Glossary

The tech sales glossary

Last reviewed 30 April 2026·74 terms·By Issy Hardwick

Every tech-sales acronym, methodology, and pipeline term defined in plain English. Written for Australian SDRs entering the field in 2026, useful for anyone learning the language of B2B SaaS.

Roles & titles

SDRSales Development Representative: An entry-level salesperson whose job is to research target accounts, reach out by phone, email, and LinkedIn, qualify interest, and book meetings for senior reps. SDRs don't close deals; they open them. Standard AU OTE in 2026 is A$100,000 to A$115,000 at the standard level.
BDRBusiness Development Representative: Same fundamental role as an SDR in modern Australian SaaS, with a traditional lean toward outbound prospecting rather than inbound qualification. Most AU SaaS companies in 2026 use SDR and BDR interchangeably.
AEAccount Executive: The closer. Runs discovery calls, demos the product, multi-threads accounts, negotiates pricing, and signs deals. AE is the next step up from SDR. Year-one AU OTEs typically run A$180,000 to A$250,000.
AMAccount Manager: The post-sale relationship owner for a customer. Focused on retention, expansion, and renewals rather than new logo acquisition. Often paired with a CSM at SaaS companies.
CSMCustomer Success Manager: The post-sale role that ensures customers actually adopt and get value from the product. CSMs handle onboarding, training, and ongoing health-check conversations. Typically not commission-driven in the same way AEs are.
SESales Engineer / Solutions Engineer: The technical counterpart to an AE. Owns the technical side of the sale: deep demos, integration questions, security reviews, proof-of-concept setup. Often paid on the same comp plan as the AE they pair with.
Sales manager: A people manager running a team of SDRs, AEs, or both. Carries a team quota that rolls up from individual quotas, plus management deliverables. AU OTE typically runs A$200,000 to A$350,000+.
VP Sales / CROVice President Sales / Chief Revenue Officer: Senior leadership owning the entire sales (or revenue) function. Sets quota, hires managers, runs forecasting cycles. Typically a 5+ year path from AE to first-line manager to VP.

Compensation

OTEOn-Target Earnings: Base salary plus the variable commission you'd earn at 100% of quota. The number to negotiate against, not base. Typical AU SDR OTE is A$100,000 to A$115,000 at the standard level.
Base salary: The fixed portion of your pay, paid into your account each fortnight regardless of performance. Standard AU SDR base in 2026 is A$75,000.
Variable comp / commission: The performance-based portion of your pay, paid against attainment of quota (meetings booked, pipeline generated, deals closed). Typically paid monthly or quarterly with a one-cycle lag.
Pay mix: The ratio of base to variable in your comp plan, expressed as base/variable. Standard AU SDR is 70/30 (70% base, 30% variable). AE plans typically run 50/50 or 60/40.
Quota: The target you're paid against. For SDRs, usually meetings booked per month or qualified pipeline per quarter. For AEs, usually closed-revenue per quarter or year.
Attainment: What percentage of quota you hit. 100% means you exactly met target; above 100% triggers accelerators; below 70% sustained typically triggers a performance plan.
Accelerator: A multiplier that increases your per-unit commission rate above 100% of quota. Standard AU tiers: 1.25x at 100 to 120%, 1.5x at 120%+. Without accelerators, top performers earn the same as average performers, so this is how big years happen.
Ramp: The first 3 to 6 months in a new role, when quota is reduced and onboarding is heavy. Most AU SaaS companies pay 60% to 80% of variable during ramp regardless of attainment, called ramp protection.
Clawback: When commission paid earlier is reclaimed by the company because the deal didn't progress (a meeting no-showed, a deal slipped past a window, a customer churned within X days). Common at SDR level for unqualified meetings; common at AE level for early churn.
SPIFFSales Performance Incentive Fund: A short-term bonus run on top of your normal comp plan to drive specific behaviour. E.g. "Book 10 meetings into Acme accounts this month and earn an extra A$1,000." Common at quarter and year ends.

