The Complete B2B Sales Glossary: 63 Terms Every Rep Should Know

Updated September 2026

Sales is a language of its own, and the vocabulary keeps expanding. This glossary defines 63 essential B2B sales terms, from foundational pipeline concepts like MQL and BOFU to the AI and RevOps terminology that entered mainstream use as revenue teams adopted conversation intelligence, AI SDRs, and video-first outreach.

Whether you are a new SDR trying to keep up in your first team meeting or a sales leader briefing the board on RevOps, bookmark this page. Each term below includes a plain-language definition you can use immediately, without needing to cross-reference three other glossaries.

Pipeline, Funnel & Deal Strategy Terms

Pipeline and funnel terms describe how a prospect moves from first awareness to a closed deal, and how reps manage the accounts in between. Master these 17 terms first, since nearly every other sales conversation assumes you already know where a deal sits in the funnel.

Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the funnel is the awareness stage, where a prospect first realizes they have a problem worth solving. TOFU content and outreach focus on education, not pitching, so reps typically use blog posts, short videos, and low-pressure intros here rather than a hard sell.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The middle of the funnel is where a prospect actively evaluates solutions, including yours. MOFU touches, like a personalized demo video or a discovery call, should compare approaches and show proof, since the buyer is now judging fit rather than just learning the problem exists.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

The bottom of the funnel is the decision stage, where a prospect is close to choosing a vendor. BOFU content, such as pricing pages, case studies, and proposal walkthroughs, needs to remove the last objections a buying committee raises before signing.

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is the visual model of how prospects narrow from broad awareness down to a closed deal, typically split into TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU stages. Tracking conversion rates between each stage shows exactly where deals stall so reps can fix the weakest link first.

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline is the set of active, in-progress deals a rep or team is working, organized by stage from first contact to close. Unlike the funnel, which models the buyer's journey broadly, the pipeline tracks specific named accounts and their real-time status. See our ultimate guide to building and managing a sales pipeline for a stage-by-stage breakdown.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring assigns a numeric value to each prospect based on firmographic fit and engagement behavior, like opening emails or visiting pricing pages. Sales and marketing teams use the score to decide which leads an AE should call first versus which need more nurturing.

Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of building trust with a prospect who isn't ready to buy yet, usually through a sequence of relevant emails, content, or personalized videos over weeks or months. The goal is to stay useful so you're the first call when they are ready.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A marketing qualified lead is a prospect marketing has judged likely to become a customer based on engagement signals, but who hasn't yet been vetted by sales. MQLs typically convert to sales qualified leads only after a rep confirms budget, authority, and timeline.

Qualified Lead

A qualified lead is a prospect confirmed to have the budget, authority, need, and timeline to realistically become a customer. Chasing unqualified leads wastes rep capacity, so most teams gate pipeline entry behind a clear qualification checklist like BANT or MEDDIC.

Opportunity Management

Opportunity management is the discipline of tracking every open deal's stage, value, close date, and risk factors inside a CRM so forecasts stay accurate. Good opportunity management means every deal has a clear next step and owner, not just a stage label that never updates.

Account-Based Selling (ABS)

Account-based selling focuses effort on a curated list of high-value target accounts instead of chasing every inbound lead. Reps build custom outreach and content for each account's specific stakeholders, which increases conversion rates but requires more research per account than volume prospecting. Our complete guide to account-based selling walks through how to build that target list.

Buyer's Journey

The buyer's journey is the path a prospect follows from first recognizing a problem to signing a contract, typically mapped as awareness, consideration, and decision stages. Mapping content and outreach to each stage of the journey keeps messaging relevant instead of generic.

Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who cancel or don't renew over a given period, usually calculated monthly or annually. High churn erodes the value of every new deal a sales team closes, which is why customer success and sales increasingly share churn as a shared metric.

