10 min readPublished
Telemarketing & Cold Calling
The Top 50 Terms in B2B Outbound and Cold Calling
Robbie McGregor · Co-Founder at Sentrama
18 years in B2B sales, seven building outbound SDR teams
Connect on LinkedInTL;DR
A plain-English glossary of the 50 terms that matter most in B2B outbound and cold calling, from ICP and dial-to-connect to CPM and ACV. What each means, and why it matters.
This is a glossary of the 50 terms that matter most in B2B outbound and cold calling, from ICP and dial-to-connect through to CPM and ACV. Each one is defined plainly, with why it matters to anyone who runs outbound, buys it, or briefs an SDR team. The definitions come from live client briefings, SDR onboarding calls and the way campaigns are run at Sentrama, the UK B2B outbound agency that guarantees sales meetings with no retainer.
If you run outbound, buy outbound, or brief an SDR team, these are the terms worth knowing cold. They are grouped the way a campaign actually runs: the people, who you target, the call, what gets logged, the ratios, the meeting, and the commercials.
The people
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| B2B Outbound | Business-to-business outbound | Contacting prospects who have not asked to hear from you. Phone first, with email and LinkedIn in support. The opposite of inbound, where the buyer comes to you. You control the volume, so you control the pipeline. |
| Cold Calling | Phoning a prospect with no prior contact. Still the fastest route to a live conversation, and conversations are what book meetings. | |
| SDR | Sales Development Representative | The person making the dials and booking the meetings. Seniority matters. Someone who has sold before handles objections better than a graduate reading a script. |
| BDR | Business Development Representative | Often used interchangeably with SDR. Where teams split the roles, BDRs hunt outbound and SDRs qualify inbound. The label matters less than the skill. |
| AE | Account Executive | The closer. Takes the qualified meeting the SDR booked and runs the deal to signature. The SDR-to-AE handover is where pipeline leaks most. |
| Gatekeeper | The PA, receptionist or switchboard sitting between the caller and the decision-maker. Treated well, a route in. Treated badly, a locked door. | |
| Ramp | The time a new SDR takes to reach full productivity. In-house, often months of salary before a meeting lands. A good system with qualified data cuts that to days. |
Who you target
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| ICP | Ideal Customer Profile | The company-level definition of who you sell to. Sector, size, margin, deal value. Every campaign lives or dies on how tightly this is defined. |
| Buyer Persona | The person inside the ICP account you actually call. Their job title and the pressure they sit under. One ICP usually holds three or four personas, and each needs a different pitch. | |
| DM | Decision-Maker | The person with authority to buy. A meeting only counts as qualified when a DM is in the room. |
| TAM | Total Addressable Market | Every company that could buy what you sell. Sets the ceiling on how long a campaign can run before the lists are exhausted. |
| Vertical | An industry segment you target as one campaign. Tighter verticals mean sharper messaging and better conversations. | |
| Verified Data | The prospect list, checked. Verified means the number and email are confirmed. Contactable means someone answers. Bad data is the most common reason outbound campaigns fail. | |
| Data Qualified (Sellable) | A contact that has passed qualification before anyone dials. They fit the ICP, hold the right role and there is a real reason they could buy. Sellable answers one question: if they pick up, could you sell to them? If the answer is no, the dial is wasted before it is made. | |
| Data Enrichment | Adding missing fields to a record. Direct dials, job titles, tech stack, company size. Turns a name into a callable prospect. | |
| Suppression List / DNC | Do Not Call | Numbers and accounts excluded from dialling. Existing clients, open deals, opt-outs and anyone who asked to be removed. Skip this and you burn trust and break the law. |
| TPS / CTPS | Telephone Preference Service / Corporate TPS | The UK registers of numbers you must not cold call. Screen every list against both before anyone dials, and re-screen regularly. The fines are real. |
| GDPR | General Data Protection Regulation | UK and EU data law. For B2B calling you need a lawful basis for every record and a working process to delete data on request. |
The call
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Dialler | The software that places calls, records conversations and logs outcomes. A good dialler multiplies conversations per rep-hour. A bad one just makes noise faster. | |
| CRM | Customer Relationship Management | The system of record for every account and every touch. Outbound that does not log to CRM cannot be measured, and what cannot be measured cannot be improved. |
| Phone Reachable | A contact proven to answer the phone, with a pattern of when. Sellable tells you the conversation is worth having. Reachable tells you the conversation can actually happen. Qualify for both before a number enters the dialler queue. | |
| RTC | Reason to Call | The third filter, after sellable and reachable. The specific, researched reason this prospect should take this call today. Beats a generic pitch every time, and gives the caller confidence on the opener. |
| Opener | The first ten seconds of the call. It earns the next thirty. Prospects decide fast, so the opener gets tested and refined more than any other line in the script. | |
| Objection Handling | Prepared responses to the predictable pushbacks. "Send me an email." "We already have a supplier." "No budget." Built before dial one, tested on real calls, refined weekly. | |
| Cadence | The planned series of touches across channels over a set number of days. Structure beats spray. | |
| Pre-Warm / Drip | A light email sequence run before calling starts, so the name rings a bell when the phone does. Lifts conversation rates on cold lists. | |
| A/B Testing | Running two versions of a script or message and keeping the winner. One change at a time, or you learn nothing. |
What gets logged
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Disposition | The outcome tag logged after every dial. No answer, gatekeeper, conversation, meeting booked, not interested. No dispositions means no data, and no data means no improvement. | |
| Call Recording & Transcript | The audit trail. Every call recorded and transcribed feeds QC and coaching, and gives the client full transparency. No black box. | |
| Connect | A dial answered by a live human. Voicemails do not count. The raw material every other metric is built on. | |