Revenue metrics

MRRMonthly Recurring Revenue: The predictable monthly revenue from subscription customers. The main metric most SaaS companies report internally on a monthly basis.
ARRAnnual Recurring Revenue: MRR multiplied by 12. The main metric SaaS companies report externally and at board level. "A$100M ARR" is the standard threshold for late-stage AU SaaS.
ACVAnnual Contract Value: The annualised value of a single customer contract. A 3-year deal worth A$300,000 has an ACV of A$100,000. AE comp plans usually pay against ACV, not TCV.
TCVTotal Contract Value: The total contracted revenue across the full term of the contract. A 3-year A$300,000 deal has a TCV of A$300,000. Useful for context but not usually the comp basis.
NRRNet Revenue Retention: How much existing customers expand or contract over a defined period, expressed as a percentage. NRR above 100% means existing customers are growing in aggregate. Best-in-class SaaS sits at 120%+.
GRRGross Revenue Retention: The percentage of existing customer revenue retained over a period, ignoring expansion. NRR plus churn equals GRR. Healthy SaaS sits at 90%+ GRR.
Churn: Customers who cancel or downgrade in a given period. Tracked as logo churn (number of customers) and revenue churn (dollars lost). Lower is better.
CACCustomer Acquisition Cost: How much the company spends to acquire one new customer. Used in tandem with LTV to assess unit economics. Healthy SaaS targets a CAC payback under 18 months.
LTVLifetime Value: The total revenue a customer is expected to generate before churning. Healthy SaaS targets an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 or better.

Market sizing & ICP

ICPIdeal Customer Profile: The specific company type the product is designed to serve best, defined by industry, size, geography, tech stack, and other firmographic criteria. SDR list-building starts here.
TAMTotal Addressable Market: The full revenue opportunity if every potential customer in the world bought the product. The biggest market-sizing number, used for vision-level planning.
SAMServiceable Available Market: The portion of TAM the company can actually reach with its current product, geography, and channels. Smaller than TAM, more relevant operationally.
SOMServiceable Obtainable Market: The portion of SAM the company can realistically capture in the near term given competitive dynamics, sales capacity, and resources. The most operational of the three.
Persona: A specific role or buyer type within an ICP company that the seller targets. E.g. "VP of Engineering at a 200-person Series C SaaS." Used for personalising outreach and tailoring messaging.
Champion: A person inside the prospect company who actively advocates for the deal internally, even when the seller isn't in the room. A real champion has authority, motive, and access to the decision-maker.
Decision-maker: The person who can actually approve the purchase. Often above the champion in the org chart. Identifying and reaching the decision-maker is the central skill of AE-level selling.
Economic buyer: The person whose budget the deal comes out of. Usually senior to the decision-maker. In MEDDIC, identifying the economic buyer is one of the six core qualification criteria.

Pipeline stages

Lead: A person or company with some signal of interest in the product. Lead is the loosest term in the funnel, usually meaning "not yet qualified."
MQLMarketing Qualified Lead: A lead that has met marketing-defined engagement criteria (e.g. downloaded a whitepaper, attended a webinar). Marketing hands MQLs to SDRs for qualification.
SQLSales Qualified Lead: A lead that an SDR has qualified through a discovery conversation as fitting ICP and showing real intent. SQLs progress to a meeting with an AE.
SALSales Accepted Lead: A lead that the AE has accepted from the SDR as worth a discovery meeting. Used at companies that want a tight handshake between SDR and AE before committing AE time.
SQOSales Qualified Opportunity: An opportunity that has progressed beyond initial discovery and is being actively worked toward close. SQO criteria typically include ICP fit, identified need, and timeline.
Opportunity: A specific deal in the pipeline at a defined stage with a target close date and dollar value. The unit of measure for an AE's pipeline.
Top of funnel (TOFU): Early-stage activity: prospects becoming aware of the product, leads being captured, SDR outreach happening. The widest, least-qualified part of the funnel.
Middle of funnel (MOFU): Mid-stage: discovery calls, demos, technical evaluation. Prospects engaged but not yet committed. Most pipeline gets stuck here.
Bottom of funnel (BOFU): Late-stage: pricing conversations, procurement, legal review, contract signing. Closer to revenue but typically a smaller share of total opportunities.
Closed won / closed lost: The terminal pipeline stages. Closed won = signed deal, revenue recognised. Closed lost = the prospect chose another path (competitor, internal build, no-decision).
Pushed / slipped: When a deal that was forecasted to close in one quarter moves to the next. Common at AE level. Repeated slippage on the same deal is a red flag for forecasting accuracy.

