# SDR / Sales Agent Glossary

> SDR / sales-agent vocabulary — 83 terms across 8 categories, each defined in 1–3 sentences with one canonical primary-source citation. Maintained by [AgentsBooks](https://agentsbooks.com/). Last refreshed 2026-05-08.

## Audience

Sales leaders, BDR/SDR ops managers, RevOps, and founders building outbound functions; product teams shipping AI-SDR features.

## Categories

- **SDR foundations** — 10 terms
- **Sales metrics** — 12 terms
- **Engagement primitives** — 11 terms
- **Outbound research** — 8 terms
- **Agentic AI for SDR** — 12 terms
- **Deliverability + compliance** — 10 terms
- **Vendor + tooling** — 12 terms
- **Lifecycle + qualification** — 8 terms

---

## SDR foundations

### SDR — Foundational

*Also known as:* Sales Development Representative

A sales-development representative — a specialised outbound role responsible for prospecting, sequencing, and qualifying inbound or outbound leads before handing off to an account executive. The SDR / closer split was popularised by Aaron Ross's Predictable Revenue and remains the dominant outbound model.

**Source:** [Predictable Revenue — Aaron Ross](https://predictablerevenue.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** BDR · AE · outbound · Sequence · ICP

### BDR

*Also known as:* Business Development Representative

A business-development representative — typically the same role as an SDR but with an outbound-only emphasis (whereas SDR sometimes refers to inbound-qualification only). The label varies by company; Outreach and Salesloft treat the two interchangeably in product UX.

**Source:** [Outreach — Sales Engagement Platform](https://www.outreach.io/platform/sales-engagement) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SDR · AE · outbound · Sequence

### AE

*Also known as:* Account Executive

An account executive — the closer in the SDR / AE split. AEs run discovery, demo, proposal, and close for opportunities sourced by SDRs or inbound. AE comp is typically heavily variable and tied to closed-won ARR.

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SDR · AM · Handoff · Opportunity

### AM

*Also known as:* Account Manager

An account manager — owns the post-sale relationship for existing customers, including renewals, upsell, and cross-sell. Distinct from the AE who closes new business and the CSM who drives adoption.

**Source:** [HubSpot — Sales roles](https://www.hubspot.com/products/artificial-intelligence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** AE · CSM · RevOps

### CSM

*Also known as:* Customer Success Manager

A customer-success manager — drives onboarding, adoption, and outcome realisation post-sale. CSMs are usually measured on net retention (NRR) and product-engagement metrics rather than new ARR.

**Source:** [HubSpot — Sales roles](https://www.hubspot.com/products/artificial-intelligence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** AM · AE · RevOps

### RevOps

*Also known as:* Revenue Operations

Revenue operations — the cross-functional team that owns the tooling, data, and process spanning marketing, sales, and customer success. RevOps owns the CRM, the sequencing platform, the data-enrichment stack, and the metrics layer that ties them together.

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales 7th Edition](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SDR · AE · Sequence governance · Conversion rate

### ICP — Foundational

*Also known as:* Ideal Customer Profile

Ideal-customer profile — the firmographic and behavioural definition of the accounts most likely to buy and succeed with a product, against which prospecting is targeted. ICP is usually narrower than TAM and is the substrate for ABM target lists.

**Source:** [Predictable Revenue — Aaron Ross](https://predictablerevenue.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** TAM · ABM · Firmographic · Account research

### TAM

*Also known as:* Total Addressable Market

Total addressable market — the full revenue opportunity for a product if every theoretically-qualified buyer purchased. TAM is broader than ICP, which narrows TAM to the segment a team is actively targeting now.

**Source:** [OpenView (David Skok) — SaaS Metrics 2.0](https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** ICP · ABM · Firmographic

### ABM

*Also known as:* Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing — a go-to-market strategy that treats the account (not the lead) as the unit of effort, coordinating marketing, SDR, and AE plays against a small, named target list. Modern ABM platforms (6sense, Demandbase) score accounts on intent + fit + engagement and route plays accordingly.

**Source:** [6sense — ABM platform](https://6sense.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** ICP · Intent data · Multi-thread · demandbase

### Intent data

Third-party signals that an account is researching a topic relevant to your product — typically aggregated from publisher-network browsing behaviour by vendors like Bombora and resold through ABM platforms. Intent data is used to prioritise outbound targets and to time outreach to active research windows.