Cross-Selling

Cross-selling means offering an existing customer a different, complementary product or service beyond what they already bought. It works best when the second offer solves a problem the customer already told you about, rather than being a generic upsell pitch.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

An ideal customer profile describes the type of company most likely to buy, succeed with, and stay loyal to your product, defined by firmographics like industry, size, and tech stack. A tight ICP lets reps disqualify poor-fit leads early instead of wasting cycles on deals that were never going to close.

Pain Point

A pain point is a specific, named problem a prospect is actively trying to solve, such as declining reply rates or a disconnected tech stack. Outreach that names the exact pain point a buyer is experiencing consistently outperforms generic messaging about product features.

Upselling

Upselling means encouraging an existing customer to move to a higher-tier plan or add more capacity than they currently have. Unlike cross-selling, which introduces a different product, upselling expands the customer's usage of what they already know and trust.

Prospecting & Outreach Terms

Prospecting and outreach terms cover how reps first make contact with a potential buyer, from cold calls to warm email to social selling. These 10 terms distinguish the channels and approaches teams use to generate net-new pipeline.

Channel Sales

Channel sales means selling through third-party partners, resellers, or affiliates instead of a direct sales team reaching buyers themselves. It extends reach into markets a company can't cover alone, but requires partner training and margin-sharing that direct sales doesn't.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is phoning a prospect who has no prior relationship with you or your company to introduce a product or book a meeting. Response rates are typically lower than warm outreach, which is why many B2B teams now pair cold calls with a personalized video sent beforehand — see our breakdown of cold calling vs. video prospecting for the data.

Direct Sales

Direct sales is a go-to-market model where a company's own sales team sells straight to the end customer, with no distributor, reseller, or partner in between. It gives full control over messaging and pricing but means the company bears the full cost of the sales team.

Discovery Call

A discovery call is the first substantive conversation between a rep and a prospect, focused on understanding the buyer's problem, budget, timeline, and decision process. A strong discovery call earns the right to a demo by asking better questions than generic small talk.

Gatekeeper

A gatekeeper is anyone, such as an executive assistant or a receptionist, whose role includes filtering which sales calls and emails reach the actual decision-maker. Treating the gatekeeper as an ally rather than an obstacle, by explaining value briefly and respectfully, improves the odds of getting through.

Inbound Sales

Inbound sales means responding to leads who found you first, typically through content, search, or referrals, rather than reps initiating cold contact. Inbound leads usually convert faster since the prospect already has some awareness and interest before a rep ever reaches out.

Outbound Sales

Outbound sales means proactively reaching out to prospects who haven't engaged with your company yet, through cold email, cold calls, or personalized video outreach. It requires more up-front targeting work than inbound but lets a company control exactly which accounts it pursues.

Point of Contact (POC)

A point of contact is the specific individual at a target account who a rep primarily communicates with throughout the sales process. A single POC is rarely the entire buying committee, so reps still need to identify and engage other stakeholders who influence the final decision.

Social Selling

Social selling is using platforms like LinkedIn to research prospects, share relevant insights, and build relationships before making a direct sales ask. It works by establishing credibility over time, so a cold outreach message later lands with someone who already recognizes your name.

Warm Email

A warm email is outreach sent to a prospect who has some prior connection to you, such as a mutual contact, a website visit, or a previous interaction. Warm emails consistently see higher open and reply rates than cold email because the prospect already has context for why you're reaching out.

Sales Roles & Team Terms

Sales roles and team terms define who does what across a modern revenue organization, from the SDR who books the first meeting to the AE who closes it. Knowing these 6 terms prevents the handoff confusion that slows deals down between teams — our comprehensive guide to video sales enablement covers how these roles use video together.

Account Executive (AE)

An account executive takes qualified leads handed off by an SDR and owns the deal from demo through close. AEs need strong negotiation, presentation, and closing skills, since their compensation is typically tied directly to the revenue they bring in.

