Sales Development
Definitions of the sales development terms B2B teams use. To see how SalesHive provides a dedicated SDR team, visit our SDR Outsourcing page.
Outsourced SDR Company
An outsourced SDR company is an outside firm that supplies and manages sales development reps who prospect, qualify interest and book meetings for your B2B sales team. You keep the offer, the qualification rules and the close.
Learn moreSales Script
A sales script is a planned outline of what a sales rep says at each stage of a conversation: the opener, the questions, objection responses and the ask for a next step. Reps use it as a guide, not a speech to read.
Learn moreClosed-Lost
Closed-Lost is a CRM deal status marking an opportunity that ended without a purchase, whether lost to a competitor, to the status quo, or to no decision. In B2B sales development, it signals that active selling has stopped while preserving the reason the deal was lost for forecasting, coaching, and future re-engagement.
Learn moreSales Trigger Event
A sales trigger event is a specific change in a prospect’s company or behavior that signals potential buying intent, such as a funding round, leadership hire, technology change, or rapid product usage growth. In B2B sales development, SDRs use these events to time outreach, prioritize accounts, and craft highly relevant messages that directly connect to the prospect’s current priorities and challenges.
Learn moreVP of Marketing
A VP of Marketing is the executive who leads a company's marketing organization, owning brand, demand generation, and the pipeline marketing contributes to revenue. In B2B sales development, the VP of Marketing aligns programs like outbound SDRs, content, and ABM with sales so marketing-sourced opportunities convert and reps get the right volume and quality of leads.
Learn moreCommission
Commission is a payment tied to performance, most often a percentage of sales, used to reward employees for results across many roles. In B2B sales development, it is the variable portion of a salesperson's or SDR's compensation, paid when they hit agreed metrics such as qualified meetings booked, pipeline generated, or revenue closed. It sits on top of a fixed base salary and aligns daily prospecting and qualification work with the company's growth goals.
Learn moreEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated software system that centralizes core business processes such as finance, inventory, supply chain, and order management into a single source of truth. In B2B sales development, ERP connects operational data with customer-facing tools like CRM so SDRs, AEs, and RevOps teams can forecast accurately, qualify accounts better, and manage the full quote-to-cash cycle with less friction.
Learn moreOnboarding
Onboarding is the structured process of integrating new people and tools into an organization so they reach full productivity quickly. In B2B sales development, onboarding brings new SDRs and sales tools into your revenue engine, covering product and ICP training, tech stack setup, call and email playbooks, and performance expectations to shorten ramp time, improve quota attainment, and increase retention.
Learn moreCRM Analytics
CRM analytics is the practice of turning the data inside a customer relationship management system into insights that guide decisions, used across sales, marketing, and customer success. In B2B sales development, it converts raw prospect and activity data, such as SDR calls, emails, and meetings, into dashboards, insights, and forecasts. Those signals guide daily prospecting, pipeline management, and strategy across the sales development function.
Learn moreLoss Leader
A loss leader is an offer intentionally priced below what it costs to deliver, designed to reduce buying friction, win new customers, and create a path to higher-margin sales. In B2B sales development, teams use loss-leader offers, such as a pilot, audit, or basic package, to open doors with target accounts, demonstrate value quickly, and grow long-term revenue despite lower initial margins.
Learn moreMarketing Executive
Marketing executive is a job title with two common meanings. In the UK and some other markets, it usually names a hands-on role that plans and runs campaigns and often reports to a marketing manager. Elsewhere it is used in the general business sense of executive for a senior leader, such as a CMO, VP of Marketing, or Head of Demand Generation, who owns marketing strategy, budgets, and pipeline goals with sales.
Learn moreAnnual Contract Value (ACV)
Annual Contract Value (ACV) is the average yearly revenue a company earns from a single B2B customer contract, normalized to one year regardless of billing terms. In sales development, ACV guides which accounts SDRs target, how much outreach effort is justified, and which sales model (self-serve, inside sales, or enterprise) is economically viable for a given product.
