The growth ABC, level 2

If you want to understand startup growth, you need to learn the ABCs.

Last month we shared the fundamental vocabulary needed to kickstart your startup growth journey without getting lost in logistics and jargon. But that was only the beginning my young padawan.

In this blog, you'll find The Growth ABC Level 2. The vocabulary you need to level up your sales & marketing game in the B2B industry. And if you are already an experienced player in this field, you'll find this the perfect tool to send to your team to make sure you're all speaking the same language.

Without further ado...

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ABC - Always Be Closing

Always Be Closing (ABC) is a strategy popularized in the film “Glengarry Glen Ross,” where a demanding corporate representative pressures a group of real estate agents, telling them to sell more property; otherwise, they’d be fired.
But ABC is not only executed as in this extreme movie scenario. Many sales teams adopted this strategy and adapted it to their own requirements with the bottom line of always being on the lookout for new prospects, pitching products/services, and ultimately closing deals.

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B - B2B & B2C

B2B refers to Business selling to Business, and B2C, Business to Customers.

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C - Closing Ratio

If you sent out 20 proposals this month, and 5 of those ended up buying your product or service, your closing ratio is 25%. It’s the number that indicates how many deals were closed from the total sent in a given period.

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D - Discovery call, Deal-flow

A discovery call is pretty much what its name indicates: a call to meet your prospect, learn and discover more about their needs, pain points, expectations, and overall situation. When does this happen? Right after, your prospect indicated that’s interested in learning more about what you need to say, and usually, this happens after a cold email or a cold call. It’s the first step in the sales qualification process.

Your deal flow is the movement of potential customers across your sales funnel, from prospect to customer. You can visualize, manage and customize your deal flow from your sales platform and/or CRM.

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E - Escalations

Customer Success Managers rolling their eyes

Escalation is the term that refers to the requirement of moving a case with a customer to a higher-authority agent or manager. When does this happen? When the person dealing with the customer’s situation cannot solve the client’s need.

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F - Flywheel

The flywheel is the infographic representing a circular sales process and a popular growth strategy. This mindset places the customer at the center and enforces that the sales process must continue even after closing the deal.  

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G - Go-to-Market Strategy

Is the plan or road map designed to strategize marketing and sales efforts to put on the map a new (or rebranded) product or service. This usually includes optimized outbound efforts, creative inbound strategies, marketing optimizations, and retention strategies.

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H - Hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization is the process of using AI and data to produce highly curated content relevant to the end consumer. Hyper-personalization allows teams to automate time-consuming tasks without compromising the quality of the communication process.

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I - Ideal Customer Profile

The Ideal Customer Profile, also known as ICP, is the thorough description of your optimal customer with the objective of learning and identifying your potential customer’s patterns and behaviors and thus curating a tailored approach to their needs.

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J - January Effect

The January Effect is a popular theory that refers to the perceived seasonal tendency for some actions taken during this month. For example, the January Effect is theorized to influence the stock market price.

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K - Key Accounts

Key accounts are the group of clients that generate significantly more profits for a company. Key Accounts are precious to the company, and they are usually assigned a team or an account manager to ensure that the customer is always well taken care of.

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L - Lead scoring, Land and expand

A lead scoring system is a way to pre-qualify leads through a general ranking system that identifies whether a lead is worth investing efforts in at that given time or not. This ranking system considers different aspects that indicate the lead’s warmth, and it’s a way for salespeople to prioritize their pipelines.

Land and Expand is the term used to explain that a sales rep must first bring a customer (to Land) and then continue generating more revenue (to expand).

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M - Mid-market

Mid-Market is the term that refers to companies within a market that are between small companies and large multinational enterprises.

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N - NPS

NPS means Net Promoter Score, and it’s a customer satisfaction metric. It measures on a scale from 0-10 how satisfied your customers are and to which level they would promote your Business to others. This is a great metric to understand your customers and provide a relevant service that increases their loyalty to your product/service.

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O - Objections

Objections are doubts, opposite opinions, or statements against what the salesperson is presenting to a prospect. Sales team work on understanding patterns in prospect’s objections to be able to assess their concerns and overcome these hurdles.

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P - Prospect, Paint Point, Profit margin

A prospect is a sales term to identify a person or a business with the qualities to be a potential customer.

Pain points are the areas that the prospect would like to improve or currently represent a problem to them.

The profit margin is the profitability ratio that measures a business’s potential ability or efficiency to yield financial gain (i.e., profits) after all relevant expenses and costs have been deducted.

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Q - Qualified Lead

A qualified lead is a term given to a prospect with the characteristics of a person/business ready to buy your product/service. Before naming a potential customer a qualified lead, this one was called a prospect, and it was only after the sales or marketing team assessed how inclined is this prospect to buy that it was moved to a qualified lead.

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R - Revenue

The amount of money a business generates during a period of time. The revenue equals the sales of the company.

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S - Sales pipeline coverage

Sales pipeline coverage is the metric that identifies how full the sales pipeline is compared to the quota you want to achieve at the end of a given period of time. Managers and sales reps can have better visibility of their growth and design strategies to improve this ratio.

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T - Total Available Market

Refers to the total revenue potential for a specific product or service, including its future market imprint.

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U - Unicorn

Unicorn is a term used to describe a startup company valued at over $1 Billion. It’s also a mythical animal represented by a horse with a curled horn projected from its forehead.

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V - Value chain

The value chain is the group of the steps taken by a company to create value in their product or services. Fundamentally is the process of creating products that are ready to be introduced into a market. The steps can vary from market to market and product to product (or service).

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W - Warm Call

When a salesperson contacts a prospect that has been already in contact with their company previously. It may be that the prospect was not ready to buy before and was hoping to be in a different scenario later, or it may be that it was a referral from someone else.

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X - X-factor

The X Factor is a popular TV music competition show. It’s also that key aspect that gives you a significant competitive advantage.

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Y - Year to Date

Year to date is the period of time comprised between the beginning of this year (or fiscal year) and today. This information can be helpful for competitor and trend analyses.

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Z - Zone of Resistance

It’s a reflective action to sales pressure. Humans perceive pressure as a threat, so they shut down. When a salesperson approaches a prospect without understanding the prospect’s availability, the latter usually reacts negatively, entering the Zone of resistance.

There are a lot of words to learn in this blog and sales talk can be tricky and intimidating, but understanding this jargon will help you hold more effective conversations with your sales team. However, most importantly, if you are not in that position yet, this ABC will help guide the way towards getting that job!