Revenue operations (RevOps) has become an established discipline within organizations as companies strive to connect with customers and provide them with the product and services they want. Since RevOps introduces its own set of vocabulary and acronyms, we thought it would be helpful to identify and define some commonly used terms that you might hear or see in your cross-functional interactions. So, we hope our revenue operations glossary will serve as a guide.

RevOps Terms

Automation: Automation frees up your employees’ time by replacing tedious or repetitive tasks with software to complete those tasks on a schedule or based on changes made within the system/triggers.

Accounts: An account represents any business entity or household you want to track, including companies, organizations, consumers, partners, or competitors. Accounts are considered Standard Objects in Salesforce. Accounts can be linked or connected to many other objects within Salesforce, like contacts and opportunities, allowing you to easily access the information you know about the entity the Account represents.

Build: Customization of your technology system to meet the specific needs of your business. The build comprises the time it takes from initial implementation to launch.

Cadence: A set schedule of customer interactions that are usually automated. It’s a formula for when an email should be sent, a call should be made, social media outreach should be done, etc., that will maximize the opportunity for successfully engaging with a prospective customer.

Contacts: The individuals at a customer’s organization (Account) with whom you interact and conduct business.

Fields: The containers in Salesforce where pieces of information are held within an object. Names, individual pieces of contact information, and currency can be fields. Salesforce has some standard fields, which are included in every instance out of the box, and also allows you to create custom fields specific to your Salesforce instance and business needs.

Flow(s): The visual representation of automation that happens within your Salesforce system. It contains the trigger and criteria for what should be evaluated when the flow is supposed to run and the automated actions that should take place in your Salesforce org after the flow has been completed.

Instance: The collection of interconnected data that makes up your organization within Salesforce. It’s your individual Salesforce organization that is unique from all others.

Journey: Used in Marketing Cloud, it’s a series of automations that send a specific email communication or text message to the prospect based on certain criteria. Specific criteria determine whether the prospect should enter the journey and their actions while in the journey determine the path the automation takes and the customized interactions they will have with your company.

Leads: Leads are people who have expressed interest in your company but who we haven’t yet gathered enough information for to qualify as legitimate sales prospects. 

Lead Source: How a lead wound up in your system. They could be direct from your website, or you meet them at a trade show, etc.

Marketing Automation: Using software to schedule and initiate personalized engagement at scale with clients or potential customers. The marketing automation platform can be used for mass communication, like sending an email newsletter, or for personalized one-on-one emails triggered based on prospect interaction.

Marketing Cloud: A Salesforce marketing automation platform that allows users to automate and monitor customer engagement. It is primarily used for B2C marketing communications.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot): A Salesforce marketing automation platform that allows you to automate and monitor customer engagement. It is primarily used for B2B marketing communications.

Marketing Operations: The function of overseeing marketing activities, technology, communications, campaign planning, and strategic planning for the organization. Generally, this team owns the marketing technology stack.

Objects: Objects are digital tables that allow you to store essential data and information in Salesforce. Salesforce comes equipped with some Standard Objects like Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and Leads, but it also gives you the option to create custom objects to reflect your individual organization’s needs better.

Opportunities: Categorization that allows you to track potential deals from first contact through completion. You can upload contracts and SOWs, make notes and track invoices within opportunities.

Revenue Operations: The function of overseeing revenue activities, technology, communications, and strategic planning. Generally, this team manages the sales and marketing technology stack.

Sales and Marketing Funnel: This visual representation maps the journey from lead/prospect to customer and what stage those prospects are currently in. 

Sales Cloud: A cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system that maintains sales, marketing, and customer support efforts. It allows companies to be more efficient in their sales and marketing efforts and brings transparency regarding company activities to the team.

Sales Operations: The function of overseeing sales activities, technology, communications, and strategic planning for the sales team. Generally, this team owns the sales technology stack.

Service Cloud: A cloud-based Salesforce product that allows an organization to offer service activities to its customers while providing the company with a 360-degree view of customer, service, and support activities.

Statement of Work: This document outlines the scope of work to be completed for a contract with a breakdown and description of each piece, the hours allotted for completion, and the project’s total cost.

Systems/Applications/Products (SAP) Form: This is a Marketing Cloud-specific form to submit information to set up a domain and reply mail management.

Trigger (Apex Trigger): A piece of Apex code that initiates actions when records are changed or created within Salesforce.

RevOps Acronyms

API: Application Program Interface

ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue

CPQ: Configure Price Quote

CRM: Customer Relationship Management

CQC: Certified Qualified Consultant

DML: Database Manipulation Language

KPI: Key Performance Indicators

MPH: Managed Package Hours

MSH: Managed Service Hours

SaaS: Software as a Service

SAP: Systems/Applications/Products

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

SFDC: Salesforce dot com

SFMC: Salesforce Marketing Cloud

SMB: Small and Medium Businesses

SOW: Statement of WorkRevOps

About Revenue Ops LLC

We are an experienced team of sales, marketing, and customer success professionals committed to helping clients maximize revenue. In a nutshell, we help organizations streamline workflows so they can make data-driven decisions. We apply our deep knowledge of CRM systems like Salesforce and sales enablement tools like Salesloft to optimize sales potential by stimulating and tracking customer interactions.

Learn how we can help you implement a strategy to improve revenue operations and maximize your growth.