Glossary/B2B & Growth

• Account Executive (AE)

  A sales rep who owns qualified opportunities and runs demos, negotiation, and closing, typically after SDRs set the meeting.

• Account Scoring

  Ranking companies by fit and engagement, combining firmographics, technographics, intent, and activity across all contacts at the account.

• Account-Based Experience (ABX)

  An evolution of ABM that coordinates marketing, sales, and customer success around each target account's full experience, from prospect through renewal.

• Activation Rate

  The share of new signups who reach a key first-value action, like creating a project or inviting a teammate.

• Aha Moment

  The point when a new user first truly experiences a product's core value, strongly linked to retention.

• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

  The yearly value of a company's recurring subscription revenue, a headline metric for SaaS businesses.

• Average Contract Value (ACV)

  The average annualized revenue per customer contract, used to shape sales motion and acquisition budgets.

• B2B Software Review Sites

  Platforms like G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius where business users review software, heavily used by buyers and as a source of intent data.

• BANT

  A lead qualification method checking a prospect's Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline.

• Battlecard

  A concise internal sales guide comparing a product to a specific competitor, with key differentiators and objection handling.

• Buyer Persona

  A semi-fictional profile of a typical buyer, capturing their role, goals, pain points and buying behavior.

• Buying Committee

  The group of stakeholders, often six to ten or more people, who influence or approve a B2B purchase.

• Case Study

  A detailed story of how a customer used a product to solve a problem and achieve measurable results, used as sales proof.

• Champion

  An internal advocate at a prospect company who actively sells the solution to colleagues and helps push the deal forward.

• Cold Email

  An unsolicited one-to-one email sent to a prospect with no prior relationship, used in outbound sales prospecting.

• Conversation Intelligence

  Software that records, transcribes, and analyzes sales calls to surface insights, coaching opportunities, and deal risks.

• Customer Advocacy

  Programs that mobilize happy customers to provide references, reviews, testimonials, and case studies that influence prospects.

• Customer Marketing

  Marketing aimed at existing customers to drive adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy rather than new acquisition.

• Customer Success

  A function that proactively helps customers achieve their goals with a product, driving retention, renewals, and expansion.

• Dark Funnel

  The untrackable parts of a B2B buyer's research, like peer chats, podcasts, communities and social, that attribution tools miss.

• Demand Generation

  Creating awareness of and interest in a problem and solution among a target market, often without gating content.

• Demand Waterfall

  A model, popularized by SiriusDecisions, that tracks how leads convert through stages from inquiry to closed deal to measure funnel performance.

• Demo Request

  A high-intent B2B conversion where a prospect asks to see the product with a sales rep, usually treated as a priority hand-raiser.

• Economic Buyer

  The person at a buying organization with final authority to approve the budget and sign off on a purchase.

• Expansion Revenue

  New recurring revenue from existing customers via upsells, cross-sells, added seats, or usage growth.

• Field Marketing

  Regional, in-person, and event-led marketing, such as trade shows, executive dinners, and roadshows, that supports sales in specific territories or accounts.

• Firmographics

  Descriptive company attributes, such as industry, revenue, employee count, and location, used to segment and target B2B accounts.

• Free Trial

  Time-limited full or partial access to a paid product so prospects can evaluate it before buying.

• Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)

  The percentage of recurring revenue kept from existing customers after churn and downgrades, excluding any expansion; it cannot exceed 100%.

• Growth Hacking

  Rapid, experiment-driven marketing focused on finding low-cost, scalable ways to grow users or revenue.

• Growth Loop

  A self-reinforcing system where users' actions produce outputs, like invites or content, that bring in more new users.

• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

  A description of the type of company, by industry, size, tech and needs, that gets the most value and is best to sell to.

• Lead Generation

  Capturing contact details of potential buyers, often through forms or gated content, for sales follow-up.

• Lead Magnet

  A free, valuable resource, such as a template, report, or tool, offered in exchange for a prospect's contact details.

• Lead Routing

  Automatically assigning incoming leads to the right sales rep or team based on rules like territory, account owner, or company size.

• Lead-to-Account Matching

  Automatically linking individual leads to their company record in the CRM so activity can be viewed and routed at the account level.

• Market Development Funds (MDF)

  Money a vendor provides to channel partners to fund marketing activities that promote the vendor's products.

