154 Sales Terms Every Rep Should Know

This glossary clarifies 154 core sales terms you’ll use in prospecting, pipeline reviews, and forecasting. You’ll find plain-English definitions for prospecting, tooling, and KPIs so you can communicate clearly and move deals faster.

Whether you’re a seasoned Account Executive or just starting as an SDR, this sales glossary breaks down the essential sales terminology you’ll encounter daily. This glossary explains each term in plain English and links concepts to managing your sales cycle.

Share this with new SDRs during onboarding.

1. Sales fundamentals & methodologies

This section covers the core sales approaches your team relies on.

• Sales strategy: The high-level plan that outlines how you target customers, position the offer, and hit revenue goals.
• Sales methodology: The specific, structured approach or sales process a sales team uses to engage with prospects throughout the sales journey (e.g., SPIN Selling, Challenger Sale, Solution Selling). A consistent methodology makes coaching easier and improves forecast accuracy.
• AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action—a model for the steps to purchase.
• BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline): A popular framework used by sales representatives for lead qualification by assessing a prospect’s readiness and ability to buy based on these four criteria.
• Consultative selling: A needs-based approach where the salesperson acts as a trusted advisor, focusing on understanding and solving the customer’s specific pain points instead of just pitching a product or service.
• Solution selling: An approach focused on identifying a customer’s challenges and framing the product or service as the direct solution to those specific problems.
• Value selling: A sales methodology centered on understanding and communicating the tangible business value (e.g., ROI, cost savings, efficiency gains) a product or service delivers to the customer.
• ABC (Always Be Closing): A classic sales mantra emphasizing persistence and a constant focus on closing sales.
• B2B (Business to Business): Sales that occur between two businesses, often involving more complex transactions.
• B2C (Business-to-Consumer): Sales from a business to an individual consumer.

2. Lead generation & qualification

You can’t sell without potential buyers. Here, we explore steps for identifying, attracting, and evaluating leads to determine if they are a good fit for your product or service and worth pursuing.

• ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): A detailed profile describing the perfect company (not individual) to target, based on firmographic data such as industry, size, location, revenue, tech stack, and behavioral attributes.
• Buyer persona: A generalized representation of your ideal customer segments (the individuals within those companies) based on market research and real data about existing customers. A clear buyer persona helps tailor outreach by identifying demographics, goals, pain points, and motivations.
• Lead generation: The process of attracting and capturing interest from potential customers to build a pipeline of leads, often driven by marketing efforts.
• Lead list: A curated list of potential customers, often compiled through research, databases, or data extraction tools.
• Lead: Any individual or organization that could potentially become a customer; often an initial contact who has shown minimal interest or fits a broad profile. These are often the starting points before lead qualification.
• Prospect: A qualified lead who has been vetted, meets the ICP criteria, shows potential need or interest, and is considered a viable sales opportunity worth pursuing by sales reps.
• Lead qualification: The process of evaluating a lead against predefined criteria (like BANT or ICP fit) to determine if they are a genuine opportunity worth pursuing by the sales team. This step turns a lead into a qualified lead.
• Lead scoring: A system for assigning numerical values to leads based on their attributes (e.g., job title, company size) and behaviors (e.g., website engagement, email opens) to prioritize outreach efforts among sales reps.
• Account-based selling: A sales strategy where the entire company focuses on converting high-value accounts rather than targeting a broad audience.
• Cold lead: A potential contact who has shown no prior interest or engagement with your company.
• Warm lead: A prospect who has shown some level of engagement or familiarity with your brand (perhaps via marketing efforts) but isn’t yet active in a sales cycle.
• Hot lead: A highly engaged prospect who shows strong buying signals and is likely ready to convert soon.
• Qualified lead: A lead that has met specific criteria demonstrating they are a good fit and potentially ready for sales engagement. This is a key milestone in the sales process.
• MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead): A lead identified as likely to become a customer through marketing interactions (e.g., downloading content), but not yet sales-ready. Passed from marketing teams to sales for further review.
• SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): A qualified lead vetted by the sales team that meets the criteria, indicating they are ready for direct sales outreach or a meeting.
• Bad leads: Contacts that do not meet qualification criteria and are unlikely to convert into customers. Removing these keeps the sales pipeline clean.
• Intent signals: Behaviors that show active research or purchase readiness (e.g., pricing page visits, demo requests, content downloads, search queries). Understanding buyer behavior helps identify intent.
• Trigger event: A specific occurrence (e.g., company funding round, new executive hire) that signals a potential opening or need for your product or service, creating a timely reason to reach out.
• Buying criteria: The specific factors, features, or requirements a customer uses to evaluate potential solutions before making a purchase decision.
• Account: A company record in your CRM (existing customer or target). Stores firmographics, contacts, and deal history.

