well as to show how the existing customers benefited from and succeeded with the help of that product or service.
Bulk Email
An email message sent to a large number of recipients at once. Such a mass email has to be personalized in order to provide value to recipients and resonate with them. Otherwise, it will be ignored or even considered spam. The practice of sending personalized bulk emails is highly effective as that way the right message can be sent at the right time to the right recipients.
Buyer’s Journey
The process which follows a buyer’s progression through the sales cycle, starting with the research phase all the way to making a purchasing decision. It’s divided into different stages
Buyer Persona
A fictionalized profile of a company’s ideal customer, created based on market research and real data about its existing customers. It includes customer demographics, behavioral patterns, interests, preferences, motivations, and goals.
Buyer’s Remorse
A psychological phenomenon described a sense of guilt or remorse that a person experiences after making a purchase. It usually refers to the purchase of an expensive item
Buying Intent
A tactic used to measure the likelihood that a certain prospect or an organization will purchase a product or service.
Buying Signal
Behavioral cues signifying that a prospect is ready to buy. These signals can be showing a deeper interest in a product or service, asking about the price, nodding their head, repeating a benefit statement, and similar affirmative gestures.
C
Call to Action (CTA)
A short sentence or a phrase used in emails, offers, on landing pages, and websites to encourage prospects to click on it and take action. “Subscribe for our newsletter”, “Register for the webinar”, or “Download the e-book” are some of the examples.
Cash Flow
The amount of money used for operational activities that is moving, or flowing, into and out of a business over a period of time.
Channel Partner
A third-party organization that offers products or services on behalf of a vendor. The difference between a channel partner and a distributor lies in the fact that the former partners with a manufacturer in order to market and sell its products or services, while the latter only acts as a supplier of goods and services to retailers.
C-Level Executives
Also known as C-Suite Executives. This term refers to high-ranking positions in organizations, and the C stands for “chief” – Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Refers to the percentage of email recipients who click on your CTA, website visitors who click on your offer or prospects who see your ad online and click on it. This ratio is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on that particular link with the number of times it is shown.
Close a Deal
An expression used to describe the act of reaching an agreement, that is the moment when a prospect agrees to purchase your product or service. In other words, it’s used to denote that you’ve made a sale.
Cold Outreach
An attempt to engage a prospect in a conversation, either through a cold email or a cold call, without any prior contact with them. It basically means that salespeople call or email people with whom they have had no interaction up to that moment. Cold outreach is used as a customer acquisition method.
Content
The information or the substance of a web page, email, ad, or any other marketing publication. The content conveys your message through the copy, video, images, and other textual or visual mediums. It’s the basis of content marketing, but it’s an important part of any other type of marketing.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who take action and complete the desired goal out of the total number of website visitors, email recipients, or those who are shown an ad. In other words, the number of people who perform a specific action desired by a marketer or a salesperson divided by the total number of impressions or interactions with the ad, website, or email in question.
Cross-selling
The practice of getting an existing customer to spend more by offering them an additional or complementary product or service related to what they’ve already bought. “Would you like fries with that?” is an example of cross-selling.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Simply put, it’s the cost of acquiring a new customer, that is, how much money you invested in marketing and lead generation activities, including advertising costs, the salaries of your marketing team and sales team, etc, in order to acquire a new paying customer.
Customer Churn
A phrase used to describe the loss of customers. The churn rate is an important metric that shows the percentage of customers that stopped using your product or service over a period of time.
Customer Experience (CX)
An intangible concept describing the impression your brand leaves with your customers, that is, the way your customers perceive and evaluate every interaction with your brand across every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
A metric that helps companies predict the revenue they will earn throughout the entire future relationship with a single customer account. It’s important for identifying highly valuable customers and keeping them.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A comprehensive system for tracking, monitoring, and recording a company’s interactions with prospects and customers, as well as storing and analyzing customer data.
D
Dark
When a prospect goes dark it means that they stopped returning your calls and becomes, generally speaking, unresponsive to your attempts to get in touch and engage them.
Deal Flow
A metric showing the rate at which salespeople generate new leads and sales opportunities.
Decision Maker
A person in a company who has the authority to make a purchasing decision. It’s a decision-maker that has the final say when it comes to closing a deal.
