B2B prospecting glossary
Sixteen terms that come up constantly in outbound, defined plainly. Each one also says what it means in practice, which is usually the part that is missing.
- Acceptance rate
- The share of sent LinkedIn connection requests that are accepted. The most useful single measure of whether outbound targeting is working, and the one LinkedIn itself watches most closely.
- Account warm-up
- Increasing a LinkedIn account’s outreach activity gradually over a period, typically two weeks, rather than starting at full volume. Applies to new accounts and to dormant ones being restarted.
- Buying signalintent signal
- An observable event suggesting a company may be in the market now: a funding round, a job posting, a leadership hire, a new office, a public project announcement, or a technology change.
- Connection requestLinkedIn invitation, LinkedIn invite
- An invitation to connect on LinkedIn, optionally carrying a short note. Accepting it puts both people in each other’s first-degree network and opens direct messaging.
- Firmographics
- The company-level attributes used to segment B2B markets: industry, headcount, revenue, location, ownership structure and growth stage. The organisational equivalent of demographics.
- Ideal Customer ProfileICP
- A written description of the kind of company and person most likely to buy from you and stay. It names firmographics, the role that decides, the signals that suggest timing, and the characteristics that rule a company out.
- InMail
- LinkedIn’s paid direct message, which reaches someone outside your network without a connection request first. Available on Premium and Sales Navigator plans as a monthly credit allowance.
- Lead allocationlead routing, round-robin
- Deciding which salesperson owns which prospect. Common methods are round-robin, capacity-based - assigning to whoever has room - and criteria-based, by territory, industry or deal size.
- Lead enrichmentdata enrichment
- Adding missing detail to a prospect record - role, seniority, company size, industry, location, technology, contact details - so it can be scored and acted on rather than just stored.
- Lead qualification
- Deciding whether a prospect is worth a salesperson’s time before anyone spends it. In outbound this usually means checking fit against an ICP; in inbound it more often means checking intent and budget.
- Lead scoringprospect scoring
- Assigning each prospect a number that represents how well they match your Ideal Customer Profile, so a list can be worked in order of fit rather than in the order it arrived.
- Outbound prospecting
- Contacting potential customers who have not approached you first, usually through email, LinkedIn or the phone, after deciding from research that they are likely to be a fit.
- Reply rate
- The share of sent messages that receive any response, positive or negative. Distinct from acceptance rate, which measures connection requests, and from positive reply rate, which counts only interested responses.
- Sales Navigator
- LinkedIn’s paid prospecting product. Adds advanced search filters, lead and account lists, saved searches with alerts, and a monthly InMail allowance beyond what a free account has.
- Sales sequencecadence
- A planned series of touches across channels and days - a profile view, a connection request, a message, a follow-up - designed so that outreach arrives in a deliberate order rather than ad hoc.
- Social selling
- Building relationships on social platforms - usually LinkedIn - through engagement, content and conversation, rather than through direct pitching, with the aim of being the person someone already knows when they are ready to buy.
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