**Source:** [Bombora — Intent data](https://bombora.com/data/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** ABM · Trigger event · Intent signal · Signal-based selling

---

## Sales metrics

### MQL

*Also known as:* Marketing-Qualified Lead

A lead that has met marketing's behavioural and demographic threshold for sales-readiness — usually a combination of fit (matches ICP firmographic) and engagement (downloaded an asset, attended a webinar). The MQL → SAL → SQL sequence is the standard funnel-progression vocabulary.

**Source:** [HubSpot — State of Sales](https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SQL · SAL · Conversion rate · Handoff

### SQL

*Also known as:* Sales-Qualified Lead

A lead that the sales team has accepted as qualified to enter the active pipeline — typically after a discovery call has confirmed budget, authority, need, and timing (BANT or its successors). SQL is the progression of MQL after sales accepts it.

**Source:** [HubSpot — State of Sales](https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MQL · SAL · Opportunity · BANT · MEDDIC

### SAL

*Also known as:* Sales-Accepted Lead

A lead the sales team has formally accepted from marketing for follow-up but has not yet qualified into pipeline. SAL sits between MQL and SQL and exists primarily as a service-level measurement between marketing and sales.

**Source:** [HubSpot — State of Sales](https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MQL · SQL · Handoff

### Opportunity

*Also known as:* Opp

A qualified pipeline record representing a specific potential sale, with stage, expected close date, and amount. Opportunities are the unit of pipeline measurement in Salesforce, HubSpot Sales, and most CRMs.

**Source:** [Salesforce — Sales Cloud](https://www.salesforce.com/sales/agentforce-sdr/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Pipeline · Win rate · Sales cycle · SQL

### Pipeline

The sum of weighted or unweighted open opportunities at a given moment, broken down by stage. Pipeline coverage is usually expressed as a multiple of quota (e.g., 3× pipeline coverage means active opps total 3× the quarterly quota).

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales 7th Edition](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Opportunity · Win rate · Sales cycle · ACV

### Conversion rate

The percentage of records that progress from one funnel stage to the next — e.g., MQL → SAL conversion, sequence-reply → meeting-booked conversion, demo → proposal conversion. Stage-by-stage conversion rates are the principal lever in the funnel-math model of sales.

**Source:** [OpenView (David Skok) — SaaS Metrics 2.0](https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MQL · SQL · Win rate · Reply rate

### Win rate

The percentage of opportunities (or stage-N opportunities) that close as won. Win rate by stage is the headline AE-productivity metric and the input most ABM and forecasting tools weight against.

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales 7th Edition](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Opportunity · Pipeline · Sales cycle · MEDDIC

### ACV — Foundational

*Also known as:* Annual Contract Value

Annual contract value — the annualised revenue from a single deal, normalising multi-year contracts to a one-year view. ACV is the standard atomic unit for sales productivity, comp, and segmentation (SMB ACV vs mid-market ACV vs enterprise ACV).

**Source:** [OpenView (David Skok) — SaaS Metrics 2.0](https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Pipeline · CAC · Payback period

### Sales cycle

The elapsed time from first qualified contact to closed-won. Sales-cycle length tracks closely with deal size: SMB SaaS often closes in <30 days, mid-market in 30–90, enterprise in 6–18 months.

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales 7th Edition](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Opportunity · Pipeline · Win rate · MEDDPICC

### CAC — Foundational

*Also known as:* Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost — the fully-loaded sales-and-marketing spend per new customer acquired in a period. CAC paired with LTV and payback period defines whether a GTM motion is unit-economically viable.

**Source:** [OpenView (David Skok) — SaaS Metrics 2.0](https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Payback period · ACV · Cost per meeting

### Payback period — Foundational

The number of months for the gross profit on a new customer's recurring revenue to recover the CAC. Best-in-class SaaS payback is under 12 months; over 24 months is a warning sign on GTM efficiency.