De-Dupe (Deduplication)
The process of removing duplicate data, such as contact information, records, or accounts with the help of matching logic. Autoklose automatically performs deduplication, which means that you won’t have duplicate contacts in your campaigns.
Demand Generation
A marketing strategy for generating buzz and excitement around your upcoming product or service. It’s used for boosting awareness and creating a need for the product or service in question.
Direct Mail
Delivering physical newsletters, catalogs, flyers, postcards, and similar promotional materials through traditional postal services. The analog equivalent of email marketing.
Direct Sales
Selling products or services directly to customers instead of through retailers. This business model consists of face-to-face demos and presentations which usually take place at a prospect’s home, office, or a nearby cafe. The entire process is carried out by so-called independent sales reps or distributors.
Discount
A reduction in the price of a product or service, usually done for promotional purposes, in order to speed up the sales process or sell slow-moving items.
Discovery Call
The initial call with a new prospect whose purpose is to identify whether they’re a good fit for your product and company. It’s the first step in the lead qualification process.
Display Name
Also known as “from name” is an important email element that displays the email address. Recipients want to see a familiar name in the from field and that will prompt them to open and read the message. Using a no-reply address is a bad idea as it seems as if you don’t care about your recipients and want to prevent them from reaching out to you. Autoklose allows you to use your own personal email address when sending emails to your list, thus making sure that your outreach has a personal touch.
Draw
The amount of money given to a sales rep in advance in order to make sure they’re properly compensated when they’re starting their job. The draw is then repaid through the commissions the sales rep earns.
Drip Campaign
An automated email campaign consisting of a set of prewritten emails scheduled in advance and sent at predefined intervals. The purpose of a drip campaign is to engage recipients by delivering relevant content at the right moment and move them through the sales cycle.
E
Email Automation
The process of creating a tailored sequence of emails and scheduling it in advance to target the right recipients with the right message at the right moment. All this wouldn’t be possible without advanced, time-saving, sales email automation tools like Autoklose which allow you to streamline your campaigns, personalize them based on your recipients’ behavior, preferences, demographics, and other parameters, as well as pick the best timing.
Email Marketing
A marketing strategy that uses emails in order to reach potential and existing customers, engage them, and build meaningful relationships with them. It can be used for generating new leads, as well as for nurturing your prospects, educating them, and converting them into paying customers. It also works great for promoting your products or services.
Email Tracking
A method for monitoring the performance of an email campaign. It allows marketers to see how many of their emails have been delivered, opened, clicked on, and responded to. Autoklose offers real-time campaign analytics so that you can monitor the progress of your campaigns from your dashboard and even fine-tune them if necessary.
Emotional Sale
A sales approach that heavily relies on evoking strong emotions in prospects. It can be done either by generating excitement around a product or service or by tapping into the negative emotions like fear of failure or anger over a poor customer experience with another brand.
Employee Engagement
The extent to which an employee is committed to the company and its goals, how passionate and engaged they are at work, and how invested they are when it comes to improving its profitability, reputation, and overall well-being.
Engagement
When talking about prospects and customers, it refers to the emotional connection between them and a brand. A prospect who is engaged is interested in a product or service and is more likely to convert.
Enterprise
A comparatively large company consisting of different departments, with hundreds of employees, and most importantly, a very big budget.
EOD
An abbreviation which stands for “end of day” and is usually used for setting a deadline for a project or task which should be submitted by the end of the business day – usually at 5 pm.
ESP
An abbreviation for an email service provider, that is, a company offering email marketing services and allowing you to send and receive emails.
F
FAB
An acronym for Features, Advantages, and Benefits – a concept marketers and salespeople use in order to highlight and focus on the value of their product or service. It’s achieved through outlining its features, positive characteristics of these features, as well as how the product itself will improve their prospects’ lives and be beneficial to them.
Field Sales Rep
A salesperson whose job is to reach out to prospects and pitch products and services in person outside of the company’s headquarters. A contemporary term for what used to be a traveling salesperson.
Firmographics
Set of characteristics and features of individual prospect organizations used to classify them into meaningful marketing segments. Firmographics are B2B counterparts of demographics.
Fiscal Year
A 12-month period that companies use for accounting, financial reporting, and budgeting purposes.
Forecasting
A set of techniques companies use to estimate and predict their likely future revenues. This technique relies on different quantitative, qualitative, and historical data.
Fortune 500
Fortune magazine’s annual listing of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. based on their revenue.