Account Management (AM)

Account management is the post-sale function responsible for retaining and growing existing customer relationships, distinct from the new-business focus of an AE. Account managers handle renewals, upsells, and escalations, making them the primary point of contact once a deal closes.

Business Development Representative (BDR)

A business development representative generates and qualifies new pipeline, similar to an SDR, but the title is often used specifically for reps focused on outbound prospecting into net-new accounts rather than inbound lead follow-up. Many companies use SDR and BDR interchangeably.

Employee Onboarding

Employee onboarding is the structured process of training a new sales hire on product knowledge, tools, and messaging before they start carrying a full quota. Ramp time varies widely, but teams with a documented onboarding program consistently get new reps to full productivity faster than ad hoc training.

Sales Development Representative (SDR)

A sales development representative is responsible for prospecting, qualifying, and booking meetings for account executives, without carrying the closing responsibility themselves. SDRs are typically the first human touchpoint a prospect has with a company, making their outreach quality a major driver of pipeline health — these SDR email outreach tips cover what beats inbox fatigue in 2026.

Sales Enablement

Sales enablement is the function that equips reps with the content, training, tools, and coaching they need to sell effectively, from battle cards to onboarding programs. Strong sales enablement shortens ramp time and keeps messaging consistent across a growing team, and our roundup of the best sales enablement platforms for B2B teams covers the tools that support it.

Revenue Metrics, Contracts & Ops Terms

Revenue metrics, contracts, and ops terms are the numbers and paperwork that determine whether a sales team is actually profitable, not just busy. These 18 terms span everything from CAC and MRR to the SLAs and MSAs that hold enterprise deals up in legal review.

Average Order Value (AOV)

Average order value is the average dollar amount of each closed deal or transaction over a given period, calculated by dividing total revenue by number of deals. Tracking AOV alongside deal volume shows whether growth is coming from more customers, bigger deals, or both.

Close Ratio

Close ratio is the percentage of qualified opportunities that convert into signed customers, calculated by dividing closed-won deals by total opportunities in the period. A declining close ratio usually points to a qualification problem earlier in the pipeline rather than a closing skills problem.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

Cost of goods sold is the direct cost of delivering a product or service to a customer, such as hosting costs for a SaaS company. COGS factors directly into gross margin calculations, which sales leaders use alongside CAC to judge whether growth is actually profitable.

Conversion Rate (CVR)

Conversion rate is the percentage of prospects that move from one pipeline stage to the next, such as from demo booked to demo held, or from opportunity to closed-won. Tracking CVR stage by stage pinpoints exactly where a sales process is leaking deals.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost is the total sales and marketing spend required to win one new customer, calculated by dividing total spend by new customers acquired in the period. Comparing CAC against customer lifetime value tells a company whether its growth engine is actually sustainable.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is the total revenue a company expects to earn from a customer over the entire relationship, not just the first sale. A healthy CLV-to-CAC ratio, commonly cited as 3:1 or higher, signals that acquisition spend is generating durable, profitable growth.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Monthly recurring revenue is the predictable subscription revenue a company collects every month, excluding one-time fees. MRR is the core health metric for most SaaS sales teams because it directly reflects the compounding effect of new sales, expansions, and churn.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty by asking how likely someone is to recommend a company on a 0-10 scale, then subtracting detractors from promoters. Sales teams use strong NPS scores as social proof and referral fuel for prospecting into similar accounts.

Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is the process of predicting future revenue based on current pipeline, historical close rates, and deal stage probability. Accurate forecasting depends on reps keeping CRM data current, since a forecast built on stale pipeline data misleads the whole revenue team.

Sales Quotas

A sales quota is the revenue or activity target a rep or team is expected to hit in a given period, typically monthly or quarterly. Quotas that are set too aggressively without matching pipeline coverage tend to drive short-term corner-cutting instead of sustainable selling behavior.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A customer relationship management platform is the system of record where sales teams track contacts, deals, activities, and communication history. A CRM only creates value if reps actually log activity in it consistently, which is why enablement teams spend real effort on CRM adoption, not just CRM selection.

