Glossary
Outbound and lead generation, defined.
Updated 26 September 2026
Plain definitions of the terms that come up when a software company buys or runs outbound: what's being sold, how it's priced, how results are measured, and how email gets delivered. Where a term has a specific meaning in our engagements, it says so.
What is being bought
- Demand development
- Finding, reaching and turning into real conversations whoever a company needs to talk to next: buyers, channel partners or investors. It is broader than lead generation, which usually means buyers only. How an engagement works
- Lead generation
- Producing contacts or conversations with potential buyers who might purchase what a company sells. Services
- Outbound lead generation
- Reaching out first to chosen companies and people, by email, phone or social messages, rather than waiting for them to find you. Outbound lead generation
- Inbound
- Demand that arrives on its own, through search, content, referrals or advertising. It compounds but is slow, and you don't choose who arrives.
- Demand generation
- Marketing that builds awareness and interest in a category or product before buyers are ready to talk, as opposed to capturing buyers who already are. Compared with lead generation
Who does the work, and how it is priced
- SDR (sales development representative)
- A salesperson whose job is to start conversations with potential buyers and hand the promising ones to someone who closes deals. What an in-house SDR costs
- BDR (business development representative)
- Often used interchangeably with SDR; where a company distinguishes them, the BDR usually works outbound and the SDR follows up inbound interest.
- Outsourced SDR
- An agency or contractor that does an SDR's work for you, usually for a monthly fee or per meeting booked. When it's the right buy
- Appointment setting
- Outreach sold by the meetings it books, where the booked meeting itself is the product.
- Pay per meeting
- A pricing model where you pay a fee for each meeting booked with a prospect, which makes the written definition of a meeting the thing you are really buying. Pay per meeting vs retainer
- Retainer
- A monthly fee for a team's time and activity, the same whatever the activity produces. Pay per meeting vs retainer
Deciding who to reach
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)
- A written description of the kind of company most likely to buy and succeed with what you sell: industry, size, situation and the role that owns the problem. Template and worked example
- Buyer persona
- A description of the person inside that company: their role, what they are measured on and what makes them act. An ICP describes the company; a persona describes the person.
- Segment
- A group of companies similar enough that one message and one reason to talk fit all of them.
- Trigger
- Something that changes at a company and makes it start looking for a solution now: a new hire, a failed audit, a tool being retired, a funding round. Name the moment they start looking
Measuring results
- Reply rate
- Replies divided by something, and the something matters: per person contacted and per email sent give very different numbers for the same campaign. Reply rate benchmarks
- Positive reply rate
- Replies that show interest or ask a real question, divided by the people contacted. It is closer to what a campaign is for than the reply rate. Work yours out
- Denominator
- The "from Y" in "X from Y": the number a result is divided by. A result reported without one can't be judged. A report with every denominator shown
- Sales pipeline
- The deals you are working on, each at a stage with a clear rule for moving to the next. Build one from scratch
- Pipeline coverage
- The value of your open qualified opportunities compared with the revenue you need in the period. Keep it honest
- Cost per meeting
- What you spend on lead generation in a period divided by the meetings it produced. Cost per sales opportunity is the more useful version. Cost per meeting calculator
- Qualified conversation (at Scipioform)
- Whatever we agree in writing, for your business, before we start. We don't use the word without a definition. FAQ
- Threshold (at Scipioform)
- The number of qualified conversations a pilot should produce, agreed with you in writing after the diagnostic. Terms §3.2
- At-risk portion (at Scipioform)
- The part of the pilot fee we refund if the pilot doesn't reach the threshold. The pilot, and what's at risk
Sending and deliverability
- Deliverability
- Whether your emails reach the inbox rather than spam or nowhere, which depends on authentication, sending reputation and how recipients react. Why cold emails go to spam
- SPF
- A DNS record listing the servers allowed to send email for your domain. Authentication
- DKIM
- A signature added to each message by your email provider and checked against a key published in your DNS. Authentication
- DMARC
- A DNS record telling receiving servers what to do with mail that fails SPF or DKIM, and where to send reports about it. Authentication
- Secondary domain
- A separate domain used only for outreach, so any reputation damage stays away from the domain your customers and invoices depend on. Domain and inbox
- Warm-up
- Starting a new domain or inbox at low volume and raising it gradually, so mailbox providers learn to trust it. How many per day