**Source:** [OpenView (David Skok) — SaaS Metrics 2.0](https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** CAC · ACV

### Cost per meeting

*Also known as:* CPM (sales) · CPSQM

The fully-loaded cost — SDR comp, tooling, data — to source one qualified meeting. Cost-per-meeting is the cleanest unit-economic check on outbound efficiency before AE conversion is layered in.

**Source:** [OpenView (David Skok) — SaaS Metrics 2.0](https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** CAC · Reply rate · AI SDR

---

## Engagement primitives

### Sequence

Outreach's term for a multi-touch outbound cadence — ordered steps across email, LinkedIn, phone, video — executed against a list of prospects. The unit of work in modern sales-engagement platforms; Salesloft's equivalent is called a Cadence.

**Source:** [Outreach — Sales Engagement Platform](https://www.outreach.io/platform/sales-engagement) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Cadence · Touchpoint · Channel · Sequence-writer agent

### Cadence

Salesloft's term for a multi-touch outbound campaign across channels — the platform-native equivalent of Outreach's Sequence. Cadence and Sequence are used interchangeably in operator vocabulary; the underlying primitive is the same.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Cadence](https://salesloft.com/products/cadence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence · Touchpoint · Channel · Sequence governance

### Touchpoint

*Also known as:* touch · step

A single outreach action within a sequence — one email, one call, one LinkedIn message, one video. Touchpoints are usually counted (a 12-touch sequence) and shaped (email-call-email-LinkedIn-call) per ICP segment.

**Source:** [Outreach — Sales Engagement Platform](https://www.outreach.io/platform/sales-engagement) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence · Cadence · Channel

### Channel

The medium of an outbound touch — email, LinkedIn, phone, video, SMS, direct mail, gifting. Channel mix matters: 2026 outbound-team vocabulary distinguishes between email-led, multichannel, and signal-led sequences.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Cadence](https://salesloft.com/products/cadence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence · Touchpoint · Social selling

### Reply rate

The percentage of recipients in a sequence who reply (positive, negative, or neutral). Reply rate above 5% is healthy for cold outbound on a well-targeted list; under 1% signals a list, message, or deliverability problem.

**Source:** [Outreach — Sales Engagement Platform](https://www.outreach.io/platform/sales-engagement) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence · Tone-match · Sender reputation · Conversion rate

### Hyper-personalisation

*Also known as:* hyper-personalization

Outreach where each message is composed against a specific signal about that prospect — recent funding round, named hire, new tech stack, recent content publication. Cheap to fake, hard to do well; the principal claim made by AI-SDR vendors is that they automate the research-and-compose loop.

**Source:** [Lavender — Email assistant](https://www.lavender.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence-writer agent · Research agent · Trigger event · Tone-match

### Tone-match

Adjusting an outreach message to match the prospect's writing style, seniority register, and culture — formal vs casual, terse vs warm, technical vs business-narrative. Lavender and similar email coaches measure tone fit and recommend rewrites; Anthropic's Claude is commonly used as the underlying model.

**Source:** [Lavender — Email assistant](https://www.lavender.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Hyper-personalisation · Sequence-writer agent · Brand voice for sales

### Objection handling

The discipline of responding to a prospect's stated concern (price, timing, fit, competitor preference) with a structured rebuttal that re-opens the conversation. Modern training frameworks (MEDDPICC, Sandler) drill objection responses against named common objections per persona.

**Source:** [MEDDIC Academy](https://meddic.academy/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDIC · MEDDPICC · Champion · Reply-classifier agent

### Social selling

Building visibility, trust, and pipeline through public-facing posts and 1:1 engagement on LinkedIn — distinct from outbound LinkedIn DMs by emphasising content and inbound-attraction over scripted outreach. Most B2B sales orgs treat social selling as a complement to, not a substitute for, sequencing.

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales 7th Edition](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Channel · Multi-thread · engagement-via-LinkedIn

### Signal-based selling — Emerging 2026

An outbound discipline that triggers outreach off a specific real-time event — a funding round, an executive hire, a product launch, a competitor switch — instead of pre-scheduled sequence cadence. Salesloft's Rhythm AI and Apollo's signal layer are the mainstream platform expressions.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Rhythm AI](https://salesloft.com/products/rhythm) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Intent data · Trigger event · Employee-change signal · AI SDR

### Multi-thread

Engaging multiple stakeholders inside a target account in parallel — economic buyer, champion, technical evaluator, end user — rather than relying on a single contact. Multi-threading is the principal mitigation for the Gartner finding that B2B buying involves 6–10 stakeholders.