Forward Revenue
A revenue projection for the next 12 months, usually made for the next fiscal year. In case of public SaaS companies, this projection is used to determine their value.
FUD
Stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. A sales method used to deter prospects from opting for or remaining with a competitor by playing on buyers’ fears. This shady technique relies on sharing misinformation.
G
Gated Content
The type of content that can be accessed only by filling out a web form and providing personal information such as email addresses. This is premium content and is frequently used as a lead generation tactic as people are more willing to provide their personal information if they get valuable content. White papers, industry reports, or e-books are usually offered as gated content.
Gatekeeper
An employee, usually a personal assistant or secretary, who controls access to a decision-maker. Their role is to prevent unimportant information from distracting their boss, which is why they play an important role in the sales process – if sales reps want to reach a decision-maker, they first need to prove that their offer is relevant and valuable.
Goodbye Message
An automated message sent to contact from your list who unsubscribed. Such a message should contain a re-subscribe option in case that the contact accidentally unsubscribed.
Go-to-Market Plan
This is a strategy that identifies and outlines all the steps necessary to enter a new market and succeed in it, or attract a new customer segment. It’s achieved by highlighting the value of the product (new or rebranded) and gaining a competitive edge.
Gross Margin
The amount obtained after the gross profit is divided by total sales. This metric shouldn’t be confused with gross profit – the total sales after you subtract the cost of goods sold (COGS).
H
Honey Pot
A spam trap usually in the form of a seemingly regular email address that ISPs use in order to identify spammers and catch them red-handed. These planted email addresses can be found in email lists bought on the internet, but it’s also possible that an email address that you have in your database, and that hasn’t been active for a certain period of time, is used as a honey pot. That’s why it’s important to clean your list regularly and avoid purchasing lists on the internet. If you send a couple of emails to such an email address, the ISP will identify you as a spammer and blacklist you.
Hyperlink
A link on a web page or within a document or an email that takes you to another location on the same web page, within the same document, as well as to an entirely new document. It’s used to help website visitors and email recipients to navigate the web site or a document more easily.
I
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
In short, it’s a profile of your ideal customer. A hypothetical description of your best customer, that is the one that would benefit most from your product or service. This depiction contains various desirable characteristics and attributes such as the right age, gender, location, budget, among many others, all of which increase the probability of making a purchase or opting in.
Inbound Lead Velocity (ILV)
A metric which measures the pipeline development. It refers to the rate at which the percentage of your qualified leads increases month over month.
Inbound Marketing
A strategy of attracting, engaging, and building meaningful relationships with prospects through relevant and valuable content tailored to meet their interests and needs and address their pain points. It’s a much subtler and significantly less intrusive approach than outbound marketing.
Inside Sales
The process of identifying, engaging, nurturing, engaging, and converting leads remotely, that is, via email, phone, and other channels of communication.
Influencer
A person, usually a thought leader or a household name that has established themselves as an authority in a certain field, and as such has a significant impact and influence over their followers, thus being capable of convincing them to purchase a particular product or service they promote. Influencers usually leverage social media channels to get in touch with their audience.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
A type of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing infrastructure. It delivers scalable compute, network, and storage resources over the internet.
Initial Public Offering (IPO)
Also known as stock market launch, is the process in which a privately held company sells its shares to the public for the first time in order to raise more capital.
InMail Messages
A premium LinkedIn feature which allows you to send a message to another member of this social network you’re currently not connected to.
Intellectual Sale
Unlike an emotional sale, which tries to press the right emotional buttons, intellectual sale tries to appeal to prospects’ logic and help them realize why a product or service is a quick and affordable solution to their pain points. This approach is all about business, while an emotional sale tends to be more personal.
J
Joe Job
A spamming tactic in which the sender uses a fake address in order to make it look like all the spam is being sent from a domain or sender other than the actual source. The purpose of such an attack used to be tarnishing the reputation of the apparent sender, while now it’s used to trick recipients into opening emails believing they’re coming from a trusted source.
K
Key Accounts
So-called VIP accounts, i.e., big, profitable customers who make repeat purchases and spend significant amounts with your brand.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The most important and relevant measurable metrics that help evaluate and assess how well a company or an individual progresses towards achieving predefined goals.
