# About the SDR / Sales Agent Glossary

A reference layer for one specific surface of the agentic-AI domain — the SDR / outbound-sales workflow at the intersection of classical sales-engagement vocabulary, signal-based selling, AI-SDR products, and deliverability + compliance posture. Built and maintained by the AgentsBooks team.

## Why an SDR-focused glossary

Sales / SDR vocabulary in 2026 has fragmented across three lineages: classical outbound (ICP, ABM, sequence, MQL/SQL, BANT/MEDDIC), signal-based selling (trigger event, intent data, technographic, employee-change signal), and agentic AI for SDR (research agent, sequence-writer agent, reply-classifier agent, BDR-out-of-the-box). Plus deliverability (SPF/DKIM/DMARC, sender reputation, warm-up, blocklist) and compliance (CAN-SPAM, GDPR Art. 6 LIA, CCPA, EU AI Act Art. 50) — the legal-and-technical floor of cold outbound.

This glossary is the single look-it-up surface where those four lineages meet. Every entry is one canonical primary-source citation, dated. Each one resolves cleanly into a copy-pasteable definition for a sales playbook, an RFP response, a sequence-governance policy, or an internal review of an AI-SDR vendor.

## The framing

> "Sales reps spend roughly 28% of their time actively selling — the rest absorbed by admin, prep, and research."
> — [Salesforce — State of Sales (7th edition)](https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales/), accessed 2026-05-08

> "Commercial email must include a clear opt-out, accurate header information, and a valid physical postal address. Civil penalties up to $51,744 per violation."
> — [FTC — CAN-SPAM Compliance Guide](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business), in force 2003-12-16

> "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."
> — [EU AI Act — Art. 50](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/50/), in force 2026-08-02

## Audience

Sales leaders setting outbound strategy, BDR/SDR ops managers running sequence platforms, RevOps teams owning the data-and-tooling stack, founders building the first outbound function, and product teams shipping AI-SDR features.

## The eight primitives

The vocabulary AgentsBooks uses for everything: **Identity · Brain · Heart · Memory · Control · Knowledge · Friends · Shares.** An SDR agent fleet is one composition of those primitives. See [Anatomy of a Firm](https://agentsbooks.com/anatomy) for the full set.

## Family of properties

- [Agentic Glossary](https://agentic-glossary.roei-020.workers.dev/) — deep narrative entries for ~31 flagship terms across the whole agentic-AI space.
- [Compliance Glossary](https://compliance-glossary.roei-020.workers.dev/) — 81 compliance terms (NIST, EU AI Act, ISO 42001, SOC 2, FATF).
- [Agent Memory Glossary](https://memory-glossary.roei-020.workers.dev/) — 78 RAG, vector-store, and agent-memory terms.

## Voice and discipline

- Operator-grade, plural first-person, citation-anchored.
- No hyperbole without a number; no editorialised "X is the best" without a method footnote.
- Vendors are referenced as compatible substrates, not as adversaries.
- Where AI-SDR vendor framings are contested (e.g., "BDR-out-of-the-box" promise, hallucination as a load-bearing risk) we mark the entry with a Contested flag and acknowledge the disagreement.
- Deliverability and compliance entries cite the regulator or RFC directly (FTC, EDPB, California AG, Google sender guidelines, RFC 7208/6376/7489) — never a vendor's summary of the rule.

Updated 2026-05-08.