Glossary
Sales and outreach glossary
Plain definitions of the sales and outreach terms we use, each with an example.
A
- Account-based marketing (ABM)
- Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B approach in which marketing and sales agree on a list of target companies and plan the research, messages and offers for each one around the people who make or shape the buying decision there.
- AI SDR
- An AI SDR is software that takes on parts of a sales development rep's job: researching leads, writing first messages, reading the replies, answering them and handing a conversation to a person when it needs one.
- Appointment setting
- Appointment setting is the job of booking sales meetings for someone else to run: a setter, in-house or at an agency, works a list of prospects and puts a call on the account executive's calendar with each one who fits and agrees to talk.
B
- B2B data provider
- A B2B data provider is a company that compiles and sells records on companies and their staff, from headcount and industry to a named person's job title, work email and direct phone. Sales and marketing teams use those records to build prospect lists and keep the CRM current.
- Business development representative (BDR)
- A business development representative (BDR) is a salesperson who starts conversations with companies that have not shown interest yet, mostly through outbound email, calls and social messages, and hands the qualified ones to an account executive. Many companies use BDR for outbound prospecting and SDR for inbound leads.
- Buyer persona
- A buyer persona is a short profile of one kind of person who buys from you, built from interviews and deal data: their role, what they are measured on, what worries them about buying, and the words they use for the problem.
- Buying signals
- A buying signal is something a person or a company does that suggests they may be ready to buy before they say so: they open your pricing page, post about the problem you solve, or start a new job. You use buying signals to decide whom to write to, and when.
C
- CAN-SPAM Act
- The CAN-SPAM Act is the US federal law on commercial email, and it covers cold email between businesses too. Each message needs an honest sender and subject line, a statement that it is an ad, a postal address and a way to opt out that is honored within 10 business days.
- Catch-all email
- A catch-all email is an address on a domain whose mail server accepts messages for any address, real or not. Because the server says yes to everything, a verifier cannot tell whether the mailbox exists, and a message to it may still bounce later.
- Cold email
- A cold email is a first email to someone you have never been in touch with, sent to start a business conversation. It goes to one person's work address, says why you chose them, and asks only for a reply.
- CRM (customer relationship management)
- A CRM (customer relationship management system) is the software a company uses to keep one shared record of its customers and prospects: who they are, every conversation with them and every deal, so the whole team works from the same history.
E
- Email A/B testing
- Email A/B testing is sending two or more versions of an email to random parts of the same list and comparing the results. In cold email the fair measure is the reply rate, because open counts include emails nobody read.
- Email verification
- Email verification is a check, before you send, that an email address exists and will take mail. A verifier finds the domain's mail server, asks it about the mailbox without sending anything, and marks the address valid, invalid, catch-all or unknown.
F
- Firmographic data
- Firmographic data is the set of facts that describe a company: its industry, size, location, ownership and age. Sales teams use it to define the companies they sell to, split a list into segments and send each account to the right rep.
- Follow-up email
- A follow-up email is a later message to someone who has not answered your first one. It goes in the same thread, adds one new reason to reply, and the sequence stops as soon as the person answers or opts out.
G
- Go-to-market strategy
- A go-to-market strategy is the plan for how a product reaches its buyers: the market you sell to first, who in it buys, what you tell them, the channels that reach them and the price, written down before the first campaign.
- GTM engineer
- A GTM engineer is the person who builds the systems a sales team runs on: the lists, the enrichment, the scoring, the sending and the links between tools, wired together with APIs, webhooks and AI so outbound runs without copy and paste.
I
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)
- An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a short description of the companies your product fits best: their industry, size, region, the tools they run and what is changing for them. It decides who goes on a prospect list and who is left off.
- Intent data
- Intent data is information that suggests a company is researching a topic before it contacts anyone who sells it. The term usually means third-party intent: reading across many publishers' sites, tied to companies and scored for a rise on each topic.
L
- Lead enrichment
- Lead enrichment is filling in, from outside data sources, what a lead record is missing: a work email, a job title, the company's industry and size, or a sign that the timing is right. It turns a name and a company into a record you can qualify and write to.
- Lead nurturing
- Lead nurturing is keeping in touch with leads who are not ready to buy yet, with messages worth their time, so you are the one they call when they are ready. It runs over weeks or months and follows what each person does.
- Lead qualification
- Lead qualification is deciding whether a lead is worth a salesperson's time: whether they match the customers you sell to and are in a position to buy. Qualified leads go on to a sales conversation, and the rest are nurtured or dropped.
- Lead scoring
- Lead scoring is a way to rank leads by how likely they are to buy, with points or a model for who they are (fit) and what they do (engagement). Sales works the highest scores first, and the rest stay in nurturing.
- LinkedIn InMail
- LinkedIn InMail is a paid message you can send to a LinkedIn member you are not connected to. Sellers use it to reach buyers outside their network and recruiters to reach candidates, without waiting for a connection request to be accepted.
M
- Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
- A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that marketing has judged ready for sales, because the person fits your customer profile and has done enough, such as opening the pricing page or asking for a demo, to be worth a call. Sales then decides whether it becomes a sales qualified lead.
- Multichannel outreach
- Multichannel outreach is contacting the same prospect on more than one channel, usually email and LinkedIn and sometimes the phone, in one planned sequence where each touch follows from the last and a reply on any channel stops the rest.
O
- Outbound sales
- Outbound sales is selling by reaching out first: the seller chooses the companies and people to contact and opens the conversation by email, LinkedIn or phone before the buyer has asked to hear from anyone.
P
- Personalization at scale
- Personalization at scale is writing each outreach message from true facts about that person and their company, for a whole list at once. Data does the research, AI writes the first draft from it, and a person sets the rules and checks a sample.
R
- Reply rate
- Reply rate is the share of people who answered your outreach out of everyone it reached. You count answers written by people, leave out auto-replies and bounces, and track positive replies beside the total.
S
- Sales cadence
- A sales cadence is the timing and channel plan for reaching one prospect: how many touches, on which channels, how many days apart, and when to stop. The sequence holds the steps and the words, and the cadence decides when each one goes out.
- Sales development representative (SDR)
- A sales development representative (SDR) is a salesperson who finds and qualifies new prospects and books first meetings for the account executives who close the deals. An SDR's work ends at the handoff: a qualified meeting on an account executive's calendar.
- Sales pipeline
- A sales pipeline is every deal a team is working, sorted by stage from the first conversation to the close, so you can see what is likely to close, roughly when, and where deals stall.
- Sales qualified lead (SQL)
- A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a prospect that someone in sales has checked in a conversation and accepted as a real potential customer, with a need, a person who can buy and a reason to move. In many CRMs it is the step before an opportunity.
- Sales sequence
- A sales sequence is the ordered set of steps run for each prospect: the emails, LinkedIn messages, calls and tasks, the waits between them, and the rules that end it. A reply usually takes the person out.
T
- Technographic data
- Technographic data is the record of the technology a company uses: its CRM, email provider, website platform and other tools. Sales teams use it to find companies that can use what they sell, and to write about the tools a team runs today.
- Total addressable market (TAM)
- Total addressable market (TAM) is the revenue you would earn if every company that fits your offer bought it. In B2B outbound it is often counted from the bottom up: the number of accounts that match your ideal customer profile, times what one of them pays a year.
W
- Waterfall enrichment
- Waterfall enrichment is a way to fill one field of a record, such as a work email, by trying data providers in a fixed order. The next provider is asked only when the one before it found nothing or returned an answer that failed your check.