3. Sales outreach & communication

You’ve found your leads. Now connect. This section covers the different ways sales representatives initiate contact and interact with prospects, from the first hello to handling objections.

• Outbound sales: A sales approach focused on proactively identifying and contacting potential customers who may not be aware of your company or solution.
• Inbound sales: A sales approach focused on responding to and closing leads that come to the company proactively through marketing content, referrals, or direct inquiries.
• Cold outreach: Initiating contact with a prospect (via email, social media, etc.) who has no prior relationship or interaction with you or your company.
• Warm outreach: Contacting a prospect who has already had some interaction with your brand, content, or salesperson (e.g., met at an event, connected on LinkedIn).
• Cold calling: Phone outreach to prospects with no prior contact.
• Sales call: A conversation (phone, video, or in-person) between a sales representative and a prospect or customer with a specific sales objective (e.g., discovery, demo, negotiation, closing).
• Social selling: Using social platforms (like LinkedIn and X) to find, connect with, and nurture prospects. A key part of modern sales strategies.
• Connection request: An invitation sent on platforms like LinkedIn to add someone to your professional network, often used as an initial touchpoint.
• InMail: LinkedIn Premium messaging to reach non-connections. Use sparingly and personalize to respect recipients.
• Open Profile message: A message to a member who enabled Open Profile (Premium), allowing non-connections to reach them.
• Cadence / Sequence: A structured series of planned outreach touchpoints (emails, calls, social interactions) delivered over a set period to engage a prospect, often managed in your CRM or with PhantomBuster automations that schedule messages based on replies and timing.
• Personalization: Tailoring outreach messages and content to the specific individual, company, role, or situation of the prospect to increase relevance and response rates. Essential for cutting through the noise.
• Positioning statement: A concise statement that clearly articulates your product’s unique value proposition and how it differs from competitors, tailored to a specific customer segment.
• Sound bite: A short, memorable phrase or sentence that effectively summarizes a key benefit or aspect of your sales pitch.
• Sales script: A pre-written guide or outline used by salespeople to structure their calls or presentations, ensuring key points are covered consistently.
• Discovery call: An initial conversation with a qualified lead focused on understanding their needs, challenges, goals, and pain points to determine if your solution is a good fit. This step is critical for qualification.
• Sales presentation: A structured delivery of information, often using visual aids, designed to explain your solution’s features, benefits, and value to a prospect.
• Feature: A specific product capability (e.g., drag-and-drop builder).
• Benefit: The positive outcome or value a customer receives from a product feature, often addressing a pain point (e.g., “The drag-and-drop interface saves you time and makes building campaigns easier”). Salespeople should focus on benefits over features.
• Sales proposal: A formal document provided to a prospect outlining the proposed solution, scope of work, pricing, terms, and expected value or ROI, often preceding contract negotiation.
• Pain point identification: The process of uncovering business challenges, problems, or frustrations a prospect is experiencing that your product or service can solve. Foundational to consultative selling.
• Objection handling: The process of addressing and overcoming concerns, questions, or hesitations raised by a prospect during the sales process. A critical skill for sales reps.
• Hard sell: Direct, high-pressure sales tactics focused solely on closing the deal quickly.
• Soft sell: An indirect, relationship-focused sales approach using subtle persuasion and rapport-building.
• Follow-up: Any communication sent after the initial outreach to nurture the relationship, provide value, or re-engage the prospect. Schedule two to three follow-ups, then pause or switch channel.
• No-reply condition: In PhantomBuster sequences, send the next step only if there’s no reply.
• Gatekeeper: An individual (like an assistant or receptionist) who manages access to the primary decision-maker. Navigating gatekeepers is a common challenge in outbound sales.

4. Sales process, pipeline & funnel management

How do leads become customers? This section defines the structures—the sales process, sales pipeline, and sales funnel—that sales teams use to track and manage opportunities as they move through the stages of the sales cycle or buyer’s journey.

