The cold calling glossary

Account Executive (AE)

The salesperson who takes the meeting booked by the SDR, runs the full discovery, builds the proposal and closes. In most teams the AE and the SDR write together what a qualified meeting is.

AI call summary

An automatic summary of a recorded call: context, points covered, objections, next step. It fills the CRM and lets the SDR move on instead of writing.

BANT

Budget, Authority, Need, Timing: an old and simple qualification frame to check that an opportunity deserves a meeting. It is asked as questions, never as an interrogation.

BDR (Business Development Representative)

The cold prospector: goes after accounts that have never heard of you. In the most common split the SDR qualifies inbound demand and the BDR hunts cold. In small companies one person does both.

Buying signal

An event that makes a call relevant now: an open job posting, a funding round, a new tool, a new hire, an office move. The opener starts from the signal; without one, it starts from the persona’s typical problem.

CAC (customer acquisition cost)

Everything spent to sign a new customer, SDR and AE salaries included, divided by the customers signed in the period. Read it with LTV.

Cadence

The rhythm of a prospecting sequence: how many touches, through which channels, at what intervals, over how many days. A good cadence alternates call, email and LinkedIn and stops cleanly.

Call coaching

Reviewing a real call with a manager or a peer against a scorecard: opener, listening, objections, next step. One session a week on one call changes more than one training a year.

Call script

The written outline of a call: opener, questions, objection answers, next step. A good script is a safety net, not a text to read; you know it well enough to leave it.

Call transcription

The text of a recorded call, produced automatically. With the AI summary, it serves coaching, CRM updates and replaying your own questions.

Churn

The share of customers who leave over a period. On subscription, 2% monthly churn means a customer stays about fifty months on average. It drives lifetime value and therefore what you can spend to acquire one.

Click to call

Starting a call by clicking a number in an interface instead of dialing it. In Skipcall you call from the app and the CRM record is updated afterwards.

Cold call

A call to someone who is not expecting you and has never been in touch with you. The whole outbound SDR job lives in the first thirty seconds of that call.

Cold email

The written twin of the cold call: a short, personalised email to someone who does not know you. In a cadence it prepares or extends the call rather than replacing it.

Connect rate

The share of dials that end in a conversation with the right person. It is the KPI that links call volume to meetings, and it is measured per list and per time slot.

Connected call

A dial where a person, right or wrong, picked up and spoke. Ring-outs, voicemails and dead numbers do not count. It is the denominator of the meeting rate.

Conversation

A connected call with the right person where an exchange happened beyond “no thanks”. It is the most honest unit to measure an SDR: you do not control who picks up, you control what you do with the conversation.

CRM

The software where contacts, opportunities and the history of exchanges live (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Attio). The SDR fills it as they go, thirty seconds per conversation, never on Friday evening.

Discovery

The part of the exchange where you get the prospect talking about their situation, their problems and what those cost, before proposing anything. On a cold call it is two questions; in a meeting it is half the time.

Do Not Call (DNC)

A register of people who have opted out of marketing calls. In the United States the national DNC list applies to consumers under the TCPA; many countries have an equivalent. Business numbers are usually outside it, but internal opt-out lists still apply.

E.164

The international phone number format: country code, then the number without the leading zero, no spaces, with a leading +. “+14155552671”. A list in E.164 avoids duplicates and dials to fake numbers.

Enrichment

Completing a contact with the missing data: direct phone number, email, title, company size. Waterfall enrichment queries several providers one after the other until one finds it.

Follow-up

Any touch that follows a first exchange or a non-answer: the call back after “send me an email”, the email after a voicemail. A follow-up gives the reason for coming back, never “just checking in”.

Funnel

The volumes at every stage, from attempted contact to signed customer, and the rates between them. Reading your funnel means spotting the stage that leaks before chasing more volume at the top.

Gatekeeper

The person who screens calls before a decision maker: front desk, assistant, office manager. You do not “get past” them by force: you introduce yourself clearly, ask for help, and never lie about an existing relationship.

On the phone : “Hi Nadia, Tom Berger from Nexalis, I’m trying to reach Dana Whitfield. Would you know when she’s easiest to catch?”

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

The portrait of the company most likely to buy and stay: industry, size, tools in place, buying signals. It fits in five criteria and is used to sort the list before dialing.

Inbound

Demand that comes to the salesperson: a form, a free trial, downloaded content. The inbound SDR qualifies it fast and well; speed to call back matters more than the script.

KPI

A steering indicator. For an SDR, activity KPIs (dials, conversations), outcome KPIs (meetings booked and held) and quality KPIs (no-show rate, meetings accepted by the AE) are kept apart.

Local presence dialing

Showing a number from the prospect’s area so they pick up more readily. Common in the United States, regulated in Europe: the number must be yours and reachable in return.

LTV (lifetime value)

What a customer brings in gross margin over the whole relationship. Compared with acquisition cost, it says whether each customer makes the company richer and how much you can spend to find one.

MEDDIC

Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion: a qualification frame for complex sales. On a cold call you touch two letters; the rest happens in the meeting.

