Reference
The definitive reference for sales leaders, revenue operations professionals, and AEs navigating AI-powered coaching tools. 40 terms defined.
A quantitative metric that measures how well a sales rep demonstrates attentive engagement during a call. It is calculated from signals such as talk-to-listen ratio, the frequency of clarifying questions, and the absence of interruptions. A high active listening score typically correlates with higher close rates and better customer satisfaction.
Used in context
“Her active listening score improved from 62 to 81 after three weeks of Koachly coaching sessions.”
The use of artificial intelligence to deliver personalized, real-time or post-call guidance to sales representatives. AI sales coaching platforms analyze conversation patterns, compare rep behavior against winning sales models, and surface actionable suggestions — enabling managers to scale coaching beyond what is possible through manual call reviews alone.
Used in context
“Koachly's AI sales coaching surfaces objection-handling suggestions in under two seconds, while the conversation is still live.”
A sales qualification framework standing for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. BANT helps reps quickly determine whether a prospect is worth pursuing by confirming they have the financial resources, decision-making power, a clear business need, and a defined purchasing timeline. It was originally developed at IBM and remains widely used in B2B sales.
Used in context
“The rep used BANT qualification in the first call to confirm the prospect had both budget authority and a Q1 timeline.”
The capture of audio (and sometimes video) from a sales conversation for later review, coaching, or compliance purposes. Call recording is a foundational capability of most conversation intelligence platforms and enables managers to review rep performance, identify coaching opportunities, and ensure adherence to scripts or compliance guidelines.
Used in context
“Call recording is enabled by default for all inbound demo calls so the sales manager can review rep performance weekly.”
The process by which a sales manager or coach listens to recorded calls to evaluate rep performance, identify skill gaps, and deliver targeted feedback. Effective call review programs are selective — focusing on key moments such as objection handling, discovery, and closing — rather than reviewing calls in their entirety.
Used in context
“The sales manager schedules two call reviews per rep per week, prioritizing calls where the deal was lost.”
The automatic conversion of spoken audio from a sales call into a structured text transcript. Modern AI transcription systems achieve over 90% accuracy and can identify different speakers, tag key moments, and feed into downstream analytics like sentiment analysis and filler word detection.
Used in context
“Call transcription is processed in real time so reps can review a searchable transcript immediately after the call ends.”
A sales methodology developed by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson that advocates for reps to teach, tailor, and take control of sales conversations. Rather than simply responding to customer needs, Challenger reps proactively reframe the prospect's understanding of their problem and challenge them to think differently — a style associated with higher performance in complex B2B deals.
Used in context
“Using the Challenger Sale approach, the AE reframed the prospect's view of their current CRM limitations before presenting the solution.”
A composite performance metric assigned to a sales rep or individual call that aggregates multiple conversation intelligence signals into a single number. Coaching scores may incorporate talk-to-listen ratio, active listening behavior, adherence to the sales playbook, objection handling quality, and sentiment. They give managers a fast signal of which reps and which calls need attention.
Used in context
“Koachly generates a coaching score for every call, so managers can triage the bottom 20% of calls each week without listening to hours of recordings.”
The practice of contacting a prospective customer who has had no prior relationship or expressed interest in the product. Cold calling remains one of the most direct outbound sales tactics and is particularly effective in markets where buyers are not actively searching. Modern AI coaching tools provide real-time guidance during cold calls to help reps handle gatekeepers and early objections.
Used in context
“The SDR team runs cold calling sprints every Tuesday morning with Koachly's live advisor enabled for real-time guidance.”
A category of sales technology that uses artificial intelligence to analyze spoken conversations — capturing, transcribing, and extracting insights from sales calls and meetings. Conversation intelligence platforms identify patterns correlated with winning deals, surface rep behavior trends, and give managers visibility across all calls without requiring manual review.
Used in context
“The VP of Sales used conversation intelligence data to discover that top performers spent 40% more time on discovery questions.”