• Sales process: A defined, repeatable sequence of steps that salespeople follow to move a prospect from initial contact to a closed deal. Having a clear sales process improves efficiency and predictability.
• Sales funnel: A visual representation of the theoretical buyer’s journey, showing the stages they pass through from initial awareness to becoming a customer (e.g., Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action). Often used by marketing teams.
• Sales pipeline: A specific, real-time view of all active sales opportunities, categorized by their current stage in the sales process. It tracks the progress of actual deals being worked by the sales team and forecasts future sales.
• Stage: A distinct phase within the sales process or sales pipeline (e.g., Qualification, Needs Analysis, Proposal Presented, Negotiation, Closed-Won/Lost).
• Opportunity: A qualified prospect with a recognized need, budget, and authority, representing a potential deal actively being worked by the sales team within the sales pipeline.
• Pipeline management: The ongoing process of overseeing, analyzing, and managing all the opportunities currently in the sales pipeline to ensure healthy deal flow and accurate forecasting.
• Opportunity management: The process of tracking and guiding individual sales deals through the different stages of the sales pipeline.
• Weighted pipeline: A method of forecasting sales revenue by assigning a probability percentage to deals based on their current stage in the sales pipeline. Sometimes called a weighted sales pipeline.
• Buying process: The series of steps or stages a customer goes through internally when making a purchase decision. Understanding the customer’s buying process helps align the sales process.
• Conversion path: The sequence of steps or interactions a lead takes from initial awareness to becoming a customer.
• Demand generation: Marketing activities focused on creating awareness and interest in your product or service, ultimately feeding the sales funnel.
• TOFU / MOFU / BOFU: Top, Middle, and Bottom of the Funnel; terms describing the different stages of the buyer’s journey and appropriate content/engagement for each part of the sales funnel.
• Closed-won: A sales opportunity that has successfully resulted in a sale and is closed in the sales pipeline.
• Closed-lost: A sales opportunity that did not result in a sale and is now closed in the sales pipeline. Analyzing these helps refine sales strategies.
• Closed opportunities: The collective term for all deals that have reached a final outcome, whether won or lost.

5. Sales roles & responsibilities

Who does what on a sales team? Here’s a breakdown of common job titles and their typical roles within a sales organization, ranging from finding leads to closing deals and managing accounts.

• Sales development representative (SDR): A sales representative primarily focused on outbound prospecting, identifying and qualifying new leads for account executives. Often an entry-level role, SDRs also convert inbound leads to provide opportunities for the sales team.
• Business development representative (BDR): Similar to an SDR, this sales representative may focus more on generating new business opportunities through strategic outreach, partnerships, or targeting specific high-value accounts or markets.
• Account executive (AE): The sales rep primarily responsible for closing deals with qualified opportunities passed from SDRs/BDRs or generated through their own efforts. Account executives manage the sales cycle from qualification to close.
• Account manager (AM): Focused on managing relationships with existing customers, ensuring satisfaction, retention, renewals, and identifying upsell/cross-sell opportunities. Key for maintaining customer lifetime value.
• Inside sales representative: A sales rep who conducts sales activities remotely using phone, email, and video conferencing, rather than traveling to meet clients in person.
• Outside sales representative: A sales rep who spends significant time traveling to meet with prospects and customers face-to-face to build relationships and close deals.
• Field sales rep: A type of outside sales representative who travels within a specific geographic territory to meet clients and close deals face-to-face.
• Sales manager: Leads, motivates, and manages a team of salespeople, sets targets, monitors performance, and oversees the execution of the sales strategy. Often considered sales leaders.
• Sales coach: An individual dedicated to training and mentoring sales representatives to improve their skills, techniques, and performance.

6. CRM & general sales technology

Use these tools to track deals, automate routine work, and keep data clean.

