AI SDR
An AI agent that performs Sales Development Rep tasks: instant first response, lead qualification, and warm-lead nurture.
An AI Sales Development Representative (AI SDR) is a software agent that handles inbound sales development at scale. It engages every new lead within seconds, runs a qualification conversation against your framework (BANT, CHAMP, MEDDIC, or custom), nurtures warm leads across weeks, and hands off hot leads to human reps with a full context brief. Unlike chatbots, AI SDRs maintain context across sessions and channels.
BANT
Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline — IBM's classic four-criterion qualification framework.
BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. Originally developed by IBM in the 1950s, it asks four questions: Does the prospect have allocated budget? Are they a decision maker? Is there a clear, urgent need? Is there a defined timeline? BANT works best for transactional sales under $10K with short cycles.
CHAMP
Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization — a customer-centric alternative to BANT.
CHAMP leads with the prospect's Challenges instead of Budget, then probes Authority (who's involved), Money (resources available), and Prioritization (how urgent vs. other priorities). It's better suited to mid-market consultative selling ($5K–$50K) where understanding the problem deeply matters more than fast disqualification.
MEDDIC
Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion — the enterprise qualification standard.
MEDDIC is the most comprehensive qualification framework, designed for enterprise deals over $50K with long cycles and multi-stakeholder buying committees. It maps the buyer's success metrics, the budget owner, evaluation criteria, the buying process, the core pain, and an internal champion who advocates for your solution.
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
A written description of the company you're best suited to serve — industry, size, role, pain, deal size.
An ICP describes the company most likely to evaluate quickly, get value from your product, and become a long-term customer. It typically captures industry, company size, buyer role, pain points, deal size, and buying triggers. ICP is the foundation of qualification — leads are scored against ICP fit during conversation.
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
A lead marketing has assessed as a fit but who hasn't yet been qualified by sales.
An MQL is a lead that has met marketing's criteria — typically firmographic fit (right industry, right company size) and engagement signals (content downloads, repeat visits, demo requests). MQLs need sales qualification to confirm budget, authority, need, and timeline before becoming an SQL.
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
A lead sales has confirmed has budget, authority, need, and timeline — ready for a real sales conversation.
An SQL is a lead that's been qualified by sales (or an AI agent) and confirmed to have an active need, decision authority, available budget, and defined timeline. The transition from MQL to SQL is where most pipeline leakage happens — only ~27% of MQLs typically become SQLs, often because qualification is slow or inconsistent.
Speed to Lead
Time from inquiry to first meaningful response. Under 5 minutes is the bar; under 60 seconds is the new standard.
Speed to lead is the elapsed time between a prospect's inquiry (form fill, ad click, email) and your first meaningful response. Companies that respond within 5 minutes are 100x more likely to qualify the lead than those who wait 30 minutes (Oldroyd, MIT Lead Response Management Study, 2007). It's the highest-ROI lever in inbound sales.
Lead Nurturing
Staying in contact with warm prospects across weeks and months — delivering value, watching for buying signals, re-engaging when timing is right.
Lead nurturing is the practice of keeping warm prospects engaged until they're ready to buy. Effective nurture is phased: a value phase (relevant content, no selling), engagement phase (check-ins), signal monitoring, and re-qualification when intent appears. 80% of sales happen after the 5th touchpoint, but 44% of reps quit after one.
Lead Brief
A structured handoff document with everything a sales rep needs to walk into a call prepared.
A lead brief consolidates everything sales needs to know before the first conversation: contact info, qualification data, conversation history, key pain points, competitors mentioned, buying signals detected, and a suggested approach. Good briefs eliminate the 'tell me about yourself' opener and let reps lead with relevance.
Buying Signals
Behavioral, content, and company-level cues that suggest a lead is actively evaluating a purchase.
Buying signals are observable indicators of purchase intent: pricing-page visits, document downloads, return visits after silence, email engagement spikes, competitor mentions, and company-level events (funding rounds, relevant job postings). AI nurture systems trigger contextual outreach the moment a signal fires instead of running fixed drip cadences.
Speed-to-Lead Decay
The drop in contact rate over time after a lead inquires — extremely steep in the first 30 minutes.
Speed-to-lead decay describes how quickly a lead's responsiveness drops after they inquire. After 5 minutes, contact rate falls sharply. After 30 minutes, it falls 10x. After 24 hours, most leads have disengaged or moved on to a competitor. Web-generated leads decay fastest because intent is at peak when the form is submitted.
Qualification Framework
A structured set of criteria a sales team uses to score every lead consistently.
A qualification framework is a defined set of questions and criteria applied to every lead, so qualification is consistent across reps and over time. The most common are BANT, CHAMP, and MEDDIC. Choosing the right one depends on deal size, sales cycle length, and buying-committee complexity.
Inbound Lead
A prospect who initiates contact — opposite of outbound where sales reaches out cold.
Inbound leads come from prospects who took an action: filled a form, clicked an ad, requested a demo, started a trial, or replied to content. Inbound leads have higher conversion rates than outbound but require fast response — intent decays within minutes of the action.
Round-Robin Routing
Automatic assignment of new leads to sales reps in rotating order.
Round-robin routing distributes new leads evenly across a sales team in rotating order. More advanced versions use skill-based or territory-based rules (enterprise vs. SMB, geography, vertical). Round-robin prevents bottlenecks at any single rep and ensures consistent SLA on first response.
Lead Scoring
Assigning a numeric or categorical value to each lead based on fit and intent.
Lead scoring assigns a value (numeric or categorical: Hot/Warm/Cold) to each lead based on ICP fit and observable buying intent. Traditional scoring uses static rules ('+10 points if title = VP'). AI-based scoring evaluates the full context of each conversation and updates dynamically.