• Marketing-Influenced Pipeline

  Pipeline from opportunities where marketing touched the account or contacts at some point, even if marketing did not originally source it.

• MEDDIC

  A B2B sales qualification framework covering Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion.

• Multi-Threading

  Building relationships with multiple stakeholders at a target account so a deal does not depend on a single contact.

• One-to-Few ABM (ABM Lite)

  An ABM tier that groups similar target accounts, such as by industry or need, and tailors programs to each cluster.

• One-to-Many ABM (Programmatic ABM)

  An ABM tier that uses technology to reach hundreds or thousands of target accounts with lightly personalized, scalable campaigns.

• One-to-One ABM (Strategic ABM)

  The most intensive ABM tier, building fully customized programs and content for a handful of high-value target accounts.

• Opportunity

  A CRM record for a qualified potential deal with a specific account, tracked through deal stages with an expected value and close date.

• Opportunity Win Rate (Close Rate)

  The percentage of sales opportunities that end as closed-won, out of all opportunities closed in a period.

• Partner Marketing

  Joint marketing with resellers, technology partners, or alliances, such as co-branded campaigns and events, to reach each other's customers.

• Pipeline

  The total value of open sales opportunities at each stage, used to forecast revenue.

• Pipeline Coverage Ratio

  Total open pipeline value divided by the revenue target for a period, used to judge whether there is enough pipeline to hit quota.

• Pipeline Velocity

  How fast revenue moves through the pipeline: opportunities × win rate × deal size, divided by sales cycle length.

• Product-Led Growth (PLG)

  A growth model where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion and expansion, often via free trials or freemium.

• Product-Led Sales (PLS)

  A hybrid motion where sales teams engage users already active in a free or self-serve product, prioritizing accounts by product usage signals.

• Product-Market Fit (PMF)

  The point where a product satisfies a strong market demand, evident in retention, organic growth and customer pull.

• Product-Qualified Lead (PQL)

  A user who has shown buying intent through meaningful product usage, typically in a free trial or freemium plan.

• Revenue Operations (RevOps)

  A function unifying marketing, sales and customer success operations, data and tools around revenue goals.

• Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)

  A lead that the sales team has reviewed and agreed to work, sitting between marketing qualified and sales qualified.

• Sales and Marketing SLA

  An agreement setting commitments between marketing and sales, such as lead volume targets and how quickly sales must follow up.

• Sales Cycle Length

  The average time it takes for an opportunity to move from creation to closed-won.

• Sales Development Representative (SDR)

  A salesperson focused on qualifying inbound leads and prospecting outbound to book meetings for account executives.

• Sales Enablement

  Equipping sales teams with the content, training, tools, and insights they need to engage buyers and close deals more effectively.

• Sales Forecasting

  Predicting future bookings or revenue for a period, typically by weighting pipeline by deal stage, rep judgment, and historical win rates.

• Sales Qualified Opportunity (SQO)

  An opportunity that sales has vetted as having real budget, need, and timing, and that is counted in the forecastable pipeline.

• Sales Sequence (Cadence)

  A scheduled series of outreach touches, such as emails, calls, and social messages, that a rep sends to a prospect over time.

• Speed to Lead

  The time between a prospect's inbound request, like a demo form, and the first sales response; faster follow-up generally converts better.

• Target Account List (TAL)

  The named list of companies an ABM or sales team commits to pursue, usually selected using ICP fit and intent signals.

• Technographics

  Data on the technologies a company uses, such as its CRM or cloud provider, used to target and qualify B2B accounts.

• Total Addressable Market (TAM)

  The total revenue opportunity if a product captured 100% of its market, often paired with SAM and SOM.

• Total Contract Value (TCV)

  The full value of a customer contract over its entire term, including recurring and one-time fees.

• Viral Coefficient (K-Factor)

  The average number of new users each existing user brings in; above 1 means growth compounds on its own.

• Webinar

  A live or on-demand online presentation used to educate prospects and capture leads through registration.

• Website Visitor Identification

  Revealing which companies, or sometimes which people, visit a website, often via reverse IP lookup, to prioritize sales outreach.

• Win/Loss Analysis

  Studying why deals were won or lost, often through buyer interviews, to improve product, messaging, and sales execution.