The words of outbound, defined plainly.

Outbound has a vocabulary that sounds like everyone agrees on it and nobody quite does. A "meeting" is a calendar entry to one provider and a held conversation to another; a "reply" is an out-of-office to some dashboards. These are the terms as we use them, which is as the buyer would if the buyer were counting.

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Account executive (AE)

The person who takes the qualified meeting and runs the sale from there: discovery, demonstration, proposal, close. The closer. Most companies have one before they have an SDR, which is why the closer ends up prospecting. How the roles divide is in SDR, BDR, AE: who does what.

Account-based

Outbound that starts from a short list of named companies and works each one as a whole - the people, the timing, the message - rather than from a long list of contacts worked one at a time. Suited to large, considered sales where a handful of accounts is the whole market.

Appointment setting

The part of sales development that ends in a date: booking qualified meetings with decision makers and handing them over. Often sold per meeting, which is where its weakness lies; a meeting that was booked and a meeting that was worth having are the same thing to the invoice. What counts as qualified, and how a meeting is booked and confirmed, is on the appointment setting page.

Board

At Caption, the list of companies a campaign will work, with the reason each one is on it. Built from signals in the first week of an engagement and shown to the client before anything is sent. A campaign without a board is a filter on a database.

Bounce rate

The share of emails that could not be delivered at all, usually because the address does not exist. Above roughly two per cent it damages the sending domain’s reputation, which is why addresses are verified before a sequence starts.

Business development representative (BDR)

In most UK companies, another name for an SDR. Where the two are distinguished, the BDR works outbound into named accounts and the SDR qualifies inbound; the distinction is not consistent between companies, so ask which is meant. How the roles divide is in SDR, BDR, AE: who does what.

Buying committee

The several people inside a company who together decide a purchase: the economic buyer who signs, the evaluator who checks, the champion who wants it and the user who lives with it. Outbound that reaches one of them is a conversation; outbound that reaches three is a deal.

Cadence

The planned series of touches to one person over a period - a call on the first day, an email the day after, a second call at a different hour a few days on, and so on - with the timing set in advance. Also called a sequence. Ours is six touches by phone and email in twenty days with LinkedIn alongside, and the day-by-day version is on the blog.

Cold call

A phone call to someone who is not expecting it and has not asked for it. In 2026 it is preceded by research and has a specific reason in its first sentence, or it ends there. Still the channel in which a meeting is most often agreed. The UK rules on calling businesses are set out on the cold calling page.

Cold email

An email to someone who has not asked for it. Works when it is short, specific to the reader and sent in moderate volume from a warmed domain; fails at scale, where it is indistinguishable from the automated mail the reader already deletes. The long version: the cold email that gets a reply.

Connect rate

The share of dials that reach the person intended, as opposed to voicemail, a switchboard or nobody. Driven by the quality of the number and the timing of the call more than by the rep. The rest of the numbers are in SDR metrics: what to measure.

Conversation

A dial that reached the intended person and lasted long enough for a question to be asked and answered. The unit of work on the phone; dials measure effort, conversations measure progress.

Deliverability

Whether email sent from a domain reaches the inbox rather than the spam folder or nowhere. A property of the domain, built up by sending moderate volumes of mail people open and reply to, and lost quickly by sending mail they do not.

Dialler

Software that places calls from a queue, logs the outcome and records the conversation. A power dialler places one call at a time for one rep; a parallel dialler places several at once and connects the first that answers, at the cost of a pause the prospect hears.

Discovery call

The first proper meeting between a prospect and the closer, in which the closer finds out whether and how the company could help. The thing an SDR books. Distinct from the qualifying conversation the SDR has first.

DMARC, DKIM and SPF

Three records on a domain that let a receiving mail server check that an email really came from where it claims. Without them, cold email from that domain is far more likely to be filtered, whatever it says. Set up before the first send, on the client’s domain.

Domain warming

Sending a small and slowly rising volume of email from a new mailbox or domain over several weeks so that receiving servers learn to trust it before it is used in earnest. Part of the set-up weeks of an engagement.

Enrichment

Adding to a record what a list does not include: the direct email, the mobile number, the current title, the company’s size and technology. See waterfall enrichment for how it is done well.

Handover

The moment a qualified meeting passes from the SDR to the closer, with everything the SDR learned: who the person is, why they agreed, what they said. A weak handover is where meetings are lost after they were won. What it should contain is in the SDR handover.

Ideal customer profile (ICP)

A description of the company most likely to buy and to succeed with what is being sold: sector, size, geography, technology, situation. The starting point for a board; not the board itself, which adds the timing.