End of Day (EOD)

End of day is shorthand for a deadline due by the close of business that day, commonly used in sales communication like "can you send that proposal EOD?" It sets a same-day expectation without specifying an exact time, which keeps momentum on active deals.

Master Service Agreement (MSA)

A master service agreement is the overarching legal contract that sets the general terms between a vendor and customer, under which individual orders or statements of work are then executed. Enterprise deals often stall in legal review specifically over MSA terms like liability and data handling.

Sales Commission

Sales commission is the variable pay a rep earns based on the revenue they close, layered on top of a base salary in most B2B roles. Commission structures directly shape rep behavior, so poorly designed plans can incentivize the wrong deals, like heavy discounting to hit quota.

Sales Demos

A sales demo is a guided walkthrough of a product tailored to a specific prospect's use case, shown after discovery has established what actually matters to them. Demos that map directly to a prospect's stated pain points consistently convert better than generic, feature-by-feature product tours.

Sales Intelligence

Sales intelligence is data about target accounts and contacts, such as firmographics, technographics, and intent signals, used to prioritize and personalize outreach. Tools like ZoomInfo and Clay compile sales intelligence so reps spend research time acting on it instead of hunting for it manually.

Sales Pitch

A sales pitch is the concise value proposition a rep delivers to explain why a prospect should buy, tailored to what that specific buyer cares about. The strongest pitches lead with the prospect's problem and quantified outcome, not a list of product features.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A service level agreement is a contractual commitment defining the level of service a vendor guarantees, such as uptime percentage or support response time. SLAs are frequently a deciding factor in enterprise deals, since buyers need contractual assurance before trusting a vendor with critical workflows.

AI, RevOps & Video-First Sales Terms Reshaping 2026 Selling

AI, RevOps, and video-first terms are the vocabulary that has entered mainstream B2B sales since 2024, driven by AI-powered tooling and a buying committee that now researches most of the way to a decision without a rep. These 12 terms cover the concepts every rep needs to keep up in 2026 — for a deeper dive, see our complete guide to AI video personalization for outbound sales.

AI-Personalized Video Outreach

AI-personalized video outreach is recording one video and using AI-personalized video intros with AI voice cloning and dynamic backgrounds to automatically generate thousands of individually personalized versions, each addressing a specific prospect by name and company. Sendspark's AI video personalization platform is built around exactly this workflow, and teams using it report 2-3x higher reply rates than static outreach.

AI SDR

An AI SDR is software that automates prospecting tasks traditionally done by a human sales development representative, such as researching accounts, drafting outreach, and booking meetings. AI SDRs handle volume and first-touch personalization at a scale a human team can't match, though most B2B teams still route qualified conversations to a human rep before close.

RevOps (Revenue Operations)

Revenue operations, or RevOps, is the function that aligns sales, marketing, and customer success around shared data, processes, and tooling instead of operating as separate silos. According to HubSpot, RevOps exists specifically to make revenue predictable by giving every team a single, shared view of the customer journey.

Conversation Intelligence

Conversation intelligence is AI-powered software that records, transcribes, and analyzes sales calls to surface patterns like objections, competitor mentions, and talk-to-listen ratio. Gong describes conversation intelligence as turning unstructured conversations into structured, actionable data that helps managers coach reps using real examples instead of guesswork.

Intent Data

Intent data is behavioral signal, such as a company researching competitor comparisons or pricing pages across the web, that indicates a business is actively in a buying cycle. Sales teams layer intent data onto their ICP to prioritize outreach toward accounts that are already showing buying signals, not just accounts that fit on paper.