Outbound & prospecting

Outbound: Proactive seller-initiated outreach to prospects who haven't expressed interest yet. Cold calls, cold emails, LinkedIn DMs. The primary motion at most AU SDR roles.
Inbound: Prospect-initiated engagement: form fills, demo requests, content downloads, free-trial signups. Triaged by SDRs at marketing-led SaaS companies.
Cold call: An unscheduled phone call to a prospect who hasn't expressed interest. Typical AU SDR connect rate is 5% to 10%; meeting-book rate is 10% to 20% of connects.
Cold email: An unsolicited email to a prospect, typically structured as 4 lines: trigger event, specific pain, brief proof, single ask. Strong reply rates hold 12% to 18%.
Cadence / sequence: A pre-designed series of outreach touches to a prospect across multiple channels and days. Standard AU SDR cadence is 14 days, 8 to 12 touches across phone, email, and LinkedIn.
Multi-thread: Engaging more than one stakeholder at the same prospect company. Multi-threading reduces deal risk because no single contact leaving stalls the deal.
Single-thread: Engaging only one stakeholder at the prospect company. Common for SDRs at the qualification stage but a deal-stage red flag for AEs.
Trigger event: A specific signal that suggests the prospect is more likely to buy now than usual. New funding rounds, new executive hires, expansion into a new market, layoffs. Strong outbound leads with the trigger event in the subject line.
ABM / ABSAccount-Based Marketing / Account-Based Selling: A go-to-market motion that targets a finite list of named accounts with coordinated marketing and sales effort, rather than chasing volume. Common at enterprise SaaS.
Connect rate: The percentage of cold calls that result in an actual conversation (not voicemail, not the wrong number). 5% to 10% is standard for AU outbound in 2026.
Reply rate: The percentage of cold emails or LinkedIn DMs that get a response of any kind. Standard AU outbound: 5% to 10% generic, 12% to 18% personalised, 20%+ trigger-event.
Show rate: The percentage of booked meetings that the prospect actually attends. 70% to 85% is healthy for a well-qualified pipeline.

Sales methodologies

BANTBudget, Authority, Need, Timeline: An older qualification framework that asks four questions: does the prospect have budget, decision authority, an identified need, and a defined timeline? Considered too rigid by modern SaaS but still in use.
MEDDICMetrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion: A widely-used B2B SaaS qualification framework. Stronger than BANT for complex enterprise sales because it pushes sellers to identify the economic buyer and the actual decision process, not just budget.
MEDDPICCMEDDIC + Paper process + Competition: MEDDIC extended with two additional criteria: the procurement and legal paper process (which can take longer than the rest of the sale) and competitive context. Standard at enterprise SaaS.
SPIN sellingSituation, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff: A discovery framework structured as a sequence of question types. Originally from Neil Rackham's 1988 book; still widely taught. Useful for early-career sellers running their first discovery calls.
Challenger sale: A sales approach that emphasises teaching prospects something new about their business rather than asking what they need. Based on the 2011 book by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson.
Solution selling: A sales approach focused on diagnosing the prospect's problem before proposing a solution. The dominant SaaS sales framing through the 2010s; now blended with Challenger and consultative approaches.
Consultative selling: A buyer-centric approach where the seller acts as an advisor, asking questions and shaping recommendations rather than pushing product. Common at high-ACV enterprise SaaS.
Discovery call: A 30 to 60 minute call where an AE (or sometimes a senior SDR) explores the prospect's current state, pain points, decision process, and timeline. The most important call in the sales cycle.

Company segmentation

SaaSSoftware as a Service: Software delivered over the internet as a subscription rather than a one-time licence. The dominant model for B2B software since the 2010s and the category most AU SDRs work in.
B2BBusiness-to-Business: Selling to other companies rather than consumers. Most SDR roles are B2B because B2B sales cycles are long enough to need an outbound prospecting layer.
SMBSmall and Medium Business: The smallest company segment, typically under 200 employees. SMB deal sizes are smaller (sub A$50,000 ACV) but cycles are faster, which is why SMB SDR roles often see higher quotas.
Mid-market: Companies between SMB and enterprise, typically 200 to 2,000 employees. Mid-market deals usually run A$50,000 to A$300,000 ACV with 60 to 120-day cycles.
Enterprise: The largest customer segment, typically 2,000+ employees. Enterprise deals run A$300,000+ ACV and 6 to 18-month sales cycles. Highest deal sizes, longest cycles, most rigorous procurement processes.
Strategic / global: The very top of the enterprise segment. Sometimes used for the named-account list of the largest 50 to 200 prospects. Strategic deals often run A$1M+ ACV with multi-year cycles.
PLGProduct-Led Growth: A go-to-market motion where the product itself drives acquisition (free tier, free trial, viral loops) and sales is overlaid on top of users who self-onboard. Atlassian and Canva are classic AU examples.
SLGSales-Led Growth: The traditional B2B SaaS motion where sales reps drive the entire acquisition cycle from outreach to close. Most AU enterprise SaaS still operates this way despite the PLG narrative.

Ready to learn the rest on the job?

The glossary is a start. The rest of the QuotaClub content covers how to actually use these concepts to land a tech sales role in Australia.

How to get into tech sales →See SDR salaries →