**Source:** [Gartner — Future of Sales 2025](https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/future-of-sales) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Champion · ABM · Social selling

---

## Outbound research

### Account research

The pre-outreach work of understanding a target account's business model, recent news, leadership changes, tech stack, and known buying signals. Historically a 15–30 minute manual task per account; AI research agents (Apollo, Clay, 11x) now compress this to seconds.

**Source:** [Clay — Learn](https://www.clay.com/learn) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Persona research · Trigger event · Research agent · Waterfall enrichment

### Persona research

Building a profile of the specific prospect's role, tenure, recent posts, public statements, and likely priorities, against which the outreach message is composed. Lavender and similar coaching tools surface persona context inline as the SDR drafts.

**Source:** [Lavender — Email assistant](https://www.lavender.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Account research · Hyper-personalisation · Trigger event

### Trigger event

A discrete dated event in an account's life — funding round, IPO, executive hire, product launch, layoff, office expansion, lawsuit — that creates a moment of openness to outreach. Trigger-event-driven outbound consistently outperforms time-based cadence on reply rate.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Rhythm AI](https://salesloft.com/products/rhythm) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Intent signal · Signal-based selling · Employee-change signal

### Intent signal

Any observable signal that an account is researching a category, a competitor, or a problem your product addresses — site visits, content downloads, ad clicks, third-party intent (Bombora-style), G2 / Capterra browsing. Stronger than firmographic fit alone for prioritisation.

**Source:** [6sense — ABM platform](https://6sense.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Intent data · Trigger event · ABM · Signal-based selling

### Technographic

Data about the technology stack a prospect's company uses — CRM, marketing-automation platform, observability vendor, hosting cloud. Technographic targeting ("all companies on Salesforce + Outreach + Snowflake") is a core ABM-list-building input.

**Source:** [ZoomInfo — Platform](https://www.zoominfo.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Firmographic · ICP · ABM · Waterfall enrichment

### Firmographic

Company-level descriptive data — industry, employee count, revenue, geography, founded year — used to filter target lists against an ICP. ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Cognism are the dominant firmographic-data vendors.

**Source:** [ZoomInfo — Platform](https://www.zoominfo.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Technographic · ICP · TAM · ABM

### Employee-change signal

A specific class of trigger event: a named decision-maker joining, leaving, or being promoted inside a target account. New executive hires are statistically the strongest single signal for category-buying-window outbound, especially in the first 90 days.

**Source:** [Cognism — Documentation](https://www.cognism.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Trigger event · Signal-based selling · Intent signal

### Waterfall enrichment — Emerging 2026

A data-enrichment pattern that tries each provider in priority order, falling back to the next when the first returns null — e.g., try ZoomInfo first, then Apollo, then Clearbit, then a scraped LinkedIn. Popularised by Clay and now standard in modern outbound stacks.

**Source:** [Clay — Learn](https://www.clay.com/learn) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Account research · Research agent · Technographic · Firmographic

---

## Agentic AI for SDR

### AI SDR — Emerging 2026

*Also known as:* AI BDR · autonomous SDR

An autonomous or semi-autonomous software agent that performs SDR work — account research, sequence drafting, email send, reply classification, meeting booking — with limited human oversight. Mainstream products in 2026 include Salesforce Agentforce SDR, 11x Alice/Jordan, Apollo's AI SDR, AiSDR, and Reply.io's AI SDR; capability and human-in-the-loop posture vary materially between vendors.

**Source:** [Salesforce — Agentforce SDR](https://www.salesforce.com/sales/agentforce-sdr/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Research agent · Sequence-writer agent · Reply-classifier agent · BDR-out-of-the-box · Agent fleet (sales)

### Research agent — Emerging 2026

An agent specialised on the pre-outreach research step: ingesting company URL, news, LinkedIn, tech stack, funding history, and surfacing the 3–5 lines of context that make a personalised opener possible. Apollo's research agent and Clay's AI Research are typical implementations; Anthropic's Claude is a common underlying model.