The connection between a sales coaching or conversation intelligence platform and a Customer Relationship Management system such as Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive. CRM integration enables automatic logging of call outcomes, coaching scores, and next steps — eliminating manual data entry and ensuring pipeline data stays current without relying on rep discipline.
Used in context
“After enabling CRM integration, the team saw a 35% reduction in missing call notes because Koachly pushed summaries to Salesforce automatically.”
The structured review of an active opportunity by a manager or revenue leader to assess deal health, identify risks, and determine the probability of close. Effective deal inspection draws on call recordings, talk track adherence, stakeholder engagement signals, and deal activity data — rather than relying solely on the rep's verbal update.
Used in context
“The sales director runs weekly deal inspection on all opportunities over $50K to catch risk signals early.”
The aggregation of all available signals about an active opportunity — call transcripts, email sentiment, stakeholder engagement, CRM activity, and competitive mentions — into a unified view of deal health. Deal intelligence enables revenue leaders to make data-driven decisions about where to focus coaching, resources, and executive support.
Used in context
“Koachly's deal intelligence flagged a previously undetected competitor mention in a late-stage call, prompting a timely competitive counter-play.”
A structured conversation between a sales rep and a prospect designed to uncover the prospect's challenges, goals, buying process, and decision criteria before a product demonstration or proposal. High-quality discovery is consistently one of the most reliable predictors of deal success and is a primary focus of sales coaching programs.
Used in context
“The AE's discovery call score improved significantly once she learned to ask open-ended questions before presenting solution features.”
An AI capability that identifies and counts verbal filler words — such as 'um', 'uh', 'like', and 'you know' — in a sales rep's speech during calls. High filler word frequency undermines perceived confidence and authority. Coaching platforms use filler word detection to help reps develop more deliberate, polished communication habits.
Used in context
“Koachly's filler word detection showed the new SDR said 'um' an average of 14 times per minute — the coaching target was to get it below 3.”
A detailed description of the company or person most likely to buy your product — defined by firmographics, technographics, and behavioral signals. Calling against ICP accounts dramatically improves conversion rates.
Used in context
“After refining their ICP to mid-market SaaS companies with 50–200 employees, the team's conversion rate on outbound calls doubled within a quarter.”
A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a team is achieving business objectives. Common sales KPIs include quota attainment, win rate, average deal size, and sales cycle length.
Used in context
“The VP of Sales reviewed the team's core KPIs every Monday — quota attainment, pipeline coverage, and average deal size — to identify coaching priorities for the week.”
The process of evaluating whether a prospect has the budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT) to become a customer. Qualification early in the sales process prevents reps from investing time in low-probability opportunities.
Used in context
“Rigorous lead qualification in the first call reduced the team's average sales cycle by three weeks by filtering out prospects without confirmed budget.”
A rigorous B2B sales qualification framework covering Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion. MEDDIC is widely adopted in enterprise and complex-deal environments where multiple stakeholders, long sales cycles, and high deal values demand disciplined qualification. Reps trained in MEDDIC tend to forecast more accurately and waste less time on unqualified deals.
Used in context
“The enterprise sales team adopted MEDDIC after analysis showed deals without an identified champion had a close rate 60% lower than those with one.”
An AI feature that automatically identifies and extracts committed next steps and follow-up actions from a call transcript. Deals that end without a clearly defined next step are significantly less likely to progress. Next steps detection flags these missed commitments for the rep and manager immediately after the call.
Used in context
“Koachly's next steps detection flagged that 23% of calls ended without a scheduled follow-up, helping the team reduce that number to 8% within a month.”
A metric that measures customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend a product on a scale of 0–10. Promoters (9–10) minus detractors (0–6) equals the NPS score, ranging from −100 to +100.
Used in context
“After deploying AI coaching for customer-facing calls, the company's NPS rose from 32 to 54 over two quarters — a direct result of more consistent, empathetic conversations.”
The skill of addressing and overcoming a prospect's stated hesitation, concern, or resistance to moving forward in the sales process. Common objections include price ('it's too expensive'), timing ('we're not looking until next year'), and competitor preference ('we're already using another solution'). Effective objection handling acknowledges the concern before pivoting to the value case.
