The Top 10 Terms You Should Know and Understand Before Interviewing for a Job in Sales

Job interviewing is hard enough as it is with all of the hours spent on researching, preparing and presenting; but when you add in all of the insider jargon and acronyms, it can be confusing too. Sales professionals are no strangers to this, and to an outsider, it can seem like they have their entirely own language. To help, I’ve decided to compile a list of the top terms that you should know and be able to talk about if you are looking to land a job in sales. This is by no means an exhaustive list of every term that salespeople use (that would be very long), but as a recruiter that specializes in placing people in sales roles in the tech industry, I picked the top 10 that I encounter most frequently while talking to clients and interviewing candidates. Enjoy!

1. ARR vs. MRR ARR stands for Annual Recurring Revenue. It is a measure of the predictable and recurring revenue components of a recurring revenue stream such as subscriptions or maintenance. This excludes one-time fees and for most organizations, would exclude variable, usage, and consumption fees. MRR stands for Monthly Recurring Revenue. It’s the same deal as ARR, but monthly. Typically companies will use ARR over MRR when the minimum contract/subscription is at least a year. 2. ACV ACV, in sales stands for Annual Contract Value. Annual Contract Value is one of the core SaaS (software-as-a-service) metrics and it is an average annual contract value of your account subscription agreements. 3. OTE OTE stands for On-Target Earnings. For pretty much all sales roles, the annual compensation that you will make includes a base salary and commission and/or bonus. The OTE is what total salary you should expect to make if you hit your sales targets. Therefore, there is always room to make more than the OTE if you hit above goal, but it’s a good number to know so you can understand the full offer. 4. Enterprise, Mid-Market, SMB Enterprise, Mid-Market, and SMB refer to the size of the client that you sell to and work with. However, this can be tricky because a lot of companies define what it means to be “enterprise” or “mid-market” differently. 98% of the time, it’s either based on how many employees the client has or their annual revenue. SMB stands for small-to-medium sized businesses and in most cases is companies with less than 100 employees. Mid-market is a business that is in the middle range between small businesses and enterprise clients, typically having between 100 to 1,000 employees. Enterprise clients have 1000+ employees. 5. B2B vs B2C B2B stands for  Business to Business. This term is usually used when the product or service is being sold to another business. So if you are selling software to other businesses, then you are conducting a B2B business. B2C stands for Business To Consumer. This term is referred to a business that sells to a consumer. For example, if you are running an e-commerce site that sell products to the regular consumer, then you are running a B2C business. 6. Inside Sales vs Outside Sales Inside sales are sales that are conducted over the phone or internet, where outside sales or traditional field sales is done face-to-face. In the last decade, the vast majority of sales roles have converted to inside sales because of technology, and it is a lot less common to have a purely outside sales representative anymore. 7. CRM CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Companies use CRM systems to manage their business relationships and the data and information associated with them. CRMs can also be used to manage the customer lifecycle as well as track retention and performance. The most popular CRM our client's use is SalesForce. 8. Quota A quota is a target set by the company to determine how much the sales team is expected to sell in the given time period. (Week, Month, Quarter, Year).This is what salespeople live on and if you’re interviewing for a sales role and have done sales in the past, you should know this number and what your quota attainment is at all times. 9. Sales Cycle A sales cycle is a cycle that begins at the first contact with a customer and ends when the sale occurs. Sales Cycle times can vary greatly based on the size of the deal, the company, effectiveness and efficiency of sales process, and many other variables. 10. Consultative Selling vs. Transactional Selling Consultative selling is a selling technique that involves increased collaboration and input between the salesperson and the client. This process is aimed at gaining more information from the client in order to fully meet their needs. It typically is a longer sales cycle than transactional selling. Transactional selling is more focused on the one-time selling of a product to a client. Julie Olsson is a Recruitment Manager at Captivate Talent, a recruitment and consulting firm. Contact Julie to learn more about job opportunities in the sales.