GLOSSARY
The metrics that matter.
Definitions, formulas, and worked examples for the sales performance metrics that matter.
58 terms · reviewed quarterly against verified CRM data
Metrics
30 terms- Alpha Score
- Alpha Score is WinsAbove's CRM-verified composite metric that scores a sales rep against the open market on revenue, win rate, and velocity — not against an internal quota.
- Annual Contract Value
- Annual Contract Value (ACV) is the normalized 12-month revenue value of a contract — total contract value divided by term length in years — used as the standard unit for quota assignment, territory planning, and deal-size benchmarking in B2B sales.
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the normalized yearly value of a SaaS company's active subscription contracts, used to measure scale, growth rate, and valuation in recurring-revenue businesses.
- Bookings
- Bookings are the total dollar value of contracts signed in a period, measured at signature regardless of when the revenue is recognized or cash is collected.
- CAC Payback Period
- The number of months a SaaS company needs to recover the sales and marketing cost of acquiring a customer through that customer's gross-margin-adjusted recurring revenue.
- Churn Rate
- Churn rate is the percentage of customers or revenue a company loses in a given period, calculated as churned units divided by the starting baseline; it is the primary driver of gross and net revenue retention and the most consequential metric a subscription business can underreport.
- Close Rate
- Close rate is the percentage of qualified opportunities that convert to closed-won revenue within a defined period, measuring how reliably a seller turns pipeline into bookings.
- Commission Accelerator
- A commission accelerator is a variable compensation mechanism that increases a sales rep's payout rate once they exceed quota, rewarding overperformance with a progressively higher percentage of bookings on each incremental dollar above plan.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Customer Acquisition Cost is the total sales and marketing spend required to win one new customer, calculated as fully-loaded acquisition cost divided by new customers closed in the same period.
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Customer Lifetime Value is the total gross profit a single customer generates across the duration of their relationship, used to validate whether acquisition spend is economically defensible.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
- CSAT is the percentage of customers who rate a specific interaction or product experience favorably, usually 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale, and it's the closest thing sales has to an instant temperature read.
- Deal Slippage
- Deal slippage is the movement of a forecasted deal from its committed close period to a future period without a win or loss outcome, measured as the percentage of forecasted deals or bookings that shift quarters to diagnose forecast accuracy and rep credibility.
- Deal Velocity
- Deal velocity measures how quickly opportunities move from creation to closed-won, calculated as the average number of days a deal spends in pipeline before booking — the inverse of cycle time and a leading indicator of forecast reliability.
- Forecast Accuracy
- Forecast accuracy measures how close a sales team's predicted bookings come to actual closed revenue, usually expressed as the percentage variance between forecast and actuals at the end of a quarter.
- Gross Revenue Retention
- Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) measures the percentage of starting recurring revenue a company keeps from existing customers after churn and contraction, excluding expansion — the floor of a subscription business, capped at 100%.
- Magic Number
- A SaaS efficiency metric that divides annualized net new ARR by trailing sales and marketing spend, showing how much recurring revenue each dollar of go-to-market investment produced.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- NPS measures the percentage of customers who'd recommend you minus the percentage who'd actively warn people away, on a scale from -100 to +100, and it's the most over-cited number in B2B sales.
- Net Revenue Retention
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue retained from an existing customer cohort over a period after accounting for expansions, contractions, and churn — a number that exceeds 100% when expansion revenue outpaces losses from the same base.
- No-Decision Rate
- No-Decision Rate is the percentage of qualified sales opportunities that close as lost to no decision — the buyer chose neither you nor a competitor, just the status quo.
- On-Target Earnings (OTE)
- On-Target Earnings (OTE) is the total annual compensation a sales rep earns at exactly 100% of quota — base salary plus variable commission — used as the headline number in offers and benchmarks.
- Pipeline Coverage Ratio
- Pipeline coverage ratio is open pipeline value divided by remaining quota — the metric every RevOps team treats as a constant when it should be a function of win rate.
- Pipeline Velocity
- Pipeline velocity measures how fast revenue moves through your sales pipeline, calculated as opportunities × win rate × deal size divided by sales cycle length.
- Quota Attainment
- Quota attainment is the percentage of an assigned sales target a rep closed in a given period — a number set inside one company that does not travel between employers.
- Ramp Time
- Ramp time is the number of months from a sales rep's start date to consistent full-quota productivity, used to model sales capacity, comp plan accelerators, and hiring ROI.
- Rule of 40
- The Rule of 40 is a SaaS health benchmark stating that a company's revenue growth rate plus its profit margin should sum to 40% or more.
- Sales Cycle Length
- Sales Cycle Length is the average elapsed time from first qualified opportunity to closed-won, measured in days and used as a leading indicator of forecast risk and pipeline health.
- Sales Velocity
- Sales velocity is the dollars-per-day a rep or team produces, computed from opportunity count, deal size, win rate, and cycle length — the closest thing sales has to a throughput equation.
- Stage Conversion Rate
- Stage conversion rate measures the percentage of opportunities that advance from one CRM pipeline stage to the next, exposing exactly where in the funnel deals stall or die.
- Total Contract Value (TCV)
- Total Contract Value (TCV) is the complete dollar amount of a signed contract over its full term, including all recurring fees, one-time charges, and professional services—distinct from ACV, which annualizes the recurring component only.
