Most glossaries in this category list terms alphabetically and define each one in a sentence that could describe any company. That is not useful at the point someone reaches for a glossary, which is usually mid-argument about what a word means inside their own funnel.
This one is grouped by the six pillars of Pipeline Architecture, because a term means something different depending on which part of the system it belongs to. Where a definition is genuinely contested, the entry says so instead of picking a side quietly.
Market: who is worth a conversation
ICP, ideal customer profile. The account-level description of who you sell to, including who you decline. An ICP without disqualifiers is a wish list, not a profile. Build it from closed-won and closed-lost together, since the losses carry most of the signal. Workshop: ICP development.
Persona. The person inside the account, distinct from the ICP, which is the account itself. Teams routinely collapse the two and then wonder why messaging misses: the right company and the wrong job title fails the same way as the reverse.
Account tiering. Ranking target accounts by fit and potential value so effort is allocated deliberately. Tier 1 gets research and a custom approach, Tier 3 gets a sequence. The tiering only pays if the effort actually differs by tier.
TAM, SAM, SOM. Total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, serviceable obtainable market. Useful for board decks, mostly not for prospecting. The number that matters to an SDR team is how many accounts in the ICP are reachable this quarter.
ABM and ABSD. Account-based marketing and account-based sales development. Both mean treating the account rather than the lead as the unit of work. ABSD is the sales development half: the same account focus applied to who gets researched, sequenced, and called.
Signal: what says an account is in motion
Intent data. Evidence that an account is researching a topic, usually from third-party content consumption. Treat it as a prioritization input, not a qualification. Intent says an account is reading, not that it is buying.
Trigger event. A dated, specific change that creates a reason to reach out now: funding, a leadership hire, a new office, a product launch, a job posting for a role your product touches. The best triggers are the ones a competitor would also see, so speed matters more than cleverness.
Technographics. What an account runs. Valuable when your product replaces or integrates with something specific, and noise otherwise.
Bidstream data. Intent inferred from advertising bid requests rather than from content engagement. Broader coverage, weaker precision per signal.
Signal decay. The window in which a trigger is still worth acting on. Most teams never define it and end up working triggers that went cold weeks ago.
Message: what earns a reply
Sequence and cadence. A sequence is the set of touches. A cadence is their timing. The words are used interchangeably in most tools and are not the same thing: two teams can run identical sequences on cadences that perform nothing alike.
Touch. One outbound attempt through any channel. Counting touches without counting channels hides the shape of the effort.
Personalization. A message that could only be sent to this account. The common failure is a personalized first line bolted onto a generic body, which readers detect immediately.
Cold email. Outbound email to someone with no prior relationship. See cold calling tips for the call equivalent, and AI prompts for prospecting for drafting help that still needs editing.
Objection versus brush-off. An objection is a real concern that can be answered. A brush-off is a reflex to end the call. Treating a brush-off as an objection is how reps talk themselves out of a second attempt.
Motion: how the work runs
SDR, sales development representative. The role that creates qualified pipeline through outbound and inbound follow-up, and hands it to a closer. Salesforce describes the same split: SDRs open conversations, account executives close them.
BDR. Business development representative. In most orgs the same job as an SDR, occasionally split so BDR means outbound and SDR means inbound. There is no industry-wide convention, so define it locally before comparing benchmarks with anyone.
AE, account executive. The closer who takes the meeting an SDR books.
Outbound and inbound. Outbound starts with the seller, inbound starts with the buyer. The distinction matters for expectations more than for technique: a 20% connect rate means something very different in each direction.
Connect rate. The share of dials that reach a human. Contested: some teams count any pickup, others count only conversations past the first sentence. Compare the definition before comparing the number.
Meeting set versus meeting held. Set is booked. Held is attended. The gap between them is a quality measure and the number most often quietly omitted from a report.
No-show rate. The share of set meetings that do not happen. A rising no-show rate usually points upstream at qualification, not at the calendar.
MQL and SQL. Marketing qualified lead and sales qualified lead. Both are local definitions dressed as standards. Write yours down or the handoff will be an argument every week.
Qualification frameworks. BANT, MEDDIC, MEDDPICC and others. They are checklists for what to learn, not scripts. A framework applied as an interrogation produces worse meetings than no framework.
Handoff. The transfer of a booked meeting from SDR to AE. A good handoff carries context the AE would otherwise have to rediscover. See revenue alignment.
Mastery: how people get good at it
Ramp. The period before a new rep is expected to hit full quota, usually designed as 30/60/90. Ramp is a design, not a waiting period. Curriculum: SDR training. Verification: the training checklist.
Enablement. The function that gives reps the material and practice to do the job. Distinct from training, which is the act of teaching.
Call review. Listening to a recorded call with the rep and coaching one thing. The single highest-use manager habit, and the first to disappear under pipeline pressure. See SDR manager training.
Playbook. The written procedure for a repeatable play: the trigger, the steps, and what a manager inspects before it ships. Library: playbooks.
Fractional SDR manager. A part-time manager for a team too small to justify a full-time one. See fractional SDR manager.
Measurement: which numbers say it is working
Pipeline velocity. Opportunities multiplied by average deal value multiplied by win rate, divided by sales cycle length. The one formula that ties the four levers together. Full page.
Win rate. Closed-won divided by closed-won plus closed-lost, in a closed cohort. Open pipeline stays out of the denominator. Full page.
Conversion rate. Any step-to-step ratio. Meaningless without naming both steps, which is why "our conversion rate is 12%" is not a sentence.
Quota and attainment. The target and the share of it achieved. Attainment distribution matters more than the average: 50% attainment across the team is a different problem from two reps carrying everyone.
Cost per meeting. Fully loaded cost divided by meetings held, not set. The honest denominator changes the number substantially.
ARR and ARPA. Annual recurring revenue and average revenue per account. MetricHQ defines ARR as committed subscription value normalized over twelve months, excluding one-time fees and services. ARR · ARPA.
Sales cycle length. Time from a defined stage entry to close. The stage entry is the part teams forget to fix, and moving it changes the number without changing the business. Time to close.
The maturity ladder
Four rungs describing how far a team has automated the motion above: Manual (people do the work, tools store the record), Assisted (tools draft and suggest, people decide), Orchestrated (the system runs the motion, people supervise), Autonomous (the system runs and adapts, people set policy).
Place your team on it with the maturity model.
Using this glossary
Free to read, free to copy into your own onboarding doc. The one ask is attribution: cite Tenbound and link the source.
If a term here is defined differently inside your team, that is the useful finding. Write yours down. Most sales development arguments are two people using one word for two things.