Sales & Revenue Ops Glossary

All the sales, marketing and revenue operations terms you need to know

No Results

A

What Is Account Scoring?

Account scoring ranks companies by likelihood to buy, renew, or expand using fit, intent, engagement, and usage signals to prioritize GTM actions.

What Is Activation Rate?

Activation rate is the percent of new users or accounts that complete key early actions showing initial value, measuring onboarding and adoption success.

What Is Adoption Rate?

Adoption rate is the percent of eligible users or accounts that actively use a product or feature in a time period, showing real rollout success.

What Is an Account Coverage Model?

An account coverage model defines how accounts are assigned and supported across roles and stages, including ownership, routing, and engagement rules.

What Is an Account Hierarchy?

An account hierarchy links related accounts under a parent-child structure in CRM and billing, improving ownership, forecasting, and revenue reporting.

What Is an ARR Bridge?

An ARR bridge explains period-over-period ARR change by breaking it into movements like new ARR, expansion, contraction, and churn.

What Is an Attribution Window?

An attribution window is the time period in which a conversion can be credited to a touchpoint, shaping channel ROI and attribution reporting.

What Is API Integration?

A technical connection enabling automated data flow between RevOps systems.

What Is ASC 606?

ASC 606 is the US GAAP revenue standard for recognizing revenue from customer contracts using a five-step model and required disclosures.

What it is Agent‑Led Growth (ALG)?

Agent-Led Growth is a growth model where autonomous AI agents (software systems that can act, decide and adapt on their own) become the main drivers of a company’s growth and go-to-market activities. Instead of only humans doing sales, marketing, onboarding etc., these AI agents take on many of those tasks: identifying leads, engaging them, optimizing […]

B

What Is Billing Automation?

Billing automation uses software to calculate charges, generate invoices, collect payments, and manage dunning for subscriptions and usage-based billing.

What Is Blended CAC?

Blended CAC is total sales and marketing acquisition spend divided by new customers acquired, showing all-channel customer acquisition efficiency.

What Is Booking Velocity?

Booking velocity measures how quickly bookings are generated over time, often shown as bookings per week or month to track momentum and forecasting.

What Is Budget vs Actuals?

Budget vs actuals compares planned financial results to real results, showing variances for revenue and expenses to guide forecasting and decisions.

What Is the B2B Buying Process?

The B2B buying process is the series of steps a business goes through when purchasing products or services from another business.

C

What Are Closed Deals?

Closed deals refer to sales that have been completed and closed out by a sales representative.

What Is a Cloud Based CRM?

Cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) is when a company's CRM software and data is hosted in the cloud instead of on local servers.

What Is a Customer Health Score?

A customer health score summarizes churn and renewal risk using signals like product usage, support, and contract data to prioritize customer success actions.

What Is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?

A CRM system centralizes customer data and automates sales workflows.

What Is Capacity Planning?

Capacity planning is the process of forecasting future demand and ensuring an organization has enough people, equipment, infrastructure, and budget to deliver work on time without overbuilding or under-resourcing. It compares expected workload with available capacity, then guides decisions like hiring, scheduling, scaling cloud resources, adding shifts, or prioritizing projects. Why Capacity Planning Matters Capacity […]

What Is Cohort Analysis?

Cohort analysis groups users or customers by a shared start event and tracks retention, revenue, or behavior over time to reveal trends averages miss.

What Is Commercial Analytics?

Commercial analytics uses CRM, marketing, billing, and product data to measure and improve revenue performance across pipeline, pricing, retention, and growth.

What Is Consumption-Based Pricing?

Consumption-based pricing charges customers based on actual usage like API calls, storage, or compute, using metering and billing to scale cost with value.

What Is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)?

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the process of managing contracts from creation to execution and renewal. CLM improves efficiency, compliance, and risk management.

What Is CRM Analytics?

CRM analytics analyzes customer and sales data to reveal trends, forecast outcomes, and guide revenue decisions.

What Is CRM Data Cleansing?

CRM data cleansing is the process of identifying and fixing errors, inconsistencies, duplicates, and outdated information in customer relationship management (CRM) systems to improve data quality.

What Is Customer Journey Mapping?

Customer journey mapping visualizes the steps and touchpoints customers experience, revealing pain points and opportunities to improve conversion and retention.

What Is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) measures the total revenue a customer generates over their relationship with a business.

What Is Customer Segmentation?

Grouping customers by shared traits to tailor GTM strategy.

What Is the Customer Lifecycle?

The customer lifecycle covers all stages from awareness to expansion. Learn each stage, key metrics, and modern AI-driven lifecycle practices.

