Intelligence
The GTM Glossary.
The vocabulary of Western European market entry, defined the way we use it in mandates — from Zero-Dependency GTM to speed-to-lead. Written for C-level readers and the AI engines they ask.
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Account Executive (AE)
The seller who owns qualified opportunities from first meeting to signature.
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Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Treating a named list of high-value accounts as individual markets, with coordinated marketing and sales effort per account.
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Activation Rate
The share of signups or deployed seats that reach the defined first-value milestone.
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AI Sales Transformation
Rebuilding a sales motion so AI handles research, enrichment, drafting, and preparation while humans keep the conversation.
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Annual Contract Value (ACV)
The normalised yearly value of a customer contract, excluding one-off fees.
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Answer Rate
The share of outbound contact attempts that reach a live human conversation.
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Average Selling Price (ASP)
The mean value of closed deals in a defined period and segment.
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B2G Sales
Selling to government and public-sector bodies, under procurement law rather than commercial negotiation alone.
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BANT Qualification
A qualification frame that checks Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing before an opportunity enters the pipeline.
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Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT)
An engagement model where a partner builds a capability, runs it until it performs, then hands it to the client team.
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Burn Multiple
Total net cash burned divided by net new annual recurring revenue in the same period.
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Buying Signal (Intent Data)
An observable event suggesting an account may be entering a buying window.
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CAC Payback Period
The number of months of gross profit from a new customer required to repay the cost of acquiring them.
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Commercial Sovereignty
The condition in which a company owns the infrastructure, data, and relationships that generate its revenue.
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Cost per Qualified Opportunity
Total acquisition spend divided by the number of opportunities a salesperson has accepted.
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Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
The fully loaded cost of winning one new customer, including sales and marketing salaries, tooling, agencies, and campaign spend.
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Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total gross profit a customer is expected to generate over the whole relationship.
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Data Hygiene
The ongoing practice of keeping CRM records accurate, deduplicated, complete, and lawfully held.
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Demand Generation
Creating awareness and intent in a market that is not yet looking for your category.
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Documented, Not Tribal
The rule that every play, sequence, and decision rule is written down as it is created, not reconstructed at the end.
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Domain Warm-Up
Gradually increasing sending volume from a new domain or mailbox so providers build a positive reputation for it.
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DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act)
The EU regulation setting ICT risk and resilience requirements for financial entities and the technology providers they depend on.
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Ecosystem-Led Growth (Nearbound)
Generating pipeline through partners already embedded in your target accounts, rather than approaching those accounts cold.
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Email Deliverability
The likelihood that a sent email reaches the recipient inbox rather than spam or rejection.
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Employer of Record (EOR)
A third party that legally employs your staff in a country where you have no entity, while you direct their day-to-day work.
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Engineered Autonomy
Designing a growth engine so the client team can operate it without the partner who built it.
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EU AI Act Article 50
The transparency rule requiring people to be told when they are interacting with an AI system, and requiring AI-generated content to be machine-readable as artificial.
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Forecast Accuracy
How closely committed forecast matches actual closed revenue in the same period.
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Founder Visibility
The deliberate build of a founder’s public credibility in a target market, as a commercial asset rather than personal branding.
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Framework Agreement
A pre-negotiated umbrella contract that lets public bodies award work to admitted suppliers without a new full procurement each time.
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GDPR Legitimate Interest (B2B Outreach)
A lawful basis under the GDPR that can permit business-to-business contact without prior consent, when the interest is balanced against the individual’s rights.
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Go-to-Market Motion
The repeatable sequence a company uses to reach a defined buyer, create demand, and close revenue in a specific market.
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Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
Revenue retained from an existing cohort excluding all expansion, so it can never exceed 100%.
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Gross-Margin-Adjusted Magic Number
The Magic Number recalculated on gross profit rather than revenue, so delivery cost is not hidden.
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Ideal Customer Archetype (ICA)
The individual inside a target account whose problem, mandate, and buying psychology make them the right entry point for a conversation.
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Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
The description of the companies that get the most value from your product and are cheapest for you to win and keep.
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Lead Response SLA
A committed maximum time to first human contact after a qualified signal arrives.
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Legal Entity vs. Branch
The choice between founding a separate local company, such as a GmbH, SAS, or BV, and registering a dependent branch of the parent.