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Software central to sales operations, used to manage interactions and relationships with current and potential customers, track sales activities, manage the sales pipeline, and analyze data.
• CRM systems: The specific CRM software platforms used for customer relationship management (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM).
• Cloud-based CRM: CRM software hosted by the vendor and accessed via the internet, offering accessibility and scalability. This type of software ensures that all relevant data is accessible to every user, regardless of their location.
• On-premise CRM: CRM software installed and run on a company’s own servers and infrastructure.
• Lead management: The process within a CRM or sales platform for organizing, tracking, nurturing, and distributing leads to the appropriate sales reps.
• Opportunity management: The process within customer relationship management (CRM) software for tracking and guiding individual sales deals through the sales pipeline stages.
• Contact syncing: The process of automatically updating contact information between different systems (e.g., CRM, email marketing tool, sales automation platform) to maintain data consistency.
• CRM analytics: Reporting features and tools within a CRM system used to analyze sales data, track KPIs, and gain insights into performance.
• Sales dashboard: A visual interface, typically within a CRM or BI tool, providing a centralized view of key sales metrics, KPIs, and sales pipeline status.
• Sales reporting: The process of analyzing and presenting sales data to track performance, identify trends, and make informed decisions.
• Ad-hoc reporting: Creating specific, customized reports on demand to answer immediate business questions or analyze particular aspects of sales performance.
• Business intelligence (BI): Tools and processes for analyzing business data to gain strategic insights, often used for higher-level sales planning and performance analysis.
• Sales intelligence: Tools and platforms providing data and insights about prospects, companies, and markets to help salespeople identify opportunities, understand buyer needs, and personalize outreach.
• Data enrichment: Appending missing or incomplete data to lead records (e.g., adding emails, company size) using platforms like PhantomBuster’s AI-powered enrichment to append emails, company size, and job data.
• Profile enrichment: Use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Profile Scraper automation to collect publicly available profile details for compliant enrichment.
• Sales automation: Using software to automate repetitive sales tasks such as prospecting, data entry, email sequencing, and follow-ups, freeing up sales reps for selling activities.
• Workflow automation: Chain PhantomBuster automations to find leads, enrich them, send connection requests, and sync to your CRM.
• Zapier / Make.com: Use PhantomBuster’s webhooks and CRM integrations to sync data in real time. Zapier and Make can connect other apps when needed.
• Webhook: An automated mechanism allowing different applications to send real-time data to each other instantly when a specific event occurs (e.g., a new lead triggers adding to the CRM).
• CPQ software (Configure, Price, Quote): Tools helping sales reps quickly generate accurate quotes for complex or customizable products/services.
• Contract management: Software or systems used to create, track, manage, and store sales contracts and agreements, including the customer contract.
• Sales enablement: The strategic process, often managed by sales operations or dedicated teams, of providing the sales team with the tools, content, training, and resources they need to sell more effectively so reps ramp faster and deals move predictably.

7. Sales metrics & KPIs

How do you know if you’re winning? By measuring success. This section defines the key measurements, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics, used to track sales performance, efficiency, and the health of the sales engine.

• KPIs: The specific metrics you track to measure progress toward sales goals (e.g., quota attainment, win rate).
• Sales quota: A specific sales target (usually based on sales revenue or number of deals) assigned to a salesperson, team, or region for a defined period.
• Quota attainment: The percentage of the assigned sales quota that a salesperson or team has achieved within a specific period.
• Pipeline coverage: The ratio of the total value of opportunities in the sales pipeline compared to the sales quota (e.g., 3x coverage means pipeline value is three times the quota).
• Pipeline velocity: A measure of how quickly deals are moving through the sales pipeline, from creation to closing. Velocity = (# deals × win rate × ASP) ÷ sales cycle length. Improve by shortening cycle time or increasing win rate.
• Forecasting: The process of predicting future sales revenue based on historical data, current sales pipeline status, and market trends.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of leads or prospects who complete a desired action or move from one stage of the sales funnel/pipeline to the next (e.g., MQL to SQL conversion rate).
• Response rate: The percentage of outreach messages (emails, InMails, etc.) that receive a reply from the prospect.
• Connection acceptance rate: The percentage of LinkedIn connection requests sent that are accepted by the recipients.
• Close rate / Closing ratio: The percentage of opportunities or proposals that result in a closed-won deal. A key indicator of sales effectiveness. (Calculated as: Won deals / Total opportunities pursued).
• Time to first response: The average time it takes for a salesperson to respond to a lead inquiry or initial engagement. Speed matters.
• Average deal size: The average revenue generated from each closed-won deal over a specific period.
• Annual contract value (ACV): The average annualized revenue generated per customer contract, excluding one-time fees.
• Annual recurring revenue (ARR): The total amount of predictable, recurring revenue a company expects from subscriptions in one year.
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): The predictable, recurring revenue a company expects from active subscriptions each month. Tracks month-over-month growth.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total average cost spent to acquire one new customer (including all sales and marketing expenses). Keeping CAC low is important.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV / LTV): The total net profit a company predicts it will earn from an average customer over their entire customer lifetime. A measure of long-term value, often used interchangeably with lifetime value.
• LTV:CAC ratio: The ratio comparing customer lifetime value (LTV) to customer acquisition cost (CAC). A healthy ratio (e.g., 3:1+) indicates a sustainable business model.
• Profit margin: The percentage of revenue that remains as profit after deducting all associated costs and expenses. Essential for understanding profitability.
• Sales performance management: The overall process of monitoring, analyzing, and improving the productivity and effectiveness of the sales team and individual sales reps.

8. Customer success & retention

Closing the deal is just the beginning. Keeping customers happy and retaining their loyalty is vital for long-term growth. This section covers terms related to managing the relationship with existing customers after the initial sale.

