SAAS + SALES GLOSSARY
Use this glossary to find clear definitions of the metrics, acronyms, frameworks, and operating terms used across SaaS, sales, leadership, and go-to-market organizations.
A person who consistently demonstrates the behaviors, capabilities, judgment, and results an organization expects from its strongest performers. Quota attainment provides one measure within a broader definition.
A shared definition gives leaders a stronger basis for hiring, coaching, employee development, and performance management.
Annual Contract Value
The annualized value of a customer contract. One-time fees are excluded unless the company's reporting policy includes them.
ACV helps teams compare contracts, segment customers, and design a sales process appropriate for the expected deal value.
Account Executive
A salesperson primarily responsible for moving qualified opportunities through the sales process and closing new business.
Clear AE ownership creates accountability for discovery, deal strategy, negotiation, and close.
Average Revenue Per Account / User
The average recurring revenue generated by each customer account or individual user during a defined period.
It shows whether pricing, packaging, customer mix, and expansion efforts are increasing customer value.
Annual Recurring Revenue
The recurring subscription revenue a company expects to generate over a twelve-month period.
ARR is a core measure of scale and predictable revenue in subscription businesses.
Business-to-Business
A commercial model in which one business sells products or services to another business.
B2B buying usually involves multiple stakeholders, longer decisions, and more complex value justification than consumer sales.
Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline
A qualification framework used to assess whether a prospect has funding, decision-making authority, a meaningful need, and an actionable purchase timeline.
BANT helps sellers focus effort, but works best as a guide for discovery rather than a rigid checklist.
Business Development Representative
A salesperson focused on creating new opportunities, often through outbound prospecting and early qualification.
BDRs help build pipeline and create a consistent handoff into the closing team.
Customer Acquisition Cost
The total sales and marketing cost required to acquire a new customer, divided by the number of customers acquired.
CAC reveals whether growth is economically sustainable.
The number of months required for the gross profit from a customer to recover the cost of acquiring that customer.
A shorter payback period lets a company reinvest in growth sooner and with less capital.
The rate at which customers or recurring revenue are lost during a defined period.
Even strong new sales can be undermined when customer or revenue churn is too high.
Observable buyer evidence required for an opportunity to enter or leave a sales stage.
Objective criteria create a common pipeline language, improve coaching, and make forecasts more reliable.
The percentage of people, leads, or opportunities that advance from one defined step to the next.
Stage-level conversion rates expose friction and show where small improvements can compound.
Customer Relationship Management
The system used to manage customer and prospect data, activities, opportunities, communications, and forecasts.
A well-maintained CRM provides the shared record needed to manage pipeline and customer relationships.
Chief Revenue Officer
The executive accountable for aligning the functions and systems that generate, retain, and expand revenue.
The CRO connects strategy, sales, marketing, customer success, pricing, and revenue operations around shared outcomes.
Customer Success Manager
A role responsible for helping customers achieve value, adopt the product, renew, and identify appropriate expansion opportunities.
Customer success strengthens retention, expansion, advocacy, and long-term revenue.
A structured conversation for understanding a prospect’s goals, problems, constraints, decision process, and desired outcomes.
Strong discovery makes recommendations relevant and keeps selling focused on customer value.
Additional recurring revenue from existing customers through upgrades, added users, cross-sells, or additional products.
Expansion can increase customer lifetime value and offset contraction or churn.
How closely predicted sales results match the revenue actually closed during a period.
Accurate forecasts support hiring, investment, cash planning, and credible leadership decisions.
An integrated approach connecting market positioning, demand creation, qualification, selling, onboarding, retention, and expansion.
Revenue becomes more predictable when every stage works as one system instead of isolated functions.
Go-to-Market
The coordinated strategy for identifying a market, reaching the right buyers, delivering value, winning customers, and growing revenue.
A clear GTM strategy aligns product, pricing, marketing, sales, service, and customer success.
Ideal Customer Profile
A description of the type of company most likely to receive strong value from an offering and become a successful customer.
A clear ICP improves targeting, messaging, qualification, product fit, and sales efficiency.
The practice of making small, measurable improvements consistently across a business.
Teams can test practical changes, measure the results, and continue improving what works. Those gains can accumulate into significant performance improvement.
Key Performance Indicator
A measurable indicator used to track progress toward an important business outcome.
The right KPIs focus attention on performance and leading behaviors that teams can act on.
Customer Lifetime Value
The estimated economic value a customer generates over the full relationship with a company.
Comparing LTV with CAC helps determine whether customer acquisition is creating durable value.
Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identify Pain, Champion, Competition
A qualification and deal-management framework commonly used for complex B2B opportunities.
It helps sellers test deal quality, uncover risk, and understand how a buying decision will actually happen.
The business segment between small companies and large enterprises, usually defined by revenue, employee count, or buying complexity.
Mid-market customers often require more tailored selling and service than small businesses without the full complexity of enterprise sales.
Marketing Qualified Lead
A lead that marketing identifies as more likely to become a customer based on fit, engagement, or agreed qualification criteria.
