It’s very ironic that most people in sales understand the need to communicate in simple terms and avoid jargon where possible yet the industry is full of confusing jargon & acronyms!
Luckily for you dear reader, here’s a breakdown of the most frequently used ones:
SDR = Sales Development Representative = Salesperson whose main job is to book meetings with qualified prospects for an AE. Traditionally, SDRs only used to focus on inbound enquiries but that’s no longer the case
BDR = Business Development Representative = Salesperson whose main job is to book meetings with qualified prospects for an AE. Traditionally, BDRs only used to focus on outbound only but that’s no longer the case
AE = Account Executive = Salesperson whose main job is to convert initial meetings with prospective clients into serious interest, intent and decision
CSM = Customer Success Manager = this role focuses on keeping existing clients happy so that they remain clients and are using every service and/or product that they can
ICP = Ideal Customer Profile = The businesses who benefit most from what you offer
IBC = Ideal Buying Committee = All of the people who make the decisions as to who their company uses as providers
CTA = Call To Action = an instruction/invitation for the reader/viewer of your content to do something specific
MRR = Monthly Recurring Revenue = the total amount of income earned per month from the provision of services
ARR = Annual Recurring Revenue = the total amount of income earned per 12mths from the provision of services
CAC = Customer Acquisition Cost = arguably a marketing focused metric but it’s widely used in sales and it tells us how much it costs our business to start a new client relationship
Playbooks = documented processes for sales staff to learn how to do sales stuff
Cadence = a chronological list of sales tasks designed to spark engagement with prospective clients
Sequence = just a different word for cadence
Quota = the word all other English speaking countries outside of the UK use for a sales target
CI = Conversational Intelligence = software to help users make better calls
Sales enablement = providing the sales team with everything they need to achieve results
Pipeline = a system for tracking all of your sales opportunities from start to finish
Funnel = a system for tracking all of the relationships you have with clients
Prospecting = finding new clients
Outreach = another word for prospecting
Qualifying = confirmation that you can provide a needed service to the right type of client
Discovery = another word for qualifying
Cold calling = using the telephone for developing new business
Social selling = using social media for developing new business
Pattern interrupt = an attempt to start a call with a prospective client in an original way that doesn’t scream ‘this is a sales call’
Personalisation = an attempt to connect with a prospective client using specific information which is relevant to them
Personal brand = how the rest of the World sees you based on what you do online and in-person
Please email me with your additions which I will gladly add to the blog and credit you for them: owain@dremur.co.uk