D

What Is a Deal Desk?

A deal desk is a cross-functional team and standardized workflow that reviews, structures, and approves complex or non-standard sales deals so pricing, terms, and contracts align with company policy and can move cleanly through quote-to-cash (quoting, contracting, billing, and revenue processes). What a Deal Desk Does A deal desk typically helps the business: Approve exceptions […]

What Is Data Driven Sales?

Data-driven sales refers to the practice of using data and analytics to inform and optimize sales strategies, processes, and decisions.

What Is Data Governance?

Data governance is the framework of policies, roles, standards, and processes that ensures an organization’s data is accurate, secure, usable, and compliant throughout its lifecycle, including how data is collected, stored, accessed, shared, used in analytics and AI, and eventually archived or deleted. Core Elements of Data Governance Effective data governance usually includes: Policies and […]

What Is Data Management?

Data management is the process of collecting, storing, organizing, analyzing, and maintaining vast volumes of sales-related information.

What Is Data Model?

A data model defines how data is organized and related so systems, analytics, and AI tools can store, query, and interpret it consistently.

What Is Data Normalization?

Standardizing data formats to ensure consistency across systems.

What Is Data Pipeline?

A data pipeline automates collecting, transforming, and delivering data to warehouses, lakes, or tools so reporting, automation, and AI can run reliably.

What Is Deal Flow?

Deal flow is the movement of sales opportunities through the pipeline.

What Is Deal Velocity?

Deal velocity measures how quickly opportunities move through pipeline stages and close, using sales cycle and stage duration to find bottlenecks.

What Is Demand Forecasting?

Predicting future pipeline and revenue generation.

What Is Demand Forecasting?

Demand forecasting predicts future customer demand using data and models to plan inventory, production, staffing, and budgets.

E

What Is an End-to-End Funnel?

An end-to-end funnel tracks the full customer journey from first touch through purchase, onboarding, retention, and expansion with defined stages.

What Is an Experimentation Framework?

An experimentation framework is the system of methods and tools for designing, running, analyzing, and rolling out experiments like A/B tests reliably.

What Is Elastic Pricing?

Elastic pricing adjusts prices based on demand, time, segment, or usage, using rules or AI to align price with market conditions and value signals.

What Is Expansion ARR?

Expansion ARR is recurring revenue growth from existing customers through upgrades, add-ons, seat increases, or higher usage commitments over a period.

F

What Is Forecast Accuracy?

Forecast accuracy measures how close predicted revenue or demand is to actual results, using percent error and bias to improve planning and forecasts.

What Is Full-Funnel Attribution?

Full-funnel attribution assigns credit across the full journey from awareness to pipeline, revenue, and renewals, linking touchpoints to business outcomes.

G

What Is a Go-to-Market Model?

A go-to-market model defines how a company sells and delivers a product, including channels, team structure, customer journey, and metrics to scale revenue.

What Is Gross Churn?

Gross churn is the percent of customers or recurring revenue lost in a period, excluding expansion, showing pure retention loss from churn and downgrades.

I

What Is an Inside Sales Rep?

An inside sales rep is a salesperson who sells products or services to customers remotely using the phone, email, social media, and other digital channels instead of meeting face-to-face.

What Is an Installed Base?

An installed base is the total active deployed units or subscriptions in use, forming the customer footprint that drives renewals, upgrades, and expansion.

What Is Incentive Alignment?

Incentive alignment designs goals and rewards so teams optimize the right outcomes, like profitable revenue, retention, and forecast accuracy, not vanity metrics.

K

What Is a KPI Tree?

A KPI tree breaks a top business goal into the metrics that drive it, linking leading indicators and inputs to outcomes like revenue or retention.

L

Lead Nurturing Campaign

A lead nurturing campaign is a strategic effort focused on engaging and building relationships with potential customers who have shown interest in a company's products or services, but who are not yet ready to make a purchase.

Lead Nurturing Strategy

Lead nurturing strategy refers to the strategy used to develop relationships with potential customers (leads) over time and turn them into sales.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a way for sales teams to decide which leads to focus on first. It works by assigning a numerical score to each lead based on certain characteristics.

What Is Lead Conversion Rate?

Lead conversion rate is the percentage of leads that progress to the next sales stage.

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation involves identifying and cultivating potential customers or prospects for a business's products or services.

What Is Lead Management?

Lead management is the process of capturing, enriching, qualifying, routing, and nurturing leads.

What Is Lead Nurture?

