The Complete RevOps Glossary

Account

The totality of information your company has about a prospect or customer, which includes their contact information, products they use, and all intera...

Account Based Marketing (ABM)

Account based marketing (ABM) is the high-level coordination between marketing, sales, account management, and customer success to gain or grow custom...

Account Executive (AE)

A sales specialist who is in charge of one or more accounts, and interacts directly with prospects to demonstrate products and facilitate new business...

Account Manager (AM)

Annual Contract Value (ACV)

A calculation of the revenue amount for an individual customer in one year. The acronym stands for annual contract value.

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

A calculation of the subscription-based revenue a company generates in a year.

Application Programming Interface (API)

An API allows programmers and other technical users to interact with a product or service via code instead of a user interface. APIs allow systems to ...

Base (Base Salary)

The non-variable portion of a sales person’s performance. This base salary does not change with performance.

Billings

The total value of collected payments for committed sales contracts.

Book Building

Book building is the concept of creating and managing a book of accounts for a sales rep. These could be prospect accounts for a BDR/SDR or AE, or cus...

Bookings

The total value of signed or committed sales contracts.

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)

Business Development Representative (BDR)

A business development rep (BDR) is an entry-level sales specialist who focuses on finding or qualifying new prospects, establishing early prospect re...

Business Intelligence (BI)

Business intelligence, often shortened to just BI, is the function of using business data to make organizational decisions and improve business proces...

Business-to-Business (B2B)

Typically used to refer to a business that sells products or services to other businesses. Contrast this with businesses that sell directly to consume...

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

A member of a company’s executive team who is responsible for the company’s revenue growth, and oversees revenue generating departments, including sal...

Churn

Churn in business is the loss of a subscription customer due to cancellation or account expiration without payment. There are two types of churn to co...

Cohort

A specific group of subscription customers who subscribed or renewed during the same time period. For example, a cohort may include all new customers ...

Commission

The variable portion of a sales person’s compensation that is based on performance.

Compensation Plan

A compensation plan is a document provided to employees that explains precisely how they are paid. It details the compensation structure for a sales p...

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ)

The process of generating pricing and packaging quotes for customer orders, usually enabled through software.

Contact

An individual person associated with an account, usually an employee or point of contact at a prospect or customer company.

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)

The process of managing contract agreement during a sales cycle. A contract lifecycle typically includes contract creation, workflow, negotiation, app...

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a calculation of the cost to acquire a new customer. Typically CAC is calculated as follows: 

CAC = Total sales and...

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A system for tracking customer data and interactions with your company. Typically this is enabled through technology such as Salesforce, and is consid...

Customer Success (CS)

The department in B2B organizations that focuses on paying customers, with the goal of improving customer satisfaction and building stronger relations...

Customer Success Manager (CSM)

The customer-facing employee who supports customers as they move from sales prospects to active users of a product. The CSM is typically responsible f...

Deal Desk

A centralized location (physical or virtual) where members of sales, finance, legal, marketing and customer success discuss and make decisions about n...

Decision Maker (DM)

The person or persons responsible for purchasing decisions at a customer or prospect’s company. This may not always be that account’s primary POC.

Demand Generation

The division of a marketing organization dedicated to generating new business demand for a product, typically measured in terms of inbound leads produ...

DevOps

The collaboration of software development and IT operations throughout the various stages of the product development process. 

Dynamic Book Management

Dynamic book management, aka dynamic books, is a new approach to territory design, built on best practices from top B2B inside sales teams. Dynamic bo...

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation & Amortization (EBITDA)

EBITDA is an acronym that stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and its margins reflect a firm's short-term oper...

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

A software application that manages business processes across organizational functions like accounting, sales, project management, procurement, and ri...

Go to Market (GTM)

A company’s full sales and marketing strategy for how they sell their products. This includes plans for pricing, positioning, sales motions, and more,...

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)

A calculation of the percentage of revenue generated from a customer renewals, but does not include expansion revenue. It’s a measure of effectiveness...

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

No, this isn't referring to that ICP. An ideal customer profile in marketing and sales describes the attributes of the customers who are likely to nee...

Inside Sales

The modern way of conducting sales using telecommunications. Typically seen in comparison to field sales, inside sales refers to remote selling enable...

Lead

An individual or company that has shown an interest in your product or service; a potential customer. 

Lead Matching

The process of attempting to connect a new lead to an existing account in a CRM. This is usually performed by looking for matches in a new lead’s emai...

Lead Qualifications

The process of determining how likely a new lead or prospect is to convert to a paying customer. This can be done automatically, with lead scoring bas...