**Source:** [Apollo.io — AI SDR](https://www.apollo.io/product/ai-sales-development) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Account research · AI SDR · Waterfall enrichment · Hyper-personalisation

### Sequence-writer agent — Emerging 2026

An agent that drafts the email body, subject line, and follow-up steps of a sequence given a target persona, an offer, and (optionally) research-agent output. Lavender, Apollo, AiSDR, and 11x all ship variants; quality is sharply bounded by the input research.

**Source:** [Lavender — Email assistant](https://www.lavender.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence · Research agent · Tone-match · AI SDR

### Reply-classifier agent — Emerging 2026

An agent that reads inbound replies to a sequence and labels them — interested, not now, not the right person, unsubscribe, out of office, hostile — and routes accordingly. The classifier replaces SDR triage and is the most reliably-positive-ROI AI piece of the SDR workflow in 2026.

**Source:** [Outreach — Sales Engagement Platform](https://www.outreach.io/platform/sales-engagement) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** AI SDR · Follow-up agent · Sequence · Reply rate

### Follow-up agent — Emerging 2026

An agent that handles inbound replies that need a multi-turn response — answering common questions, scheduling meetings, requesting missing information — without escalating to a human SDR for low-stakes paths. Most AI-SDR products combine reply classification with follow-up handling.

**Source:** [AiSDR — Product](https://aisdr.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Reply-classifier agent · AI SDR · Meeting-booking agent

### Meeting-booking agent — Emerging 2026

An agent that takes a positive reply and converts it to a booked meeting — proposing time slots, sending calendar invites, handling rescheduling. The handoff from AI SDR to AE; Calendly, Chili Piper, and HubSpot all ship variants.

**Source:** [HubSpot — AI sales features](https://www.hubspot.com/products/artificial-intelligence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Follow-up agent · Handoff · AI SDR

### BDR-out-of-the-box — Contested

*Also known as:* AI BDR · digital worker

A vendor framing — popularised by 11x.ai — that markets an AI SDR as a packaged hire-equivalent ("meet Alice, your new BDR") rather than as a feature inside an existing platform. The framing is contested: realised performance varies sharply on list quality, deliverability posture, and human-in-the-loop discipline.

**Source:** [11x.ai](https://www.11x.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** AI SDR · Research agent · Sequence-writer agent

### Conversation intelligence

Software that records, transcribes, and analyses sales calls and meetings — surfacing topics covered, talk-time ratios, objection language, named competitors, next-step commitments. Gong and Chorus (ZoomInfo) are the category leaders; AI summary + coaching is now standard.

**Source:** [Gong — Revenue intelligence](https://www.gong.io/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Chorus · Objection handling · MEDDIC

### Sequence governance — Emerging 2026

The RevOps discipline of approving, versioning, and policing the sequences SDRs (or AI SDRs) can run — so brand voice, claim accuracy, and compliance posture stay consistent at scale. Sequence governance is the principal failure mode when an AI SDR is rolled out without controls.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Cadence](https://salesloft.com/products/cadence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Brand voice for sales · AI SDR · Hallucination in sales · RevOps

### Agent fleet (sales) — Emerging 2026

A coordinated set of agents spanning research, sequence-writing, reply classification, follow-up, and meeting booking — orchestrated to deliver one SDR's job end-to-end. The natural unit of scale once individual agent capabilities mature beyond single-task automation.

**Source:** [AgentsBooks — Anatomy of a Firm](https://agentsbooks.com/anatomy) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** AI SDR · Research agent · Sequence-writer agent · Reply-classifier agent · Meeting-booking agent

### Brand voice for sales — Emerging 2026

A controlled spec — tone, vocabulary, claim limits, formatting — that an AI sequence-writer is constrained to produce, ensuring outbound from agents reads consistently with the company's marketing voice and avoids unauthorised claims.

**Source:** [Lavender — Email assistant](https://www.lavender.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence-writer agent · Tone-match · Sequence governance · Hallucination in sales

### Hallucination in sales — Contested

An AI-generated sales claim that sounds plausible but is unfounded — invented integrations, fabricated case studies, made-up pricing, or imaginary executive quotes. The single highest-risk failure mode of AI SDR deployments; mitigated by retrieval-grounding, claim allow-lists, and reviewer-in-the-loop sequence governance.