A useful MQL definition creates alignment between marketing activity and sales-ready demand.
Monthly Recurring Revenue
The predictable subscription revenue a company expects in a typical month.
MRR makes recurring growth, expansion, contraction, and churn easier to track month by month.
The change in ARR after adding new and expansion revenue and subtracting contraction and churn.
It shows the true recurring-revenue growth created during a period.
Net Revenue Retention
The percentage of recurring revenue retained from an existing customer group after expansion, contraction, and churn.
NRR shows whether the existing customer base grows or shrinks without counting new customers.
Objectives and Key Results
A goal-setting method that pairs a qualitative objective with measurable results that indicate progress.
OKRs can align teams around outcomes when they are focused, measurable, and connected to operating priorities.
The set of active sales opportunities organized by stage, expected value, timing, and probability of closing.
Pipeline gives leaders a forward-looking view of revenue potential and where coaching is needed.
The ratio of qualified pipeline value to the revenue target for a period.
Coverage indicates whether a team has enough opportunity volume, given its expected win rate, to reach its goal.
Product Qualified Lead
A prospect whose product usage or behavior indicates meaningful value, fit, and potential buying intent.
PQLs connect product experience with sales prioritization in product-led businesses.
The way a company structures what customers receive, how offerings are grouped, and how value is monetized.
Strong pricing and packaging align customer value, buying preferences, competitive position, and revenue growth.
Quarterly Business Review
A structured quarterly review of results, customer value, strategic priorities, risks, and next actions.
QBRs help teams and customers step back from daily activity and align on outcomes and decisions.
The process of determining whether an opportunity has sufficient fit, value, access, urgency, and ability to progress.
Effective qualification protects seller time and improves pipeline quality without treating discovery like an interrogation.
The percentage of an assigned sales target achieved by a seller or team during a defined period.
It is an important outcome measure, but should be considered alongside behaviors, capability, judgment, and market conditions.
Revenue Operations
The function that aligns revenue data, systems, processes, planning, and analytics across marketing, sales, and customer success.
RevOps reduces friction and gives revenue teams a consistent operating foundation.
Software as a Service
Software delivered over the internet, usually through a recurring subscription rather than a one-time installation purchase.
The SaaS model depends on recurring value, retention, expansion, and disciplined unit economics.
The average time from the beginning of a qualified sales opportunity to a final purchase decision.
Understanding cycle length improves forecasting, capacity planning, and deal coaching.
A measure of how quickly pipeline produces revenue, commonly calculated from opportunity count, average deal value, win rate, and sales-cycle length.
It shows how changes across multiple sales levers affect the speed of revenue creation.
Sales Development Representative
A salesperson responsible for prospecting, responding to leads, and qualifying potential opportunities before a closing conversation.
SDRs create pipeline and help ensure account executives focus on appropriate opportunities.
Richard Ortega's approach to connecting a Service-first philosophy with the practical structure required to grow a business.
It combines operating principles with management systems, measurement, and coaching so an organization can execute consistently without depending on constant intervention from senior leaders.
Helping a prospect make the best decision before trying to win a sale, including recommending another option when it creates greater value for the buyer.
Useful education and honest guidance build trust and earn the right to recommend a product or course of action.
Sales Kickoff
A focused gathering that aligns a sales organization on its strategy, priorities, required skills, product knowledge, and expectations for the coming period.
A strong SKO establishes shared direction and prepares the team to execute after the event.
Small and Medium-Sized Business
A market segment of smaller companies, often defined by employee count, revenue, or purchasing complexity.
SMB motions usually depend on clear value, high volume, efficient acquisition, fast learning, and scalable service.
Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision
A discovery and qualification framework for understanding a buyer’s current state, problems, business impact, urgency, and decision path.
It keeps discovery centered on the customer’s situation and desired outcome.
Sales Qualified Lead
A lead that sales has reviewed and accepted as appropriate for active pursuit based on agreed criteria.
A clear SQL definition improves marketing and sales alignment and protects selling capacity.
Total Addressable Market / Serviceable Available Market / Serviceable Obtainable Market
Three market-sizing views that estimate total potential demand, the portion a company can serve, and the portion it can realistically capture.
These estimates help leaders select markets, set expectations, and match investment to a realistic opportunity.
Total Contract Value
The total committed value of a contract across its full term, including recurring and sometimes specified one-time charges.
TCV shows total commitment, while ACV makes contracts of different lengths easier to compare.
A commercial model built around handling a high number of opportunities or customers and moving them efficiently through a repeatable journey.
For small-business and mid-market segments, performance often depends on balancing enough activity with fast, high-quality execution.
The percentage of qualified opportunities that become closed-won business during a defined period.
Win rate is a critical input to pipeline coverage, sales velocity, forecasting, and capacity planning.
A person's current capacity to manage change, complexity, pressure, and uncertainty.
Understanding that capacity helps leaders decide how quickly to introduce change, when to challenge someone, and what support the person needs.
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