The vocabulary of B2B marketing and sales is full of acronyms that get used loosely and mean different things to different teams. This glossary defines the terms that actually matter when you run growth as a system, so marketing, sales and operations speak the same language. Definitions are kept short and B2B-first.
ABM (Account-Based Marketing). Focusing marketing and sales effort on a defined set of high-value accounts, with personalised messaging, instead of generating leads in bulk.
Demand generation. The discipline of creating and capturing demand across channels (SEO, content, paid, partnerships), measured by its contribution to pipeline rather than by clicks.
Inbound. Attracting prospects by being useful (content, SEO, resources) so they come to you, rather than interrupting them with outbound advertising.
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). The precise definition of the type of company you serve best (industry, size, revenue, structure). The ICP is what keeps targeting honest.
Buyer persona. A representation of a specific decision-maker inside the buying group (their role, goals and objections), used to tailor messaging.
ToFu, MoFu, BoFu. Top, middle and bottom of the funnel: the awareness, consideration and decision stages of the buyer's journey.
Lifecycle stage. The stage of the relationship a contact or company is in (for example subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, opportunity, customer), tracked in the CRM.
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). A lead that marketing judges ready to hand to sales, based on fit and engagement.
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead). A lead that sales has accepted and confirmed as worth pursuing.
Lead scoring. Assigning a score to leads based on fit and behaviour, to prioritise who to work first. Predictive scoring uses AI over historical data.
Nurturing. Keeping a relationship warm over time with relevant content and touches until the prospect is ready to buy.
Pipeline. The set of open opportunities and their stages. Healthy pipeline is the leading indicator of future revenue.
Pipeline coverage. The ratio of open pipeline value to the sales target for a period. A common benchmark is around 3x to 4x, though it depends on win rate and cycle length.
Sales cycle. The average time from first qualified contact to closed deal. Shorter, more predictable cycles are a RevOps goal.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). The total sales and marketing cost of acquiring a customer. Read together with LTV.
LTV (Lifetime Value). The total revenue expected from a customer over the relationship. The LTV to CAC ratio measures whether acquisition is sustainable.
Churn. The rate at which customers or recurring revenue is lost. Retention and expansion often move the business more than new acquisition.
MRR / ARR. Monthly and annual recurring revenue: the core metrics for subscription and retainer businesses.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management). The single source of truth where every interaction with a contact and account is recorded across marketing, sales and service.
RevOps (Revenue Operations). Aligning marketing, sales and customer success around one system, one dataset and shared metrics, so revenue becomes predictable.
Marketing automation. Software-driven workflows (nurturing, lead routing, notifications) that run on rules inside the CRM.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation). Systematically improving the share of visitors who take a desired action, through testing and better experience.
Attribution. Assigning credit for a conversion across the touchpoints that contributed, so you evaluate the journey rather than a single channel.
KPI vs OKR. A KPI measures the health of a process, an OKR sets a direction and the results that prove it. You need both.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Earning organic visibility in search results through technical health, content and authority.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation). Optimising to be the answer surfaced by AI-driven search and assistants, not just a ranked link.
Schema / structured data. Markup that helps search and AI engines understand your content, improving how it is represented.
Content engine. Treating content as a system that feeds authority, SEO and sales, rather than as one-off campaigns.
Terms only matter when the teams behind them are aligned. Most of the confusion between marketing and sales comes from the same word meaning two things: a "qualified lead" for one team is not a "qualified lead" for the other. Fixing that is not a glossary exercise, it is a system one: shared definitions, shared lifecycle stages and shared metrics in the CRM.
If marketing and sales in your company argue about what a good lead is, you have a definitions problem that is costing you revenue. See where in the Diagnosis.