• Customer success: A proactive business function focused on ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes and derive maximum value while using a company’s product or service. This fosters customer loyalty.
• Customer retention: The activities and strategies employed by a company to keep its existing customers engaged and continuing to do business over the long term. High retention boosts customer lifetime value.
• Onboarding: The process of introducing new customers to a product or service, helping them set it up, understand its features, and start realizing value quickly. A smooth onboarding reduces churn.
• Customer lifecycle: The various stages a customer progresses through in their relationship with a company, from initial awareness and acquisition through engagement, loyalty, and potentially churn or advocacy. Understanding the customer lifecycle helps tailor interactions.
• Upselling: Encouraging existing customers to purchase a more expensive version, upgrade, or add-on to their current product or service.
• Cross-selling: Selling additional, related, or complementary products or services to an existing customer. Both upselling and cross-selling increase revenue from the customer base.
• Churn rate: The percentage of customers who stop doing business with a company over a specific period (e.g., monthly or annual churn rate). A key metric for subscription businesses.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): A customer loyalty metric measured by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service. A high Net Promoter Score (NPS) indicates strong satisfaction.

9. Sales & marketing alignment

Sales and marketing shouldn’t operate in silos. When these departments work together, everyone wins. This section covers terms related to the collaboration between sales and marketing teams.

• Smarketing: A term combining “Sales” and “Marketing,” referring to the tight integration and alignment of sales and marketing departments to achieve shared revenue goals through coordinated sales efforts and marketing strategies.
• Alignment with sales teams: The process and state of ensuring that marketing and sales teams share common goals, definitions (like MQL/SQL), data, messaging, and work collaboratively towards revenue targets. Agree on MQL/SQL definitions and SLA for handoffs.
• Marketing strategies for sales: Campaigns, content, and tactics specifically designed by marketing teams to support the sales process, generate qualified leads, and enable salespeople.

10. Account safety & compliance

When using automation or handling data, playing by the rules is non-negotiable. This section outlines best practices and regulations for sales activities related to platform usage and data privacy.

• GDPR / CCPA compliance: Adherence to data privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (Europe) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (California), governing how personal data must be collected, processed, stored, and used. Important for handling prospect data.
• Data extraction ethics: Follow responsible practices when collecting publicly available data from websites, respecting user privacy, platform terms of service, and applicable regulations.
• LinkedIn limits: The restrictions imposed by LinkedIn on the number of certain actions (e.g., profile views, connection requests) a user can perform within a specific timeframe. Exceeding these can lead to issues.
• LinkedIn warning: A notification received from LinkedIn indicating that your account activity may have violated their terms of service or appears automated/excessive. A sign to adjust your activity.
• Account restriction: LinkedIn may temporarily limit your account if activity appears automated or excessive.
• Safe zone: Use PhantomBuster’s default safety limits and ramp gradually to avoid restrictions.
• Warm-up period: Gradually increase activity, stay within platform guidelines, and prioritize quality over volume.

11. Sales automation with PhantomBuster: key concepts

Let’s talk tools. This section focuses on terms you’ll encounter when using PhantomBuster to automate your sales workflow, from running workflows to understanding how it interacts with platforms.

• Automation: A pre-built process in PhantomBuster that completes a sales task (e.g., extract leads, personalize messages, sync to CRM).
• Workflows (PhantomBuster): Chain PhantomBuster automations into a multi-step outbound flow (find, enrich, connect, sync). PhantomBuster offers prebuilt workflows and enables you to chain specific automations to create custom workflows.
• LinkedIn Profile Scraper (PhantomBuster): An automation that collects publicly available profile fields from a provided list of URLs. Use safety defaults and follow LinkedIn guidelines.
• AI Enricher (PhantomBuster): Adds AI-powered enrichment (e.g., seniority, industry fit) inside your workflow so you can prioritize leads and personalize messages automatically.
• Session cookie: A browser token used by PhantomBuster to authenticate and automate activity on platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram on your behalf. Necessary for the tool to work. PhantomBuster retrieves this automatically when you have the Chrome extension installed. Use your own account credentials. Only automate actions you’d perform manually and respect platform limits.
• Safety and scheduling controls: Run PhantomBuster automations at set times to pace outreach safely. The maximum number of actions (e.g., profile views, messages sent) an automation will perform during a single execution run is set based on safety recommendations, and can be adjusted by users.
• Proxy configuration: If you operate from multiple locations or manage distributed teams, configure approved proxies to keep geolocation consistent and reduce false positives. Always follow platform guidelines.

Save this glossary and share it with your team. If you’re building an outbound workflow, start with LinkedIn Search Export, AI Enricher, Outreach, then sync to your CRM.