**Source:** [Anthropic — Building Effective Agents](https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence governance · Brand voice for sales · AI SDR

---

## Deliverability + compliance

### SPF — In force 2014-04

*Also known as:* Sender Policy Framework

Sender Policy Framework — a DNS TXT record that lists the IP addresses authorised to send email from a domain. SPF is one of three authentication records (with DKIM and DMARC) Gmail and Yahoo require for bulk senders since 2024-02.

**Source:** [RFC 7208 — SPF](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7208) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** DKIM · DMARC · Sender reputation · Warm-up

### DKIM — In force 2011-09

*Also known as:* DomainKeys Identified Mail

DomainKeys Identified Mail — a cryptographic signature attached to outbound email and verified against a public key in the sender's DNS, proving the message wasn't altered in transit. DKIM is mandatory alongside SPF for bulk senders to Gmail and Yahoo since 2024-02.

**Source:** [RFC 6376 — DKIM](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6376) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SPF · DMARC · Sender reputation

### DMARC — In force 2015-03

*Also known as:* Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance

An authentication policy layered on SPF and DKIM that tells receivers what to do with messages that fail authentication (none / quarantine / reject), and where to send aggregate reports. Required at policy `none` minimum for Gmail and Yahoo bulk senders since 2024-02.

**Source:** [RFC 7489 — DMARC](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7489) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SPF · DKIM · Sender reputation · Blocklist

### Sender reputation — In force 2024-02

An aggregate score mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) maintain on each sending IP and domain, based on volume patterns, complaint rate, authentication, bounce rate, and spam-trap hits. Sender reputation is the single biggest determinant of inbox-vs-spam routing; cold sequences with poor reputation underperform regardless of message quality.

**Source:** [Google — Email sender guidelines](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SPF · DKIM · DMARC · Warm-up · Blocklist

### Warm-up

*Also known as:* domain warm-up · inbox warm-up

The progressive ramp of outbound email volume from a new domain or IP — typically starting at <50/day and scaling over 4–8 weeks — to build a sender reputation before high-volume cold outbound begins. Skipping warm-up is the most common cause of immediate Gmail/Outlook spam-foldering.

**Source:** [M3AAWG — Sender best practices](https://www.m3aawg.org/published-documents) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sender reputation · SPF · DKIM · DMARC

### Blocklist

*Also known as:* RBL · DNSBL · blacklist

A real-time DNS list of IP addresses or domains known for spam — Spamhaus SBL, Barracuda BRBL, SORBS, and others. A listing on a major blocklist effectively blocks email delivery to a large share of recipients; remediation requires fixing the underlying behaviour and requesting delisting.

**Source:** [Spamhaus — Blocklist](https://www.spamhaus.org/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sender reputation · SPF · DMARC · Warm-up

### CAN-SPAM — In force 2003-12-16

*Also known as:* CAN-SPAM Act

The US federal statute governing commercial email. Requires a clear unsubscribe mechanism honoured within 10 business days, accurate header and subject information, identification as a commercial message, and a valid physical postal address in every send. Civil penalties up to $51,744 per violation as of 2024.

**Source:** [FTC — CAN-SPAM Compliance Guide](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** GDPR Art. 6 LIA · CCPA / CPRA · Sender reputation

### GDPR Art. 6 LIA — In force 2018-05-25

*Also known as:* legitimate interest assessment · Art. 6(1)(f)

Under the EU GDPR, processing personal data for direct marketing can rely on legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) provided a documented Legitimate Interest Assessment balances the controller's interest against the data subject's rights. B2B prospecting at corporate email addresses commonly relies on this basis; the LIA must exist and the recipient's right to object must be honoured.

**Source:** [EU EDPB — GDPR guidance](https://edpb.europa.eu/edpb_en) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** CAN-SPAM · CCPA / CPRA · EU AI Act Art. 50

### CCPA / CPRA — In force 2020-01-01

*Also known as:* California Consumer Privacy Act · California Privacy Rights Act

California's consumer-privacy regime, granting right to know, right to delete, right to opt out of sale/share, and right to limit use of sensitive personal information. CCPA applies to qualifying B2B contact data since the 2023 sunset of the prior B2B exemption; opt-out signals (Global Privacy Control) must be honoured.

