Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms behind modern sales, marketing, job hunting and freelancing. No jargon, no sales pitch.
Sales
AI sales agent
An AI sales agent is software that carries out sales work end to end rather than assisting with one step — researching target accounts, deciding who to contact, writing the outreach, and handling replies, with a human approving the parts that matter.
Ideal customer profile (ICP)
An ideal customer profile describes the type of company most likely to buy, stay and get value from what you sell — industry, size, geography and situation. It describes an organisation, not a person; the person is a buyer persona.
Buying committee
A buying committee is the group of people inside a company who collectively decide on a purchase — typically an economic buyer who owns the budget, a champion who wants it internally, decision makers who must agree, and influencers who can object.
Sales sequence
A sales sequence is a predefined series of outreach steps — emails, calls and social touches — delivered to a prospect over a set period, with rules for when to stop, most importantly stopping as soon as they reply.
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is whether your messages reach the inbox rather than the spam folder or nowhere at all. It depends mainly on domain authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), sending reputation, and how recipients react to your mail.
Marketing
Brand voice
Brand voice is the consistent personality a company expresses in its writing — vocabulary, sentence rhythm, formality and attitude. It stays the same across channels, while tone shifts with the situation.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Generative engine optimization is the practice of getting your brand named in answers produced by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI overviews — where the outcome is being cited in a generated answer rather than ranked in a list of links.
Job search
Applicant tracking system (ATS)
An applicant tracking system is the software an employer uses to receive, store and manage job applications. It parses your CV into structured fields and lets recruiters search and filter candidates.
Résumé tailoring
Résumé tailoring is rewriting your CV for one specific job posting — reordering sections so the most relevant experience comes first and using the posting's own vocabulary — without changing any underlying fact about your history.
AI job search
An AI job search uses software to do the repetitive parts of looking for work — finding relevant postings across many sources, ranking them against your background, tailoring your CV to each, and drafting applications — leaving you to decide where to apply.
Freelancing
Scope creep
Scope creep is the gradual expansion of a project beyond what was agreed, through a series of small additions that are each too minor to argue about but which collectively consume unpaid time.
Retainer
A retainer is an ongoing arrangement where a client pays a recurring fee — usually monthly — for continued access to your work, either for a set quantity of hours or deliverables, or to reserve your availability.
Days sales outstanding (DSO)
Days sales outstanding is the average number of days it takes to get paid after invoicing. It is calculated as accounts receivable divided by total credit sales for a period, multiplied by the number of days in that period.