Lead Routing

The process of sending new leads or prospective customers to the next step in the sales process. For example, lead routing often occurs when marketing...

Lead Scoring

The process of assigning a score to a lead or prospect based on its fit with a set of predefined criteria. For example, a lead could earn a higher sco...

Lifetime Value (LTV)

 A calculation of the total revenue generated from a customer over their lifetime with a company.

Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)

A marketing automation platform (or MAP) is technology or software that automates marketing activities. Generally, it's used to perform multiple tasks...

Marketing Operations (MOPS)

Marketing operations (aka marketing ops or MOPS) is the function responsible for the operational aspects of marketing. That includes both the systems ...

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is a type of lead generated through marketing efforts, that meets a certain threshold or set of criteria indicating a...

Middle of Funnel (MOFU)

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

A calculation of the subscription-based revenue a company generates in a month. 

Net Dollar Retention (NDR)

A calculation of the total recurring revenue generated from existing customers. This is expressed as the net of increases in revenue from account expa...

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Typically an 11-point rating scale used to determine a customer’s satisfaction with a company or product. 

Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

See Net Dollar Retention (NDR).

On-Target Earnings (OTE)

An employee's total potential compensation if certain performance targets are achieved. That likely includes a base salary, plus variable compensation...

Opportunity

A lead that is more likely to invest more interest in your business, usually one that’s involved in an active sales process. Some of these may be refe...

Pipeline

The total view of the in-progress deals for a sales rep or team. It typically includes deals in a variety of stages, with information about expected d...

Point of Contact (POC)

The individual who is primarily responsible for their company’s relationship with a service provider. This is typically the main contact for an accoun...

Private Equity (PE)

Private Equity refers to shares of a company that represent ownership for non-publicly-traded companies. An individual who wants to take partial owner...

Product Led Growth (PLG)

Product led growth, or PLG, is sourcing leads for acquisition and growth from a product’s current user base. Typically a PLG-based sales motion would ...

Product Marketing

The division of marketing focused on positioning the product best for sales. That typically involves messaging, collateral, sales enablement and train...

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

A customer who has performed certain behaviors or used certain parts of the product, indicating potential for an account upgrade or expansion. 

Qualified Lead

A type of lead (a prospect) that has been determined to be a potential fit for your organization. This lead meets a set of criteria agreed upon by the...

Quota

A financial target that a sales person or team must achieve by a certain time period (a month, quarter or year) to gauge effort and effectiveness. Com...

Recognized Revenue

The total value of the revenue generated after the agreed-upon product or service has been delivered and payment completed. Recurring subscription rev...

Revenue Operations (RevOps)

The modern model adopted by B2B companies that aligns the operational aspect of the full revenue organization across sales, marketing, and customer su...

Revenue Velocity

Revenue velocity is a measure of how quickly your business generates revenue. Velocity is more than just speed, though. It's a combination of the size...

Round Robin

A method for distributing work fairly to a number of people by giving an item to each person in turn, using an assigned order. Once each person has re...

Rules of Engagement (ROE)

The rules of engagement are agreed-upon guidelines for sales coverage to prevent conflicts and ensure fair treatment and deal credit. ROE also help wh...

Sales Accepted Opportunity (SAO)

A new business lead a member of the sales team has accepted into their sales pipeline. Typically, this is a well qualified lead with an increased like...

Sales Automation

The use of technology to automate certain tasks or processes within a sales motion. For example, an Account Executive could automate follow-up to a pr...

Sales Development Representative (SDR)

A sales development rep (SDR) is an entry-level sales specialist who focuses on finding or qualifying new prospects, establishing early prospect relat...

Sales Enablement

Equipping and training the sales team with the information and means to effectively sell a product or service. This includes training on new features,...

Sales Engagement

All the interactions between a sales team and prospects, usually referring to the channels (email, phone, presentation) and tactics (cold outreach, re...

Sales Engineer (SE)

A specialized role in the sales process. Businesses that sell complex or technical products rely on sales engineers to help customers connect function...

Sales Operations (Sales Ops)

Sales operations (aka sales ops) is the function responsible for the operational aspects of sales. That includes both the systems and processes involv...

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

An SQL is a type of lead that meets a set of criteria set by the sales team, indicating a greater chance of converting from prospect to paying custome...

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, aka SEO, refers to the techniques and concepts involved in making sure a website shows up in search results. SEO technique...

Segment

A group of customers or prospects based on a set of relevant criteria for sales and marketing. 

Territory

A sales territory is a group of customers or prospects a particular sales rep is responsible for. Typically territories are based on criteria such as ...

Top of Funnel (TOFU)