**Source:** [California AG — CCPA](https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** GDPR Art. 6 LIA · CAN-SPAM

### EU AI Act Art. 50 — In force 2026-08-02

*Also known as:* AI Act transparency

The transparency obligation of the EU AI Act: providers and deployers of generative AI systems must ensure that AI-generated content is detectable and disclosed where it could be mistaken for human-authored content. Implications for AI SDR are still being clarified — disclosure of AI authorship in outbound is a likely interpretation.

**Source:** [EU AI Act — Art. 50](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/50/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** AI SDR · GDPR Art. 6 LIA · Hallucination in sales

---

## Vendor + tooling

### Outreach

Outreach is one of the two dominant sales-engagement platforms (with Salesloft), centred on the Sequence as its core primitive. Outreach's product surface includes sequencing, dialer, deal-management, conversation intelligence, and AI-assisted reply handling.

**Source:** [Outreach — Sales Engagement Platform](https://www.outreach.io/platform/sales-engagement) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Salesloft · Sequence · AI SDR · Reply-classifier agent

### Salesloft

Salesloft is one of the two dominant sales-engagement platforms (with Outreach), centred on the Cadence as its core primitive. Salesloft's Rhythm product layers a signal-based AI prioritisation engine on top of cadence execution.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Cadence](https://salesloft.com/products/cadence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Outreach · Cadence · Signal-based selling · Salesloft Rhythm

### Salesloft Rhythm — Emerging 2026

Salesloft's signal-based AI engine that ingests CRM signals, intent data, and engagement events, scores prospect actions, and routes the next-best-action to the SDR's daily list. Rhythm is positioned as the in-platform alternative to standalone AI SDR products.

**Source:** [Salesloft — Rhythm AI](https://salesloft.com/products/rhythm) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Salesloft · Signal-based selling · AI SDR

### HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot's CRM + sales-engagement product, including sequences, dialer, prospecting workspace, and Breeze AI agents. Strongest among the major CRMs in the SMB and lower mid-market segment; differentiates on integrated marketing and content surfaces.

**Source:** [HubSpot — AI sales features](https://www.hubspot.com/products/artificial-intelligence) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Salesforce Sales Cloud · Outreach · Salesloft · AI SDR

### Salesforce Sales Cloud — Emerging 2026

*Also known as:* Agentforce SDR

Salesforce's flagship sales product; the de-facto enterprise CRM. Agentforce SDR is the embedded AI SDR offering, positioned as Salesforce's response to standalone AI-SDR vendors and tightly integrated with the rest of the data graph.

**Source:** [Salesforce — Agentforce SDR](https://www.salesforce.com/sales/agentforce-sdr/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** HubSpot Sales Hub · AI SDR · Opportunity · Pipeline

### Apollo.io

Apollo combines a B2B contact database, a sequencing platform, and a research+AI-SDR product surface in one stack — a vertically-integrated competitor to the ZoomInfo + Outreach + 11x combination. Strong adoption in PLG SaaS and series-A-to-B startups.

**Source:** [Apollo.io — Platform](https://www.apollo.io/product) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** ZoomInfo · Outreach · AI SDR · Research agent

### Clay — Emerging 2026

Clay is a no-code data-orchestration platform for outbound, combining waterfall enrichment across dozens of data providers with AI research agents that compose per-prospect context. Clay is the canonical reference for waterfall-enrichment patterns in 2026.

**Source:** [Clay — Learn](https://www.clay.com/learn) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Waterfall enrichment · Research agent · Apollo.io · ZoomInfo

### Lavender

Lavender is an AI email coach that scores draft emails on tone, length, structure, and personalisation, recommending rewrites inline. The mainstream choice for human-in-the-loop sequence-writer assistance, distinct from full AI-SDR autonomy.

**Source:** [Lavender — Email assistant](https://www.lavender.ai/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Sequence-writer agent · Tone-match · Brand voice for sales

### ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the dominant US-centric B2B contact and firmographic data vendor, with optional sequencing, intent, and conversation-intelligence (Chorus) layers. Strongest in mid-market and enterprise SDR teams.