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Localisation
Adapting product, content, and commercial practice to a market’s language, norms, and regulatory expectations, beyond translation.
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LTV:CAC Ratio
The relationship between the lifetime gross profit of a customer and what it cost to acquire them.
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Market Entry Mode
The structural choice of how you operate in a new country: direct, through partners, through an employer of record, or via a local entity.
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Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A contact whose behaviour suggests enough interest to justify sales attention, but who has not yet been accepted by a seller.
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MEDDIC / MEDDPICC
A qualification framework for complex sales covering Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identified pain, Champion, and in the extended form Paper process and Competition.
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Meeting Acceptance Rate
The share of booked meetings that the receiving salesperson accepts as genuinely qualified.
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Multichannel Sequence
A planned series of touches across email, phone, LinkedIn, and sometimes events, aimed at one contact over a defined window.
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Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Revenue from existing customers this period compared with the same cohort a year earlier, including expansion, contraction, and churn.
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NIS2 Directive
The EU cybersecurity directive that obliges organisations in essential and important sectors to manage risk across their own supply chains.
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Outbound Prospecting
Proactively contacting companies that have not raised their hand, based on a defined profile and a trigger.
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Pipeline Coverage Ratio
Open pipeline value divided by the revenue target for the same period.
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Pipeline Velocity
The rate at which pipeline converts into revenue, combining opportunity count, deal value, win rate, and cycle length.
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Pricing for European Buyers
Adapting price structure, discount logic, and payment terms to how European organisations actually buy and approve spend.
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Product Qualified Account (PQA)
An account whose product usage has reached a threshold that justifies a commercial conversation.
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Product-Led Growth (PLG)
A model in which the product itself drives acquisition, activation and expansion, with sales entering later or not at all.
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Product-Market Fit
The state in which a defined segment buys repeatedly, refers you, and resists switching, without heroic selling on every deal.
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Public Tender
A formal, published procurement process through which public bodies buy goods and services under competition rules.
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Ramp Time
The period a new seller needs before reaching expected productivity.
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Reference Customer
An existing client willing to vouch for you publicly or in a private call with a prospect.
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Revenue Operations (RevOps)
The function that owns the systems, data, and process connecting marketing, sales, and customer success into one revenue engine.
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Rule of 40
The benchmark that a software company’s revenue growth rate plus its profit margin should reach at least 40%.
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SaaS Magic Number
A sales-efficiency ratio measuring how much annualised new recurring revenue each euro of sales and marketing spend produced.
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SaaS Quick Ratio
New plus expansion recurring revenue divided by churned plus contracted recurring revenue in the same period.
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Sales Cycle Length
The elapsed time from a qualified first meeting to a signed contract.
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Sales Development Representative (SDR)
The person responsible for creating qualified first conversations, not for closing deals.
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Sales Enablement
Equipping sellers with the content, training, and evidence they need to move buyers through a decision.
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Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A prospect a salesperson has examined and accepted as worth pursuing against agreed criteria.
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Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)
The part of the total market your product, licences, and delivery model can actually serve today.
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Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM)
The realistic share of the serviceable market you can win in a defined period with the team, budget, and time you actually have.
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Signal-Based Outbound
Outreach triggered by specific observable events rather than by a calendar-driven sequence.
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Speed-to-Lead
The elapsed time between an inbound signal and the first meaningful human contact attempt.
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SPICED Framework
A buyer-centred qualification framework covering Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event and Decision.
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TDDDG (Germany) and Tracking Consent
The German implementation of the ePrivacy rules requiring prior consent before anything is stored on or read from a user’s device.
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Time to Value (TTV)
The elapsed time between a customer signing or signing up and their first real experience of the promised value.
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Total Addressable Market (TAM)
The full annual revenue available if every company that could ever buy your product did so, at your price.
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UWG §7 (Germany)
The German unfair-competition provision governing unsolicited advertising, including cold calls and marketing email.
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Waterfall Enrichment
Querying data providers in sequence until one returns a verified result, instead of relying on a single source.
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Works Council (Betriebsrat)
The elected employee body in German companies whose co-determination rights cover any system capable of monitoring staff performance.
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Zero-Dependency Model
The CxLEVER operating principle that every asset, dataset, and playbook created during a mandate lives in the client’s systems and stays there.