L
LAIR
An acronym for Listen, Acknowledge, Identify the Objection, Reverse the Objection, which is a method for handling sales objections. It uses active listening and reframing your prospect’s objection in a manner that demonstrates why accepting your offer will be beneficial for them.
Land and Expand
A sales strategy for landing, that is acquiring, an account, and expanding it through upselling – getting them to buy more, or by broadening the scope of your product or service.
Landing Page
A standalone web page created for the purposes of lead generation with the help of a marketing campaign. It contains a specific offer and it is supposed to help marketers capture visitors’ contact information and encourage them to take action. Prospects end up on a landing page after they have clicked on an ad, marketing email, optimized search result, or marketing promotion. The copy on a landing page is a logical extension of the ad which leads to it.
Lead
A prospect or a potential customer. This term can refer to an individual or an organization showing interest in your product or service.
Lead Generation
The process of attracting leads and sparking their interest in your product or service in an attempt to nurture them into paying customers. There are different lead generation strategies that can be used, such as content marketing, advertising, referrals, partnerships, or outbound marketing.
Lead Nurturing
The process of engaging and building meaningful relationships with your leads and moving them through different stages of the sales cycle.
Lead Qualification
The process of assessing whether a particular prospect fits the description of your ideal customer profile, that is, whether they are a good fit for your product or service in the sense that they need your product, have the purchasing ability and authority, as well as the purchase intent.
Lead Scoring
A methodology for evaluating and ranking leads based on different criteria such as their behavior, level of engagement, or interest. A number scale is used, and a relative value is assigned to each lead in order to identify the ones that are sales-ready. This process allows marketing and sales to determine engagement priority and focus on the leads that can be closed soon.
List Hygiene
The process of cleaning a database and updating it. It’s crucial to perform it on a regular basis in order to keep your list relevant and fresh by removing inactive, outdated, and incorrect entries.
Low Hanging Fruit
Refers to the tasks that are easy to accomplish, the goals that are easy to achieve, and the prospects that can be converted with almost no effort.
M
Machine Learning
A subset of artificial intelligence which attempts to get computers to act and operate without being given explicit instructions. In other words, this scientific discipline deals with algorithms and statistical models that enable computers to learn new things by themselves and without being programmed.
Marketing Automation Platform
A technology that automates repetitive, manual processes in sales and marketing thus helping companies generate, nurture, and convert leads faster and more effectively.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A lead that has been identified as being sales-ready based on lead scoring criteria, and that the marketing department forwards to sales.
Middle of the Funnel (MiFu)
This refers to the middle stage of the buyer’s journey. The prospects who are in the middle of the funnel already exist in your database and are engaging with your brand.
Mid-Market
Companies occupying the middle range of the market, between small businesses and large corporations, based on their revenue and size.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A product development technique according to which a new product or service is built with just enough basic features to satisfy early adopters who will provide their feedback, based on which further development will be planned.
Mirroring
A tactic used for building rapport with prospects through adopting their verbal and non-verbal as well as physical behaviors and cues. Since different prosodic features of language such as the tone of voice, mimics, and body language play an important role in establishing a meaningful connection, mirroring is a powerful sales technique.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
An important metric for subscription-based businesses, defined as a monthly income that they can expect to receive.
N
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
A synergy of several scientific disciplines – linguistics, AI, computer science, and information engineering which attempts to teach machines how to understand, interpret, and manipulate human language. Different voice assistants such as Alexa, Cortana, or Siri use NLP to understand and execute different commands.
Needs Assessment
The process of identifying prospects’ pressing issues and pain points so that you can understand them better, and offer them the right solution.
Net New Business
A prospect that has been newly converted into a paying customer, or an inactive account that has been re-engaged and started generating revenue.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A customer-satisfaction metric, measured on a 1-10 scale, used to determine how likely a particular customer is to recommend your business to others.
Newsletter
Informative and educational emails that are being sent regularly – every week or month. They contain a lot of useful information that provides value to recipients and improves brand visibility and awareness.
Non-Sales-Related Activities (NSAs)
Different administrative tasks, paperwork, and personal activities that sales reps spend their time while at work, and that don’t directly lead to sales. In other words, everything that can’t be described as prospecting, nurturing, qualifying, scheduling calls and demos, and closing is probably an NSA.