**Source:** [ZoomInfo — Platform](https://www.zoominfo.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Cognism · Apollo.io · Chorus · Firmographic

### Cognism

Cognism is a B2B contact-data vendor positioned for EU-compliant prospecting — explicit GDPR-readiness, validated mobile numbers, and Do-Not-Call list integration. Strong adoption in EMEA SDR teams and for any go-to-market where GDPR posture is load-bearing.

**Source:** [Cognism — Documentation](https://www.cognism.com/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** ZoomInfo · Apollo.io · GDPR Art. 6 LIA

### Gong

Gong is the conversation-intelligence category leader — recording, transcribing, and analysing sales calls and meetings to surface coachable patterns and forecasted deal health. Increasingly used as the canonical source of truth for what was actually said in a deal.

**Source:** [Gong — Revenue intelligence](https://www.gong.io/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Chorus · Conversation intelligence · Objection handling

### Chorus

Chorus is ZoomInfo's conversation-intelligence product, the principal alternative to Gong. Tightly integrated with ZoomInfo's data graph; competitive on transcription quality and coaching surfaces.

**Source:** [ZoomInfo — Chorus](https://www.zoominfo.com/products/chorus) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** Gong · Conversation intelligence · ZoomInfo

---

## Lifecycle + qualification

### Handoff

*Also known as:* SDR handoff · AE handoff

The structured transfer of a qualified lead from the SDR to the AE — typically via a calendar-booked discovery call plus a handoff note covering BANT, persona context, trigger event, and objection signals. The handoff is where most pipeline value leaks if undisciplined.

**Source:** [Salesforce — State of Sales 7th Edition](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** SQL · Opportunity · MEDDIC · Champion

### MEDDIC — Foundational

A B2B qualification framework — Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion — created at PTC in the 1990s. MEDDIC's strength is its insistence on a quantified Metrics line and a named Champion.

**Source:** [MEDDIC Academy](https://meddic.academy/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDPICC · MEDDICC · BANT · Champion

### MEDDPICC

MEDDIC extended with Paper process and Competition — Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, Competition. The dominant qualification framework in enterprise SaaS through 2025–2026.

**Source:** [MEDDIC Academy](https://meddic.academy/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDIC · MEDDICC · Champion · Objection handling

### MEDDICC

MEDDIC plus Competition — a lighter extension than MEDDPICC, kept by some teams for its simpler letter count. Used interchangeably with MEDDIC in operator vocabulary; teams that distinguish typically pick MEDDIC, MEDDICC, or MEDDPICC and stay consistent.

**Source:** [MEDDIC Academy](https://meddic.academy/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDIC · MEDDPICC · Objection handling

### BANT — Foundational

Budget, Authority, Need, Timing — the original IBM-derived sales-qualification framework. Increasingly considered too thin for modern complex B2B (no champion concept, no metrics line, weak on multi-stakeholder buying), but still common in SMB and early-stage teams.

**Source:** [HubSpot — State of Sales](https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDIC · MEDDPICC · NEAT · SQL

### NEAT

Need, Economic impact, Access to authority, Timeline — a BANT successor framework that replaces the budget question with explicit economic-impact and access-to-authority lines. Common in mid-market SaaS but never displaced MEDDIC at the enterprise tier.

**Source:** [HubSpot — State of Sales](https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** BANT · MEDDIC · SQL

### Champion

A named insider at the prospect account who has skin in the game on the deal succeeding and is willing to spend internal political capital to push it through. MEDDIC and MEDDPICC are emphatic that no champion = no deal.

**Source:** [MEDDIC Academy](https://meddic.academy/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDIC · MEDDPICC · Multi-thread · Handoff

### ROI build

*Also known as:* business case · value framework

A quantitative model produced jointly by the AE and the champion that ties product capability to a named cost saved or revenue created — typically the gating artefact for procurement and CFO sign-off in enterprise deals. ROI builds are a Metrics-line MEDDIC artefact.

**Source:** [MEDDIC Academy](https://meddic.academy/) — accessed 2026-05-08

**See also:** MEDDIC · MEDDPICC · Champion · ACV · Payback period

---

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