Inbound

Demand that arrives on its own - a form filled in, a demo requested, a call from a referral - as opposed to outbound, which is demand that someone went out and found. Most companies need both and start with one.

Intent signal

Evidence that a company is likely to be in-market now: a hire, a funding round, a new office, a technology change, a leader leaving, a topic being researched. The reason a company moves from the long list onto the board, and the reason the first sentence of a call is specific.

Lead

A word that means whatever the person using it needs it to mean: a name on a list, a form filled in, a reply, a meeting. Ask what is meant before paying for one. Caption does not sell them. A list, a lead and a meeting are compared on the lead generation page.

Meeting booked

A calendar invitation accepted by a prospect. A necessary step and a poor measure, because a share of booked meetings do not happen. See meeting held.

Meeting held

A booked meeting that took place, with the person who was invited. The number that matters, and the one to ask any provider for. Caption reports booked and held separately. Why it is the number to count is in SDR metrics.

Multi-threading

Working more than one person inside the same account at the same time, so the conversation does not depend on one person being available, interested or still employed there.

Multichannel

A cadence that uses more than one channel - phone, email and LinkedIn are the usual three - with each touch aware of the others, so the email refers to the call and the call to the email. Distinct from sending the same message on three channels at once.

Outbound

Going to find the buyer rather than waiting to be found: identifying the companies that should be talking to you, finding the right people inside them and opening the conversation. Prospecting, done as a function.

Outsourced SDR

A sales development representative employed and managed by a provider, working a client’s market under the client’s name. At Caption the unit is a function rather than a person: one SDR or a team, with the data, the dialler, the sequencing and a manager over the calls included. Also sold as SDR as a service.

Persona

The type of person inside the ideal customer who is worth contacting, described by role and by problem: the head of IT who owns the manual reporting, the marketing director with a rebrand to deliver. A board has a persona or three per company.

Pipeline

The total value of open opportunities, weighted or not, that a sales team is working. Pipeline generated by outbound is the value of the opportunities that began with a meeting outbound booked; it is a measure of what was opened, not of what closed.

Positive reply

A reply that moves the conversation forward: a question, a referral to the right person, a request for a call. Distinct from a reply, which includes out-of-office messages and refusals, and which some dashboards count as if it were not.

Prospecting

The work of finding, researching and opening conversations with people who could become customers. A discipline of its own, with its own rhythm and its own tools, and the one thing that feeds pipeline continuously; stop it, and the company is on referrals.

Qualified meeting

A meeting with a person who fits criteria agreed in writing beforehand - the right kind of company, the right role, a real reason to talk - and who knows what the meeting is for. What criteria, and what happens when a meeting does not meet them, should be agreed before the first one is booked.

Ramp

The time between an SDR starting and an SDR producing at the expected level. Industry surveys put it at around three months for a new hire; a rep who already knows the job, working a board built in advance, is dialling in the third week.

Reply rate

The share of emails sent that received any reply. Easy to inflate and easy to misread; a high reply rate from a small, well-chosen list is worth more than a low one from a large list, and neither says anything about meetings.

Sales development

The function that sits between marketing and sales and produces qualified meetings: prospecting, outreach, qualification and handover. The team that does it is the SDR team; the job of running it is the SDR manager’s.

Sales development representative (SDR)

The person who prospects: researches, calls, emails, qualifies and books the meeting that a closer then takes. Not a junior closer, and not a person who does both jobs at once for long. An SDR can be hired or outsourced; the two are compared here.

SDR manager

The person who listens to the calls, reads the emails, corrects the openers and the pauses and the questions, and moves the board when the market answers back. The difference between a rep in month three and the same rep in week two. Included at Caption.

Sequence

See cadence. The two words are used interchangeably; "sequence" is the term most sales software uses for the same planned series of touches.

Show rate

The share of booked meetings that were held. Depends on how the meeting was booked - a meeting agreed in a conversation is kept more often than one accepted from a link - and on what happens between the booking and the day. Why booked meetings do not happen is on the appointment setting page.

Total addressable market (TAM)

Every company that could, in principle, buy what is being sold. Useful for deciding whether a market is large enough to work; not useful as a list, because most of it is not in-market at any given moment. The board is the part of it that is.

Touch

One attempt to reach one person on one channel: a dial, an email, a LinkedIn message. A cadence is a planned set of them; a campaign’s activity is counted in them.

Waterfall enrichment

Looking up a contact’s details across several data providers in turn, taking the first verified answer and moving on, so that coverage is the union of the providers rather than the reach of one. How direct numbers and current emails are found before a sequence starts.