O
Objection
A reservation or concern that a prospect expresses during or after your pitch, which reduces the likelihood that they will make a purchase in the end. Pricing (It’s more expensive than another solution), trust (This is the first time I’ve heard about your company), and timing (I don’t have enough time to deal with changing vendors at the moment) are among the most common objections that can get in the way of sales.
Onboarding
The process during which a new customer is introduced to a product or service. It’s of critical importance to show them the ropes and demonstrate them how to best use different features and get all the benefits your product or service offers. Onboarding is also the term used when it comes to breaking in new employees.
OOO
An out-of-office message is an automatic email that’s sent when someone is on vacation or is absent from their regular place of work and unable to reply to emails.
Opportunity
A lead which has been estimated to have a higher likelihood of accepting your offer – opting in, subscribing for your service, or purchasing your product.
Optimization
The process of improving a system, service, product, or procedure so that it becomes more efficient and yields better results, outcomes, and benefits.
Opt In
The process in which a person subscribes for a newsletter or an email list or gives a company permission to send them emails and offers.
Outbound Sales
An approach in which the seller, usually a sales rep, directly reaches out to a prospect and initiates engagement by means of cold calling, cold emailing, or a direct social media outreach.
P
Phishing
The practice of obtaining highly sensitive personal information such as usernames, passwords, or credit card numbers by getting email recipients or website visitors to click on bogus links disguised as legit sources. It’s a commonly used tactic of identity theft.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
A model of cloud computing in which a provider supplies a framework, or in other words, an online platform with all the necessary development and deployment tools for building apps.
Personalization
The process of adjusting and tailoring the content, a web page, email campaign, offer, as well as a product or services so that it fits the needs of a particular prospect or a segment of the audience.
Plays
A sales approach consisting of a set of predefined, agreed upon, repeatable steps for engaging a certain group of prospects over a period of time in an attempt to improve the likelihood of closing a deal.
Point of Contact (POC)
A person or department whose role is to coordinate and streamline the information flow between the organization and its customers and partners. A point of contact plays an important role in situations in which information is time-sensitive and needs to be accurate.
Predictive Analytics
A scientific field that uses historical data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning to forecast future outcomes, trends, and behavior. This tactic allows salespeople to predict their prospects’ behavior and make informed decisions.
Procurement
The action of finding and acquiring goods and services for the organization through external suppliers who participate in a tendering or a competitive bidding process.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
A business approach that refers to handling and management of a product or service throughout its typical development stages, including idea generation, research and development, testing, testing, rollout, and termination.
Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
A lead, be it an individual or an organization, that has used a particular product as a free trial, limited feature model, or had any other first-hand experience with that product, and has experienced value from using it. This positive experience with the product makes that lead more likely to become a paying customer.
Proof of Concept (POC)
A test carried out to determine and verify whether a certain design idea or concept has the potential to be developed for the real-life application. It’s a litmus test that helps companies to establish the feasibility of a particular business idea and its capacity to be successful.
Puppy Dog Closing
A sales strategy according to which companies offer their prospects to try out a product without any obligations, believing that they will grow attached to the product after using it for free, thus deciding to purchase it. The idea behind this type of approach has been drawn from the fact that most people wouldn’t return a puppy that they took home for a couple of days.
Q
Quarter
A three-month period within a fiscal year that companies use to track, measure, analyze and compare their performance and success, predict business trends, calculate and report earnings, and pay dividends to their shareholders.
Quota
A goal or a benchmark, expressed through the amount of sales that a sales rep or a sales unit has to achieve over a predefined period of time.
R
Referral
An act of lead generation through referral or recommendation provided by a third-party. Happy customers are usually a good source of referrals.
Reply Rate
An important metric for measuring the performance of email campaigns. It’s the number of recipients who replied to your email.
Request for Proposal (RFP)
A document in which vendors and suppliers are requested to submit their proposal or bid during a procurement process.
Responsive Email Design
The type of email design created to display and function properly on any screen size.
Retargeting
Also known as remarketing, this practice consists of serving paid ads to people who have already visited your website but failed to convert or make a purchase.
Return on Investment (ROI)
A metric used to evaluate the profitability of an investment. In other words, it allows businesses to calculate how much net profit they generated in comparison with the amount invested.
S
Sales Acceleration
A number of activities aimed at speeding up the sales process and moving prospects through the sales funnel faster. This can be achieved with the help of different tactics and tools that help sales reps boost their efficiency and productivity.