Learn moreHard Sell
A hard sell is a high-pressure, highly directive sales approach that pushes a buyer toward an immediate decision, often using urgency, repeated objection handling, and assumptive closes. In B2B sales development, SDRs and AEs using a hard sell push prospects toward a fast next step, such as booking a meeting, signing a contract, or committing to a pilot, focusing on closing quickly rather than nurturing a longer, consultative buying process.
Learn moreVP of Sales
A VP of Sales is the senior executive responsible for designing, leading, and optimizing a company’s B2B sales engine, with a heavy focus on pipeline generation, sales development, and revenue predictability. In modern organizations, this role oversees SDR/BDR teams, account executives, processes, technology, and strategy to consistently hit growth targets while aligning closely with marketing, product, and customer success.
Learn moreContract Management
Contract management is the end-to-end process of creating, negotiating, approving, executing, and renewing contracts in a way that protects revenue and supports compliance. In B2B sales development, it connects sales, legal, and finance workflows so that SDR- and AE-generated opportunities convert into predictable, enforceable revenue with minimal friction.
Learn moreField Sales Rep
A Field Sales Rep (also called an outside sales rep) is a B2B salesperson who develops and closes business primarily through in-person interactions at customer sites, events, and in the field. They focus on complex, high-value deals that benefit from face-to-face discovery, demos, and relationship building, often supported by inside sales or SDR teams that generate and qualify meetings for them.
Learn moreProfit Margin
Profit margin is the percentage of revenue a business keeps as profit after costs, a core financial metric used across every industry. In B2B sales development, teams use it to see how the costs of acquiring, closing, and servicing customers, such as SDR salaries, tools, data, and overhead, change how much of each revenue dollar the business keeps. It reveals how efficiently a sales engine turns pipeline, meetings, and bookings into sustainable profit and guides decisions on channels, pricing, and partners.
Learn moreAdoption Process
The adoption process is the series of stages a person or organization moves through when deciding to accept and fully use a new product, tool, or idea, classically awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. In B2B sales development, it describes how buying committees move toward adopting your product and how revenue teams adopt new tools and playbooks, where a purchase decision must still be followed by rollout, behavior change, and ongoing optimization before it delivers ROI.
Learn moreTop Of The Funnel (TOFU)
Top of the Funnel (TOFU) is the earliest stage of the marketing and sales funnel, where the goal is to create awareness and capture initial interest from a broad audience. In B2B sales development, TOFU covers outbound prospecting, cold calling, cold email, and list building that turn a total addressable market (TAM) into engaged leads and first conversations.
Learn moreSales Development Strategist
A Sales Development Strategist is a senior individual who designs, optimizes, and governs the SDR motion in B2B organizations. They translate revenue goals into data-driven outbound and inbound prospecting strategies, orchestrating ICP definition, messaging, cadences, channel mix, and technology so SDR teams consistently create qualified pipeline at scale while maintaining a positive buyer experience.
Learn moreSales Process
A sales process is a defined, repeatable set of steps a team follows to move a prospect from first contact to a closed sale, used by any sales organization. In B2B sales development, it guides SDRs and AEs from targeting and prospecting through qualification, discovery, and close. By standardizing how leads are handled, how opportunities move through the pipeline, and how handoffs occur, teams can scale outbound efforts, forecast accurately, and improve performance over time.
Learn moreSales Development Playbook
A Sales Development Playbook is a documented, repeatable blueprint that guides SDRs and BDRs on how to generate qualified pipeline. It defines target accounts and personas, outreach cadences, channel mix, messaging frameworks, objection handling, and success metrics so that outbound prospecting can be trained, coached, scaled, and continuously improved across a B2B sales organization.
Learn moreSales Performance Management
Sales Performance Management (SPM) is the discipline and technology stack used to plan, measure, coach, and continuously improve sales results across a B2B sales organization. In sales development teams, SPM aligns targets, territories, incentives, workflows, and analytics so SDRs and AEs focus on the right accounts, activities, and behaviors that reliably move pipeline and quota attainment.
Learn moreSales Methodology
Sales methodology is the structured, repeatable approach that guides how your SDRs and AEs prospect, qualify, and advance B2B deals, from the questions they ask to how they handle objections and next steps. It turns your sales process into a consistent playbook so every rep executes the same high-probability behaviors across cold calling, email outreach, and multi-touch sequences.
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