Glossary of Sales and Business Terms
Whether you have been in business for years or you are just starting out our glossary of frequently used sales and business terms can be a big help.– and it’s yours whenever you need it.
Acquisition: Acquiring or gaining new customers for your product or service.
Active Customer: A customer who has made a purchase from your company within the last 12 months. The time may vary depending on the business.
Address Correction: Updating an address that is either incorrect or out of date.
Address Verification: The act of ensuring an address on file is accurate.
Append: Information that is added to your customer file such as an address or a phone number.
BtoB: Also known as Business to Business, B2B is the exchange of products, services, or information between businesses.
BtoC: Also knowns as Business to Consumer, B2C is a business transaction conducted between a company and a consumer.
Close Ratio: A term sales teams use to describe a salesperson’s success or the success of a sales department.
Cold Call: An unsoliticted call often made by a salesperson looking to sell goods or services.
Conversion Path: The steps taken by someone using a website toward a desired end from the standpoint of the website operator.
CPA: Cost per acquisition where publishers only receive payment for completed sales also used to understand the cost to acquire a customer.
CPL: Cost per lead where advertisers compensate you when someone views an ad on your site, clicks the ad, and takes further action to become a qualified lead for a sale. Also a metric used to measure the cost for each lead acquired.
CPM: Cost per thousand, this is a flat rate charged per thousand displays or impressions of an ad to your audience.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management which is a term that refers to the practices and strategies used by a company to manage and analyze their customer base.
CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization which is a sytem for increasing website visitors who become customers.
CVR: Conversion Ratio shows users how effective their marketing campaign was in converting people who clicked into a sale.
Deduping: The removal of duplicate entries from a list or a database.
Direct Response: A type of marketing that gets a specific, measurable response, such as a phone call, from a consumer to a marketer.
Inactive Customer: A customer who has not made a purchase from your company within the last 12 months.
Inbound Sales: The process of focusing on buyers as individuals including their personal needs, pain points, frustrations, and goals.
KPI: A Key Performance Indicator or KPI is a measurable value that demonstrates a company’s effectiveness at achieving key business objectives.
Lead: A prospective consumer of a product or service.
MBO: Managament By Objectives where managers and employees work together to set, record, and monitor goals over a set period of time.
Merge Purge: The act of identifying duplicates and removing unwanted data to create a cohesive customer list.
NAICS: North American Industry Classification System which is the standard set by Federal statistical agencies to classify businesses.
Outbound Sales: The act of calling out to a customer as opposed to the customer calling in.
Prospect: A person who is a potential customer.
Prospecting: The act of finding individuals who may become customers.
Qualified Lead: A lead who has already expressed interest in your product or service.
Retention: The act of keeping your current customers.
ROI: A Return on Investment is used to compare a company’s profitability or make financial decisions. They typical ROI formula is ROI=(Net Profit/Cost of Investment)x100.
ROAS: The Return on Advertisement Spending helps to determine media effectiveness of a marketing campaign.
Sales Funnel: The “ideal” marketing process you intend for your customers to experience as they go from prospect to lead to customer to continued customer.
Sales Lead: A prospective consumer of a product or service.
SEM: Search Engine Marketing involves promoting a website by increasing their visibility in search engine results.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a specific website by ensuring the website appears high on the list of search results.
SIC Code: Standard Industrial Classification is a system used for classifying various industries by a 4-digit code.
Suppression: Witholding or removing information such as removing customers on your list who have stated they are not interested in your products or services.
Talk Time: The number of minutes a sales call takes.
Universe: A specific population that you want to study or measure.
Winback: Turning a dormant customer into an active customer.