Sales Automation
The process of using software or a set of tools to automate, simplify, and streamline repetitive, manual, mundane, and time-consuming sales tasks. It’s possible to automate the entire sales process or its particular components, such as the inventory, tracking customer interactions, or sales forecasts.
Sales Demo
An important part of the sales process during which product features, benefits, and value are shown to a prospect in an attempt to get them to make a purchase.
Sales Enablement
Activities directed at providing salespeople with the right tools, technologies, processes, and information that will help them engage with prospects and customers more effectively and ultimately sell more. The point is in encouraging knowledge-based interactions with the target audience and improving sales teams’ performance.
Sales Funnel
A visualization of the buyer’s journey and its stages, presented in the form of a funnel. It describes the process through which prospects go while being led by sales professionals, on their way to making a purchasing decision. It consists of the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.
Sales Operations
A set of coordinated business processes and strategic activities aimed at reaching the company’s goals, particularly those related to growth, marketing coverage, and sales revenue.
Sales Pipeline
A visual representation showing the progress of each sales prospect in the sales process. It’s a method that helps sales teams keep track of all the deals they’re working on at the moment.
Sales Process
A number of predefined, repeatable steps that have to be taken in order to turn a lead into a paying customer.
Sales Prospect
Refers to a potential customer who matches certain criteria, such as fitting the right target market, having enough money to buy, and being authorized to make a purchase.
Sales Qualified Lead
A potential customer who has already been qualified as an MQL, thus showing a greater interest in the product or service and a higher likelihood of converting or making a purchase. Later on, a SQL is forwarded to account executives for the closing procedure.
Sales Sequence
A predefined set of activities, such as emails, voicemails, calls, etc., a sales team uses in order to engage a prospect or account and close a deal. These activities come at an established order and frequency.
Sandbagging
The practice of postponing closing active deals after you hit your quota for the month and keeping extra sales under wraps, in order to make sure that you’ll be able to hit numbers in the following month.
Scraping
Also known as data collecting or harvesting, is the process of extracting large amounts of data from websites. In the sales context, it usually refers to using different tools to obtain contact information and use it for the purposes of cold outreach.
Segmentation
Organizing an email list according to different characteristics of contacts in an attempt to personalize outreach so that the content and offers delivered to each segment is properly tailored. Segmentation can help salespeople and marketers reach out to their audience in a manner that resonates with them.
SEO
An abbreviation that stands for search engine optimization, that is, the practice of optimizing your website and content in order to make it more easily discoverable by search engines and your potential prospects. SEO uses different tools and tactics to improve the visibility of a website and its rankings in the search engine results.
Signature
An email element in the form of a block of text that can be found at the bottom of an email message. It contains the sender’s name, contact information, photo, and social media buttons.
Silos
In business, this term is used to describe the lack of collaboration and communication between different departments in a company. In other words, sales, marketing, and other organizational units are managed as separate “silos.”
Smarketing
The process of aligning sales and marketing teams in an attempt to improve the communication between them, establish and achieve common goals, and create better sales opportunities. Smarketing can help increase revenue and improve the bottom line.
Social Selling
A sales approach in which social media networks are used as sales channels. Salespeople get in touch with their prospects, engage and develop meaningful relationships with them, identify their needs and pain points, and obtain valuable information about them through LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
A type of cloud computing, that is, a software distribution model of hosting applications on the internet. Users access these apps through their browsers using the cloud technology.
Spam
Unsolicited emails sent to people who haven’t opted in. Spam is a broad term and it can also refer to too pushy and salesy emails, which contain a lot of spam words and phrases. Autoklose comes with the Template Analyzer which scans your email content and highlights spam triggers and prompts you to eliminate them thus helping you avoid being automatically sent to the spam folder by ESPs.
Spoofing
A fraudulent and malicious practice spammers use in order to trick recipients into opening and replying to unsolicited emails by pretending that they’re known and trusted sources. That way they attempt to acquire sensitive information such as credit card numbers or access to financial accounts.
Structured Data
A type of big data referring to sets of data organized in the form of a database, so that it can be easily processed, managed, searched for, and added.
Subject Line
An introductory headline that is displayed in the email inbox and that informs recipients what the email is about. It’s displayed in the list of email messages and it’s an important factor that determines whether a recipient will open an email.