- Win Rate
- Win rate is closed-won opportunities divided by closed-won plus closed-lost — the cleanest single signal of seller skill, and the one most often computed against the wrong denominator.
Concepts
19 terms- BANT
- BANT is a sales qualification framework — Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline — that assesses whether a prospect has the minimum conditions for a deal to close.
- Bookings vs. Revenue
- Bookings is the total contract value a customer commits to in a given period; revenue is the portion recognized under GAAP accounting rules — in subscription businesses these two numbers diverge sharply, and conflating them causes forecast errors, comp disputes, and investor misstatements.
- Champion
- A champion is an internal advocate inside a prospect account who has personal motivation to close your deal, sells on your behalf when you're not in the room, and holds enough political capital to move the purchase forward.
- Clawback
- A commission plan provision that reclaims previously paid sales commission when a deal churns, refunds, or fails to collect within a defined window — most commonly 90 to 365 days after booking.
- Commission Decelerator
- A commission decelerator is a comp-plan mechanism that pays a reduced commission rate on bookings produced below a defined quota-attainment threshold.
- Commission Draw
- A commission draw is an advance payment against future earned commissions, used to provide income stability for sales reps during ramp periods or seasonal slow patches.
- Forecast Category
- Forecast category is the CRM tag — Omit, Pipeline, Best Case, Commit, Closed — that reps apply to each open opportunity to signal how likely it is to close this quarter.
- Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a documented description of the company most likely to buy, retain, and expand — defined by firmographics, technographics, and behavioral signals — used to filter pipeline and prioritize go-to-market spend.
- Land and Expand
- Land and expand is the go-to-market strategy of closing a small initial contract with a customer to prove value, then systematically growing the account through new users, modules, business units, and use cases—measured in net dollar retention and expansion ARR.
- MEDDIC
- MEDDIC is a six-step B2B sales qualification framework — Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion — used to qualify enterprise opportunities and reduce no-decision losses.
- MEDDPICC
- MEDDPICC is a B2B sales qualification framework with eight checkpoints — Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Paper Process, Identify Pain, Champion, Competition — used to score whether a deal is real.
- MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
- An MQL is a lead that marketing has scored above a threshold—based on behavioral signals and firmographic fit—and formally passed to sales as worth a rep's time; the MQL-to-SQL conversion rate determines whether that designation means anything.
- OTE (On-Target Earnings)
- OTE is the total cash a rep earns at exactly 100% of quota — base salary plus variable commission — and the figure most often inflated on resumes and job posts.
- Recoverable Draw
- A recoverable draw is a guaranteed minimum commission payment to a sales rep that must be paid back from future commissions once they exceed the draw amount, creating a deficit balance the rep works off over time.
- Replacement-Level Rep
- Replacement-level rep is the WinsAbove benchmark for the median seller at the same role, segment, and tenure who could be hired this quarter for the same comp — sales' answer to baseball's replacement-level value.
- Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)
- A Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) is a marketing-generated lead that a sales rep has reviewed and formally accepted as qualified to work, marking the contractual handoff between marketing-sourced pipeline and the sales team's pursuit list.
- SPICED
- SPICED is a six-stage discovery and qualification framework — Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision — used by sales teams to anchor deals to a buyer's measurable business outcome and a hard deadline.
- SPIFF
- A SPIFF (Sales Performance Incentive Fund) is a short-term cash bonus paid to sales reps for completing a specific selling behavior — closing a target product, segment, or deal type — separate from standard commission.
- SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
- A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is a prospect that a sales rep has contacted and confirmed meets the organization's criteria for active selling, distinguishing it from an MQL by requiring human judgment rather than automated behavioral scoring.
Process
4 terms- Discovery Call
- A discovery call is the structured first conversation between a seller and a qualified prospect to identify business pain, decision criteria, and whether to advance the opportunity.
- Multithreading
- Multithreading is the deliberate practice of building substantive relationships with multiple stakeholders inside a single buying account so a B2B deal survives turnover, reorgs, and shifting priorities.
- Mutual Action Plan (MAP)
- A Mutual Action Plan is a jointly-owned, dated document listing every step required to move a B2B deal from verbal commitment to signed contract, with named owners on both buyer and seller sides.
- Pipeline Generation
- Pipeline generation is the systematic creation of qualified sales opportunities through outbound prospecting, marketing-sourced inbound, partner referrals, and account-based motions—measured in dollars of qualified pipeline created and pipeline-to-quota coverage ratios.
Roles
3 terms- Account Executive (AE)
- An Account Executive is a quota-carrying B2B sales rep who owns opportunities from qualified pipeline through closed-won, running discovery, demos, negotiation, and contract close.
- Sales Development Representative (SDR)
- An SDR is the rep who books qualified meetings for closers — they don't carry a revenue quota, they carry a meetings-set quota, and they're the entry point into B2B sales for most careers.
- Sales Engineer
- A sales engineer is the technical counterpart to the account executive on a B2B sales team, owning demos, technical discovery, and proof-of-concept design to win the technical evaluation.
Anti-patterns
2 terms- Pipeline Padding
- Pipeline padding is the practice of inflating CRM opportunity counts or dollar values with weak, stale, or fictional deals to hit coverage ratios and avoid pipeline reviews.
- Sandbagging
- Sandbagging is the deliberate timing of deal close dates to maximize commission, accelerator, or attainment outcomes — a CRM gaming pattern WinsAbove detects from deal-event timestamps.
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