Dark Funnel

The dark funnel is the portion of the B2B buyer's journey that happens in channels invisible to traditional tracking, like peer conversations, private communities, and anonymous research. Most B2B buyers now complete the majority of their research before ever contacting a sales rep, which is why content and reputation increasingly do the early selling.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) Sales

Product-led growth sales is a motion where the product itself, often through a free trial or freemium tier, drives adoption before a sales rep ever gets involved. Reps in a PLG model typically engage once usage data shows a account is expanding or hitting a plan limit, shifting the conversation from cold pitch to expansion.

Sales Engagement Platform

A sales engagement platform is software that sequences and automates a rep's multichannel outreach, such as email, calls, LinkedIn, and personalized video, across a structured cadence. These platforms centralize execution so reps spend time on conversations instead of manually tracking who to contact next.

Buying Committee

A buying committee is the group of stakeholders, often spanning multiple departments and seniority levels, who collectively influence and approve a B2B purchase decision. Buying groups have grown significantly in size in recent years, which means a rep who only builds one relationship at an account is exposed if that champion leaves or loses influence.

Multithreading

Multithreading means building relationships with several stakeholders across a buying committee at the same target account, instead of relying on a single champion. Deals that are multithreaded are meaningfully more resilient to a champion changing roles, going quiet, or getting overruled internally.

Digital Sales Room

A digital sales room is a shared, persistent online space where a rep and a buying committee can access proposals, videos, pricing, and mutual action plans in one place throughout a deal. It replaces the scattered email-attachment approach with a single link every stakeholder on the buying committee can revisit.

Video Prospecting

Video prospecting is using short, personalized videos, instead of plain text, as the primary format for cold and warm outreach to book meetings, a core tactic in modern sales prospecting playbooks. It consistently outperforms plain-text cold email on reply rate because a personalized video signals effort a template never can.

Video-first prospecting is easiest to understand in action. Here's a short look at how B2B SaaS teams use AI-personalized video to book more meetings at scale:

Sales Terms Quick Reference Table

Use this table to jump straight to the category you need instead of scanning all 63 definitions. It groups every term above by category and gives one example so you can confirm you're in the right section.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most important sales terms every rep should know?

Every rep should start with pipeline terms like MQL, BOFU, and sales funnel, plus role terms like SDR and AE, since these come up in nearly every team meeting. From there, revenue metrics like CAC and MRR matter most once you're tracking your own performance against quota.

What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?

An SDR (sales development representative) and a BDR (business development representative) both prospect and qualify leads without closing deals themselves, and many companies use the titles interchangeably. Where teams do distinguish them, BDR often refers specifically to outbound prospecting into net-new accounts, while SDR covers both inbound and outbound qualification.

What does MQL mean in sales?

MQL stands for marketing qualified lead, a prospect marketing has flagged as likely to convert based on engagement signals like content downloads or website visits. An MQL typically still needs a sales rep to confirm budget, authority, need, and timeline before it becomes a fully qualified sales opportunity.

What is RevOps (Revenue Operations)?

RevOps, short for revenue operations, is the function that aligns sales, marketing, and customer success around shared data, processes, and technology instead of operating in separate silos. Gartner has found that companies with mature RevOps functions are roughly twice as likely to exceed their revenue targets as siloed organizations.

What is conversation intelligence in sales?

Conversation intelligence is AI software that records, transcribes, and analyzes sales calls to surface objections, competitor mentions, and coaching opportunities automatically. It replaces manual call review with structured data that managers use to coach reps using real examples from actual calls.

What is AI-personalized video outreach?

AI-personalized video outreach means recording a single video once and using AI voice cloning and dynamic backgrounds to automatically generate a personalized version for each prospect, addressing them by name and referencing their company. Sales teams use it to combine the reply-rate lift of personal video with the scale of automated outreach.

How many sales terms should a new rep learn first?

A new rep should prioritize the roughly 20-25 terms covering pipeline stages, team roles, and core outreach channels before worrying about advanced metrics or emerging AI terminology. Trying to memorize all 63 terms in this glossary at once is less useful than learning the ones that come up in your first week of calls and meetings.