Used in context
“Koachly's live advisor surfaced a proven price objection response within 1.8 seconds of the prospect saying 'this seems expensive'.”
A measurement of how quickly a newly hired sales rep reaches full productivity — typically defined as achieving quota attainment or a target activity volume. Faster onboarding velocity reduces ramp costs, lowers the financial risk of hiring, and accelerates revenue contribution. AI sales coaching tools can compress onboarding by delivering in-the-moment guidance instead of relying on training programs alone.
Used in context
“The company reduced average onboarding velocity from 4.5 months to 2.8 months after deploying Koachly for all new hires.”
A formula-based metric that measures how fast revenue moves through a sales pipeline. It combines the number of deals, average deal size, win rate, and sales cycle length into a single number representing the revenue generated per unit of time. Pipeline velocity is a leading indicator of revenue performance and is used to identify whether issues lie in volume, deal quality, win rate, or cycle length.
Used in context
“After three months of focused coaching on discovery quality, the team's pipeline velocity increased by 28% through improved win rate.”
A formal, recurring meeting between a vendor and a customer — typically held every quarter — to review business outcomes, discuss product adoption, identify challenges, and plan the next quarter's priorities. QBRs are a cornerstone of customer success and account management motions and require careful preparation, data-driven storytelling, and stakeholder alignment.
Used in context
“The customer success team used Koachly's coaching scores to prepare a QBR deck showing an 18% improvement in call quality over the quarter.”
The delivery of contextually relevant sales guidance to a rep during a live conversation — as opposed to post-call coaching that occurs after the fact. Real-time coaching leverages live speech recognition and AI reasoning to detect critical moments (objections, competitor mentions, pricing discussions) and surface the optimal rep behavior within seconds, at the exact moment it is needed.
Used in context
“Real-time coaching from Koachly helped the rep catch and address a competitor mention that would have otherwise gone unacknowledged.”
The period from a new sales representative's start date to the point at which they reach expected quota contribution or target productivity. Shorter ramp times reduce hiring costs, improve team capacity faster, and are closely correlated with the quality and consistency of onboarding programs. AI coaching tools accelerate ramp by providing personalized guidance during live calls rather than waiting for structured training sessions.
Used in context
“Reducing rep ramp time from 90 to 60 days added the equivalent of 30 productive days per hire across a 20-person sales team.”
The process of predicting future revenue based on pipeline data, historical win rates, deal stage probability, and rep performance signals. Modern revenue forecasting increasingly incorporates conversation intelligence signals — such as deal risk flags from call analysis and stakeholder engagement scores — to produce more accurate forecasts than CRM data alone.
Used in context
“The CRO improved revenue forecasting accuracy from ±22% to ±9% by incorporating Koachly's deal risk signals into the weekly forecast model.”
A category of B2B sales technology that aggregates data from CRM, communication platforms, and conversation intelligence tools to give revenue leaders a complete, data-driven view of pipeline health, team performance, and deal risk. Revenue intelligence platforms help chief revenue officers and VPs of Sales make faster, better-informed decisions about resource allocation and forecasting.
Used in context
“The revenue intelligence dashboard showed that deal cycles involving more than three call touchpoints were 40% more likely to close.”
A structured, repeatable sequence of outbound sales activities — such as calls, emails, LinkedIn messages, and voicemails — executed over a defined period to engage a prospect. Effective sales cadences are multi-channel, time-bounded, and personalized to buyer persona. They ensure reps make consistent, systematic contact without relying on ad hoc effort.
Used in context
“The SDR team's 14-day sales cadence includes 6 touchpoints across three channels and produces a 12% meeting-booked rate from cold outreach.”
The discipline of providing sales representatives with the content, tools, training, and resources they need to effectively engage buyers and close deals. Sales enablement encompasses everything from product training and competitive battlecards to CRM tools and AI coaching platforms. It bridges the gap between marketing, product, and the frontline sales team.