Lead nurture is the process of developing relationships with potential customers who have shown interest in your product or service, with the goal of guiding them through the sales funnel to become paying customers.

What Is Lead-to-Cash?

Lead-to-cash is the end-to-end process from lead capture to collected payment, linking CRM, quoting, contracting, billing, and collections.

What Is Lifetime Value (LTV)?

Lifetime Value (LTV) is the total revenue a customer generates over their relationship with a business. Learn the formula, components, and modern predictive methods.

What Is Linear Attribution?

Linear attribution is a multi-touch model that splits conversion credit equally across all tracked touchpoints within the attribution window.

What Is LTV:CAC Ratio?

LTV:CAC ratio compares customer lifetime value to acquisition cost, showing how much value is earned per $1 spent to acquire customers.

M

What Is a Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are a necessary stepping stone to getting that smile on your sales rep’s face.

What Is Master Data Management (MDM)?

Master Data Management (MDM) creates trusted customer, product, and supplier records across systems by matching, governing, and syncing master data.

N

What Is Net Dollar Retention (NDR)?

Net Dollar Retention (NDR) measures recurring revenue kept from existing customers after upgrades, downgrades, and churn, expressed as a percent.

What Is Net New ARR?

Net New ARR is recurring revenue added plus expansion minus churn and downgrades in a period, showing true subscription growth after losses.

What Is Net Revenue Retention (NRR)?

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures recurring revenue kept from existing customers after expansion, downgrades, and churn, shown as a percentage.

O

What Is Order-to-Cash?

Order-to-cash is the process from customer order through fulfillment, invoicing, collections, and cash application, turning orders into collected revenue.

P

What Is Pipeline Generation?

Pipeline generation creates qualified sales opportunities and adds them to the pipeline, measured by opportunity value, volume, and conversion to revenue.

What Is Predictive Forecasting?

Predictive forecasting uses data, statistics, and machine learning to estimate future outcomes like revenue, demand, or churn, updating as new signals appear.

What Is Price Realization?

Price realization measures how much of list or target price is actually collected after discounts, rebates, and credits, showing pricing effectiveness.

What Is Pricing Governance?

Pricing governance defines rules and approvals for pricing and discounts, enforcing consistent contract terms to protect margin, reduce risk, and improve price realization.

Q

What Is a Quality Lead?

A quality lead in sales operations refers to a potential sales contact that has been qualified as being a good fit for the product or service being sold.

What Is Quota Capacity?

Quota capacity is the amount of sales quota a team can realistically carry and achieve based on headcount, ramp, and productivity assumptions.

R

What Is a Renewal Forecast?

A renewal forecast estimates which contracts will renew and the ARR impact, helping teams plan retention actions and predict churn, expansion, and net retention.

What Is Ramp Time?

Ramp time is how long it takes a new hire or team to reach expected performance levels, often tracked by time to quota or steady productivity.

What Is Revenue Architecture?

Revenue architecture is the design of revenue processes, data, and systems across lead-to-cash and retention to ensure consistent billing, reporting, and metrics.

What Is Revenue Leakage?

Revenue leakage is the gap between revenue expected from contracts and delivered value and what is actually billed or collected, often due to billing and pricing errors.

What Is Revenue Operations (RevOps)?

RevOps is a complete approach that brings together people, processes, and data across the entire customer lifecycle.

What Is Revenue Quality?

Revenue quality reflects how sustainable, reliable, and profitable revenue is, based on retention, pricing integrity, contract risk, and collectability.

What Is Revenue Recognition Automation?

Revenue recognition automation uses software to create compliant revenue schedules, handle contract changes, and post auditable entries with less manual work.

S

What Are Sales KPIs?

Sales KPI (Key Performance Indicator) - A measurable value that indicates how well a sales team or organization is performing against their strategic goals.

What Are Sales Reports?

Sales reports summarize activity, performance, and outcomes over a set period, giving leadership a clear view of deals in progress, wins, and trends. They help track pipeline health, forecast more accurately, and drive smarter decisions with automated dashboards that deliver real-time visibility, while standardized formats keep teams aligned and coaching focused. In 2026, winning reports emphasize KPIs like pipeline velocity, CAC, CLV, MRR/ARR, and attribution insights to fuel predictable revenue growth and reduce manual work.

What Are Sales Trends?

Sales trend refers to the general direction that a company's sales are taking over a period of time.

What Is a Sales Cycle?

The sales cycle is the journey of a potential customer from awareness of your product or service to becoming a paying customer.

What Is a Sales Dashboard?