SWOT
A type of analysis used to determine an organization or person’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in an attempt to identify what’s good and what should be improved. A SWOT analysis is extremely helpful when it comes to outlining objectives and defining goals.
T
Target
In terms of sales, a target refers to the number of sales that needs to be achieved or exceeded over a certain period of time. In other words, sales targets are sales goals. However, if we’re talking about marketing, the term “target audience” refers to a particular group or segment that a company plans to sell their products or services to.
Template
A generic, blank but preformatted document coming with a set of standard features that make sure that can help you create a new document of the same type faster and easier.
Tire-Kicker
A prospect that has no real intention to buy – they usually don’t have the budget, need, or authority to make a purchasing decision. Such a prospect will waste your time even though they can be genuinely interested in your product or service, which is why it’s essential to spot them early on.
Top of the Funnel (ToFu)
The upper and the largest part of the sales funnel which corresponds to the awareness phase of the buying process. This division refers to the stages of the buyer’s journey, and top of the funnel is where prospects who have shown an initial interest enter the sales process and are being screened regarding whether they’re the right fit. Top of the funnel also refers to marketing and sales activities and campaigns that target prospects in the upper part of the funnel.
Touchpoints
Different ways a prospect interacts with a business. This term refers to different points throughout the sales process at which brands and their (potential) customers get in touch and connect.
Triggers
Events signaling to sales reps that a certain prospect meets a predefined set of criteria that qualify the prospect in question as a sales opportunity.
U
Unique Selling Point (USP)
A marketing concept that helps brands define their unique advantage over their competitors and help them stand out and be distinctive with their offer. It might be a lower price, higher quality, or more features.
User Experience (UX)
A concept that encompasses end-users’ beliefs, emotions, expectations, perceptions, and beliefs and other factors that influence how they feel about a particular product, service, or brand. All these perceptions are based on end-users’ interactions with the product, service, or brand in question.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Content created by consumers, and it can include different social media posts, videos, blog posts, opinions, or online reviews. Brands can greatly benefit by encouraging their customers to create content as it’s usually more genuine and authentic that branded content and people are more likely to trust what their fellow customers say about a brand.
User Interface (UI)
Different features of an app or device which allow users to interact with it. For example, a dashboard, mouse, keyboard, menus, buttons, and hyperlinks are considered the points of interaction between users and apps/machines.
Unicorn
A startup whose value has been estimated at over $1 billion.
Upselling
The practice of convincing a customer to spend more money and purchase an additional or complementary product or opt for the one with more features and functionalities. The phrase “Do you want fries with that?” you can hear at fast-food restaurants is a perfect example of upselling.
V
Value Statement
A marketing message which sums up all the unique reasons and advantages as to why a prospect should purchase a particular product or service.
Value Triangle
A concept which illustrates the internal relationships between cost, quality, and speed. It’s used to help customers determine the value of a product or service.
Virtual Machine (VM)
A piece of software or an emulation of a computing environment that behaves like an actual computer. It’s capable of performing tasks such as running operating systems or different apps. In essence, a virtual machine is a software imitation of a fully-fledged hardware computer.
W
Warm Outreach
An act of reaching out to a sales prospect with whom you’ve already had a prior contact. This concept refers to communicating with prospects who already know you and your company either via email, phone call, or some other channels such as social media.
Whale
A whale or a white whale is a VIP prospect who has the potential to bring a big profit to an organization. It’s a lucrative deal.
White Hat
A set of lawful and acceptable SEO practices that don’t break any rules and are conducted in compliance with search engine optimization guidelines.
White Label
A no-name product or service that can be purchased by a reseller and rebranded under their name. Most of such products are usually lightweight and sold at a lower price than their non-generic counterparts.
WIIFM
An acronym standing for What’s in it for me, which is the first question that your email recipients and prospects ask themselves before they decide to open your email, read it, click on your link or accept your offer.
X
Xenocurrency
A currency that’s circulating or is being traded in money markets other than its country of origin.
X-Inefficiency
Refers to a company’s inability to get the maximum output for its input due to the lack of competitive pressure.
Y
Year to Date Net Income
The profit of a company generated from the beginning of the year up to a specified date.
Z
Zeroed Out
When a sales rep makes their draw account equal to zero. It happens after they start making enough commission to make up for what they’ve taken in advance. Once their draw account has been zeroed out, they can start earning their commission again.
