B2B Sales: terms, methodologies & roles

Account Planning

Account planning is the process of building and maintaining a deliberate strategy for growing a specific customer account, mapping its goals, stakeholders, opportunities, and risks into a plan for how to retain and expand the relationship.

Account Team

An account team is the cross-functional group of people assigned to serve and grow a single important customer account, typically spanning sales, customer success, technical, and executive roles, who coordinate to manage the relationship as a unit rather than leaving it to one individual.

Account-Based Sales

Account-based sales (ABS) is a focused B2B approach that treats individual high-value accounts as markets of one, concentrating coordinated sales effort on a defined list of target accounts rather than chasing a high volume of individual leads.

B2B Buying Process

The B2B buying process is the series of stages a business goes through to make a purchase decision, from recognizing a problem to selecting a vendor and buying, typically involving multiple stakeholders, formal evaluation, and a longer timeline than a consumer purchase.

B2B Sales Strategy

A B2B sales strategy is the plan defining how a company sells to other businesses: who it targets, the value it offers, which motions and channels it uses to reach and convert them, and how it measures success.

Channel Sales

Channel sales is the practice of selling a product through third-party partners, resellers, distributors, value-added resellers, or affiliates, rather than directly to the end customer with your own sales team.

Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding is the structured process of guiding a new customer from signed contract to first real value, covering welcome, setup, training, and adoption so they reach the outcome they bought the product to achieve.

Deal Management

Deal management is the practice of guiding an individual sales deal from opportunity to close, coordinating the people, steps, information, and timing needed to win it.

Digital Sales Room

A digital sales room (DSR) is a shared, branded online space where a seller and a buyer collaborate on a deal, holding the relevant content, the mutual plan, the stakeholders, and the back-and-forth in one place instead of scattering them across email threads and attachments.

Direct Sales

Direct sales is selling straight to the end customer with no intermediary, where the company's own salespeople own the relationship from first contact to close, giving full control over message, margin, and customer data.

Discovery Calls

A discovery call is an early sales conversation whose purpose is to understand the prospect's situation, needs, and priorities, rather than to pitch a product, learning enough to decide whether and how the solution genuinely fits.

Hot Lead

A hot lead is a prospect showing strong, immediate buying intent, ready to talk to sales now. They have moved from curiosity into active evaluation, making them the highest-priority, most time-sensitive contact in the funnel.

Inbound Calls

Inbound calls are phone calls initiated by a customer or prospect rather than a rep. In sales they are high-intent moments, a question, a demo request, or readiness to buy, which makes them among the most valuable contacts a team handles.

Inbound Sales

Inbound sales is a methodology where reps engage buyers who have already shown interest, through content, demo requests, or chat, and guide them toward a purchase in the context of the problem the buyer is trying to solve, rather than interrupting cold prospects.

Interactive Demos

Interactive demos are self-guided, clickable product demonstrations that prospects explore at their own pace, rather than watching a live presentation or a passive video, letting the buyer experience the product's value themselves.

Key Account Management (KAM)

Key account management (KAM) is the discipline of managing a company's most important customers through dedicated strategy, resources, and relationships, with the goal of retaining and growing them over the long term rather than simply selling to them once.

Key Accounts

Key accounts are a company's most important customer accounts, the ones that generate a significant share of revenue or carry strategic value, and that therefore warrant more attention and resources than the average customer.

Mutual Action Plan (MAP)

A mutual action plan (MAP) is a shared, written plan between a seller and a buyer that lays out every step, owner, and date from the current moment to a signed deal and successful go-live, co-owned by both sides.

Needs Analysis

Needs analysis is the discovery step in a sale where the rep uses structured questions to uncover a prospect's real problems, goals, and decision criteria, so any proposed solution is grounded in what the buyer actually needs.

Opportunity Management

Opportunity management is the process of tracking and advancing qualified sales opportunities through the stages of the pipeline, from a real, scoped deal to a closed outcome, so each one gets the right next action and nothing slips through the cracks.

Outbound Sales

Outbound sales is the practice of proactively initiating contact with prospects who have not expressed interest, by targeting specific accounts and reaching out through email, phone, and social to start a conversation and book a qualified meeting.

Sales Playbook

A sales playbook is the documented set of plays, processes, messaging, and resources that defines how a team sells, so every rep can run a proven approach instead of improvising.

Sales Tracking

Sales tracking is the practice of systematically recording and monitoring sales activities, deals, and outcomes, usually in a CRM, so teams can see what is happening in the pipeline and make decisions from data rather than guesswork.

Sales Workflow

A sales workflow is the defined, repeatable sequence of steps and actions that move a deal or task through the sales process, often partly automated so the right thing happens at the right time without someone having to remember to do it.

Strategic Account

A strategic account is a customer relationship a company treats as critical to its long-term growth, managing it with dedicated planning, senior attention, and tailored resources rather than standard sales coverage.

Territory Management

Territory management is the process of dividing a market into defined segments and assigning each to a salesperson or team, so coverage is balanced, account ownership is clear, and selling effort is spent where it pays off most.

Value Consulting

Value consulting is a sales practice in which the seller acts as a consultant, quantifying the business value and ROI their solution will deliver for a specific customer and building the evidence-based case that justifies the investment.

Value-based Selling

Value-based selling is a sales approach that frames a product around the measurable business value it delivers, such as time saved or revenue gained, rather than its features or price, centering the conversation on the buyer's outcomes.