| Conversation | A connect that runs past 60 seconds as a proper two-way exchange with the target prospect. Connects measure your data. Conversations measure your caller. |
The ratios
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| D2C | Dial-to-Connect | The percentage of dials that reach a human. Industry standard sits between 3% and 12%. Sentrama runs at 25%+, because the sellable and reachable filters do their work before anyone dials. If yours is in single digits, the list is the problem. |
| C2C | Connect-to-Conversation | The percentage of connects that become a conversation, defined as over 60 seconds with the target prospect. 50%+ is the standard to hold. This measures the opener and the caller's presence on the phone. |
| C2M | Conversation-to-Meeting | The percentage of conversations that end in a booked meeting. 10%+ is the benchmark. This is where skill shows. |
| Show Rate | The percentage of booked meetings where the prospect turns up. 77%+ is healthy with proper confirmation discipline. | |
| No-Show | A booked meeting where the prospect never appears. High no-show rates usually mean the meeting was soft when it was booked. | |
| Win Rate | The percentage of qualified meetings that become clients. Multiply it by deal value and you know exactly what each meeting is worth to you. |
Meetings and qualification
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Qualified Meeting | A meeting with a decision-maker who fits your ICP and has agreed to talk. This is the unit of outbound output. Everything else is activity. | |
| QC | Quality Control | Checking every booked meeting against agreed criteria before the client accepts it. At Sentrama that is a 14-step process. A person listens to the call and reads the transcript before approving or rejecting. No black box. |
| MQL vs SQL | Marketing / Sales Qualified Lead | An MQL downloaded a guide or attended a webinar. Interest signalled, no conversation had. An SQL has spoken to a salesperson who confirmed fit. The gap between the two is where most funnels quietly die. |
| Discovery Call | The first proper sales meeting. The AE explores the problem and confirms fit before proposing anything. A booked meeting buys you this conversation, nothing more. | |
| BANT | Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline | The classic qualification checklist. Four boxes. If two or fewer are ticked, it is a chat, and chats do not close. |
| Pipeline | The total value of open opportunities. Outbound exists to fill it. Measured in pounds, never in activity. |
The commercials
| Term | Stands for | What it means and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| POC | Proof of Concept | A fixed-term campaign with a minimum number of qualified meetings agreed up front. How you test an outbound partner before committing. Risk sits with the supplier, where it belongs. |
| Retainer | The traditional agency model. A fixed monthly fee paid regardless of results. You pay for activity and hope. Ask any agency to move off it and watch the reaction. | |
| Risk Reversal | Structuring the offer so the supplier carries the risk. Guarantees and pay-per-outcome pricing. Removes the buyer's biggest objection before the pitch starts. | |
| CPM | Cost Per Meeting | Total campaign cost divided by qualified meetings delivered. The number that lets you compare outbound against every other channel on your P&L. |
| CAC | Customer Acquisition Cost | Everything it costs to land one client. The number that matters is CAC as a percentage of contract value. If that creeps up, the model breaks. |
| ACV | Annual Contract Value | What a new client is worth per year. This decides whether outbound maths works at all. At £20k+ ACV, senior phone-first outbound usually pays back well. Below that, run the maths carefully. |
| ROI | Return on Investment | Revenue back against cost in, run per channel and per campaign. The only scoreboard that matters at board level. |
How the numbers connect
The chain is simple. Dials become connects, connects become conversations, conversations become meetings, meetings become pipeline. Know your D2C, C2C, C2M and show rate, and you know exactly which link is broken. If you cannot name those four numbers for your own campaign, that is the first fix.
To see what those numbers should be for your own team, and the lift a 25%+ dial-to-connect rate makes to booked meetings, run the SDR efficiency calculator. For why most outbound breaks before the ratios ever get a chance, read why outbound fails. And if you are weighing up a partner to run it for you, here is how to choose a B2B outbound agency.
Onwards and upwards.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?
- An SDR (sales development representative) and a BDR (business development representative) are often the same role under two names. Where a team splits them, BDRs run outbound to new prospects and SDRs qualify inbound enquiries. The label matters less than the seniority of the person and whether they can hold a real conversation and handle objections.
- What is a good dial-to-connect rate in B2B outbound?
- The industry standard for dial-to-connect sits between 3% and 12%, meaning the share of dials that reach a live human. With verified, ICP-matched data and senior callers, a higher rate is achievable. Sentrama runs at 25%+ across the floor, because the sellable and reachable filters do their work before anyone dials. A rate in single digits usually points to the data, not the caller.
- What counts as a qualified meeting?
- A qualified meeting is one with a decision-maker who fits your ideal customer profile and has agreed to talk. It is the unit of outbound output; everything else is activity. A well-run agency defines what qualified means in writing before a campaign starts, and quality-controls every meeting against those criteria before the client accepts it.
- What do D2C, C2C and C2M mean in outbound?
- They are the three conversion ratios of a phone-first campaign. D2C (dial-to-connect) is the percentage of dials that reach a human. C2C (connect-to-conversation) is the percentage of connects that become a genuine conversation over 60 seconds. C2M (conversation-to-meeting) is the percentage of conversations that end in a booked meeting. Track all three and you can see exactly which link in the chain is failing.
- Is cold calling still effective in B2B?
- Yes. Cold calling is still the fastest route to a live conversation, and conversations are what book meetings. What has changed is that spray-and-pray volume no longer works. Effective cold calling now depends on verified data, a real reason to call, and senior callers who can hold a conversation. Done that way, it consistently outperforms channels nobody replies to.
If this resonates, see what Sentrama can do for your pipeline.
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