Used in context
“The sales enablement team built a Koachly playbook covering the top 12 objections so reps receive proven responses automatically during calls.”
A documented collection of best practices, talk tracks, objection responses, qualification criteria, and competitive positioning used to standardize how a sales team engages buyers. A great sales playbook captures the approach of top performers and makes it accessible to the entire team — and AI coaching tools like Koachly can deliver playbook guidance in real time during calls.
Used in context
“Koachly's Company Brain stores the sales playbook so every rep receives consistent talk track guidance without memorizing a 40-page document.”
A measure of how prepared a sales representative is to engage prospects effectively — covering product knowledge, competitive awareness, messaging proficiency, and ability to handle common objections. Sales readiness is typically assessed through role-plays, quizzes, and call scoring, and is a leading indicator of ramp time and quota attainment.
Used in context
“Sales readiness scores for the Q1 cohort were 22 points higher than the previous class after integrating AI coaching into the onboarding program.”
The automated detection of emotional tone and attitude in sales conversation transcripts or audio signals. Sentiment analysis in sales identifies positive signals (enthusiasm, agreement, high engagement) and negative signals (frustration, hesitation, objection) from both the rep and the prospect — giving managers and coaching tools early indicators of deal health and conversation quality.
Used in context
“Sentiment analysis revealed that late-stage deals where prospect sentiment dropped during pricing discussions had a 65% lower close rate.”
A discovery-based sales methodology developed by Neil Rackham that structures questions into four categories: Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff. SPIN Selling is particularly effective for complex B2B sales, where the buyer must recognize the full cost of their current problem before they are willing to invest in a solution. The methodology is grounded in extensive analysis of over 35,000 sales calls.
Used in context
“The rep used SPIN Selling to help the prospect articulate the true cost of their current manual process before presenting the platform's ROI.”
The four question types in the SPIN Selling framework: Situation questions (establishing context), Problem questions (uncovering pain points), Implication questions (amplifying the consequences of the problem), and Need-Payoff questions (helping the buyer articulate the value of a solution). SPIN questions guide prospects to reach their own conclusions rather than being pushed toward a sale.
Used in context
“Koachly's live advisor suggested an implication question when it detected the prospect had acknowledged a problem but not yet quantified its impact.”
The proportion of a sales call during which the rep is speaking versus listening to the prospect. Research consistently shows that top-performing sales reps speak less and listen more — a talk-to-listen ratio of 43:57 (rep to prospect) is frequently cited as optimal for discovery calls. Conversation intelligence tools measure this ratio automatically for every call.
Used in context
“The team's average talk-to-listen ratio improved from 68:32 to 49:51 over one quarter of AI coaching, correlating with a 19% improvement in close rate.”
The practice of encouraging an existing customer to purchase a higher-value product, additional features, or an upgraded plan. Revenue from upselling existing customers typically costs 5–10× less to acquire than new revenue.
Used in context
“The customer success team used Koachly's coaching scores to identify upsell conversations and increased expansion revenue by 34% in one quarter.”
A clear statement that explains how a product solves the buyer's problem, what specific benefits it delivers, and why the buyer should choose it over alternatives. A strong value proposition is specific, measurable, and tailored to the prospect's role and pain point — not a generic feature list. Sales coaching programs frequently focus on helping reps articulate differentiated value propositions in real-time conversation.
Used in context
“The rep's value proposition improved dramatically when she shifted from describing features to quantifying the time savings her customers achieve.”
The percentage of sales opportunities that convert to closed-won deals. Win rate is one of the most fundamental metrics in sales performance and is influenced by the quality of lead qualification, the strength of the sales process, competitive positioning, and the effectiveness of the sales team's conversations. Even small improvements in win rate — driven by better coaching — have an outsized impact on revenue.
Used in context
“A 5-point improvement in win rate, from 22% to 27%, added over $2M in annual revenue for a 15-person sales team with $300K average deal size.”
From real-time objection handling to coaching scores and rep ramp analytics — Koachly brings every concept in this glossary to life in your sales calls.