A sales dashboard visualizes key metrics, pipeline data, and performance insights. Learn dashboard types, common KPIs, and modern AI capabilities.

What Is a Sales Forecast?

A sales forecast predicts future revenue using pipeline data, history, and AI insights. Learn forecast types, inputs, and modern forecasting practices.

What Is a Sales Funnel Report?

A sales funnel report is an essential data visualization tool used by sales operations professionals to track the health and performance of their sales pipeline over time.

What Is a Sales Methodology?

Sales methodology refers to the overall strategy, process, and systems that a sales team uses to sell products or services to customers.

What Is a Sales Operations Analyst?

A sales operations analyst is a role within a company's sales organization that involves leveraging data and analytics to optimize sales performance.

What Is a Sales Operations Manager?

A sales operations manager is responsible for overseeing the systems, processes, and analytics that enable a company's sales teams to operate efficiently and effectively.

What Is a Sales Operations Specialist?

A sales operations specialist is responsible for developing, managing, and optimizing sales processes and operations in order to drive revenue growth and improve sales efficiency.

What Is a Sales Pipeline?

The sales pipeline refers to the process of moving prospective deals through different stages from initial contact to closed sale.

What Is a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)?

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a prospect that has been identified as a potential customer for a business's product or service and has been vetted by the sales team as someone worth pursuing further in the sales process.

What Is a Sales Rep?

Sales rep (short for sales representative) is the frontline role tasked with generating revenue by selling products or services.

What Is a Sales Strategy?

Sales strategy refers to the overall plan and approach a company takes to sell its products or services.

What Is a Sales Team?

A sales team is a group of salespeople who work together to meet sales goals and generate revenue for a company.

What Is a Source of Truth?

A source of truth is the authoritative system or dataset for a specific domain, used to keep data consistent across tools, reporting, automation, and AI.

What Is Sales Analytics?

Sales analytics is the interpretation of sales data to reveal trends, risks, and opportunities. Learn its types, capabilities, and modern AI-driven use cases.

What Is Sales Automation?

Sales automation uses AI and workflows to automate tasks like prospecting, routing, outreach, and forecasting.

What Is Sales Data?

Sales data is the information sales teams use to understand prospects, pipeline, and revenue. Learn its types, use cases, and modern AI-driven capabilities.

What Is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is a critical function that's all about giving sales teams the tools, support, and knowledge they need to crush their goals.

What Is Sales Forecasting Software?

Sales forecasting software uses data and AI to predict future revenue and identify deal risks. Learn its key features, benefits, and modern capabilities.

What Is Sales Intelligence?

Sales intelligence is the data and insights used to find, qualify, and prioritize buyers. Learn its components, use cases, and modern AI-driven capabilities.

What Is Sales Operations?

Sales operations refers to the behind-the-scenes work that helps optimize the sales process. It's the team that keeps the sales engine humming.

What Is Sales Performance Management?

Sales Performance Management (SPM) coordinates goal setting, forecasting, coaching, and compensation with AI-driven insights to optimize rep behavior and revenue, backed by real-time dashboards, territory planning, and governance; key KPIs include quota attainment, win rate, forecast accuracy, and cycle length.

What Is Sales Performance?

Sales performance refers to how well a company's sales team is doing in generating revenue by closing deals and acquiring new business.

What Is Sales Pipeline Coverage?

Sales pipeline coverage is an important sales operations metric that measures the value of potential deals in your sales pipeline relative to your revenue target.

What Is Sales Productivity?

Sales productivity is all about getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to your sales team's efforts.

What Is Sales Technology?

Sales technology refers to the software, tools, and systems that sales teams use to optimize their sales processes and improve sales performance.

What Is Sales Volume?

Sales volume is the total number of units sold in a period. Learn the definition, formula, examples, and modern AI-driven analysis methods.

What Is Scenario Modeling?

Scenario modeling tests “what-if” assumptions to compare possible future outcomes for revenue, costs, retention, or cash flow and identify key drivers.

T

What Is Territory Design?

Territory design assigns sales coverage by defining segments, boundaries, and ownership rules to balance capacity, reduce conflict, and improve pipeline and forecasts.

U

What Is a Unified Revenue Model?

A unified revenue model standardizes revenue definitions and events across teams and systems so ARR, MRR, NRR, and forecasts match.

What Is Upsell Rate?

Upsell rate is the percent of existing customers who upgrade to a higher plan, add seats, or buy add-ons in a period, measuring expansion success.

V

What Is Variable Compensation?

Variable compensation is performance-based pay like commissions or bonuses that changes with results, used to align incentives with revenue and retention goals.