Meeting rate

The share of conversations that end in a booked meeting. It is the KPI the SDR controls most directly: it depends on the opener, the discovery and the next step.

MQL and SQL

Marketing Qualified Lead: a contact marketing finds interesting from its behaviour. Sales Qualified Lead: a contact sales has qualified through an exchange. The SDR turns the first into the second, or rules it out.

Multichannel

Prospecting the same person through several coordinated channels: call, email, LinkedIn, sometimes SMS. Each channel has a role; the call remains the one that creates the conversation.

Next step

What you get at the end of a call: a dated meeting, an agreed call back, an introduction to a colleague. A call without a next step is a pleasant conversation that leads nowhere.

No-show

A booked meeting the prospect does not attend. A high no-show rate signals meetings booked too fast or poorly confirmed: a reminder the day before and a calendar invite sent during the call bring it down.

Objection

What the prospect sets against the next step: “no time”, “send me an email”, “we already have one”. An objection is information, not a refusal: you acknowledge it, dig into it, propose a next step.

Opener

The first sentences of a cold call: who you are, why you are calling this person specifically, and a question that hands them the floor. It plays out in thirty seconds.

On the phone : “Hi Dana, Tom Berger from Nexalis. I’m calling because you’re hiring three inside sales reps. Got two minutes?”

Opt-in

A person’s prior consent to be contacted. Required to call consumers in France since 11 August 2026 and in several other countries; between businesses, legitimate interest is usually enough under conditions.

OTE (On-Target Earnings)

A salesperson’s total pay at 100% of target: base plus target variable. An OTE is read with its base/variable split and the shape of the plan (threshold, accelerator).

Outbound

Prospecting that starts from the salesperson towards people who are not expecting it. It is the home of the cold call, the cadence and the list prepared the day before.

Parallel dialer

A dialer that dials several numbers at once, up to four with Skipcall, and connects you to the first person who picks up. It multiplies conversations per hour when the list is clean and the pickup rate is low.

Permission-based opener

Stating the length of the call or asking “got two minutes?” at the start. It hands control back to the prospect, who almost always grants it, and turns an intrusion into an accepted exchange.

Persona

The portrait of the person to call inside the target company: title, goals, what wastes their time, the words they use. The ICP says where to call, the persona says whom and with which words.

Pickup rate

The share of dials where someone answers, whoever they are. It depends on the list, the hour and the number displayed more than on the SDR. Not to be confused with the connect rate.

Pipeline

All open opportunities, sorted by stage, with their value. Pipeline coverage compares that value to the period’s target: three times the target is a commonly quoted reference, not a rule.

Power dialer

A dialer that automatically dials the next number as soon as a call ends, one at a time, with the contact record in front of you. It removes manual dialing without ever putting anyone on hold.

Pre-CRM

The space where contacts to prospect live before they become opportunities in the CRM: import, enrichment, sequences, call statuses. In Skipcall, it is the Contacts screen.

Predictive dialer

A call-centre dialer that launches calls before an agent is free, based on a statistical forecast. Efficient at scale, it produces the silence on pickup that B2B prospects hate: for very large volumes only.

Qualification

Checking that a contact is worth a meeting: right company, right person, a problem you solve, a moment to talk about it. It starts on the list, before dialing, and ends in conversation.

Qualified meeting

A held meeting with the right person, about a real topic, against criteria written with the AE. It is the outcome an SDR is judged on, not the number of meetings booked.

Quota

The numeric target given to an SDR for a period: meetings held per month, most often. A quota is built from the team target, seasonality and the ramp-up of new hires.

Ramp-up

The time a new SDR takes to reach full productivity, usually counted in months. A 30-60-90 day onboarding plan shortens it.

SDR (Sales Development Representative)

The person who opens conversations with prospects, qualifies them and books meetings for an account executive. Judged on qualified meetings, not on closed revenue.

Sequence

The ordered set of touches planned with a prospect over several days, with its channels and delays. In Skipcall a sequence chains calls, call-backs and tasks and moves contacts forward automatically.

SPIN

Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff: a way to order discovery questions so the prospect measures for themselves what their problem costs.

TCPA

The US law that regulates automated calls and texts to consumers: consent, hours, the national Do Not Call registry. In B2B its constraints are lighter but not zero.

Touch

Each contact attempt in a sequence, whatever the channel: a call, an email, a LinkedIn invitation. A cadence is described as a number of touches over a number of days.

Voicemail

The prospect’s answering machine. You leave a twenty-second message with your name, the reason for the call and the announcement of an email or a call back, or you leave nothing and move on: both are decided in advance.

VoIP

Telephony that runs over the internet instead of the traditional phone network. It is what lets you call from an app, record, transcribe and measure.

Warm call

A call that follows a signal or a first contact: downloaded content, a referral, a LinkedIn exchange. The opener starts again from that signal; the rest of the call looks like a well-prepared cold call.

Wrap-up

The seconds after a call: outcome logged, next step scheduled, CRM record updated. Thirty seconds at most, while it is fresh, then the next call.