Written by MICHAEL MORRIS 04/10/2021

Everyday more and more software and apps are released adding more tools for sales people. Along with all of these new systems there is constantly new terms and phrases that are common place in the sales industry. I will provide a detailed list of eight sales terms all sales people need to be familiar with.

Sales Pipeline

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline shows a snapshot of the deals a sales person is trying to close, and where each of these potential deals are in the sales cycle.

Professional sales teams have sales processes, where they track their deals as they move from stage to stage through the sales cycle. A typical sales process includes stages like shown below.

  • Qualified
  • Contact Made
  • Demo Scheduled
  • Proposal Made
  • Negotiation
  • Closed Won
  • Closed Lost

These different stages help organize the deals in your pipeline, and make it easy to track your sales progress.

Kanban

Kanban

Kanban refers to a visual representation of your sales process on a board. Similar to the sales pipeline, it will show each of the stages in the sales process, and allows the sales person to move the deal from stage to stage.

Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are a marketing automation technique that automates the sending of emails to your leads and prospects.

With drip campaigns you can automatically schedule emails to be sent in a sequence, based on specific rules.

In your CRM software you can implement drip campaigns that run automatically. Drip campaigns are often configured for leads that inquire about your products or services, and will automatically send follow up emails after a certain duration of time.

  • 3 days after lead was created
  • 7 days after lead was created
  • 14 days after lead was created

You can also create more than one drip campaign, so when the lead reaches the end of the campaign, it can trigger the lead to be put into another drip campaign.

Sales Funnel

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel refers to a type of chart that shows a visual representation of the journey a lead goes through to purchase your product or service.

Sales Automation

Sales automation refers to a software system for sales teams that automates many aspects of the sales process.

Sales automation software can automate the sending of emails, sms messages, phone calls, and other communication methods. As well as automatically update data in the system, for example when a prospect responds to an email the system can automatically update the stage of the deal to the "Contacted" stage.

To learn more about this type of software system, check out our what is sales automation software article.

Workflow Automation

Workflow automation refers to the functionality of CRM and other types of software systems that will help sales people through the sales workflow.

Side Selling

Side selling refers to when a sales person attempts to sell a customer products or services that are not directly related to the primary purchase the customer is making.

SQL's

Sales qualified leads (SQL's) refers to a lead that has been qualified as a prospect, a lead that is definitely interested in learning more about your products or services.

Final Thoughts

There are constantly new sales terms and phrases that become keywords that a sales person must be familiar with. A good way to stay up to date on sales lingo is to monitor sales news on social media or your favorite blogs and take the time to read the articles and familiarize yourself with the new technologies that are being released.

The worst thing to happen to a sales person when speaking to a prospect is to make a bad first impression, and one surefire way that will happen is when you have no idea what they are talking about.

Hopefully these eight key sales terms taught you something new and will give you a leg up when speaking to your prospects and customers in the future.

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