AI Sales Glossary 2026: 50+ Terms Defined

AI SDR company offering Alice (outbound email SDR) and Julian (inbound voice qualification agent). 11x does not publish pricing; Vendr data suggests median ACV of approximately $40,125. Known for enterprise positioning and sales-led growth.

The closing salesperson responsible for converting qualified meetings into signed contracts. AEs are the primary beneficiary of AI SDR activity - they receive booked meetings on their calendar from an AI SDR operating upstream.

The average annual revenue from a customer contract. ACV normalises multi-year deals to a per-year figure. Used to calculate ROI on sales tools: a $5,000/month AI SDR is justified if it closes one additional deal with $60k+ ACV per year.

AI that takes autonomous actions toward a goal without requiring human approval at each step. In sales: an AI SDR that independently finds prospects, writes emails, sends them, handles replies, and books meetings is agentic. Contrast with copilot AI. Agentic AI raises different compliance considerations than human-supervised tools.

Artificial Intelligence Sales Development Representative. Software that autonomously performs the email prospecting and outreach functions traditionally done by a junior human SDR. Current platforms: 11x Alice, Artisan Ava, Regie.ai. Key metric: cost per meeting booked.

Technology defined under TCPA that can store or produce random or sequential numbers and dial them. AI voice agents may or may not technically qualify as ATDS, but FCC Ruling 24-17 extends TCPA protections to any call using AI-generated voice regardless of dialling technology used.

The AI SDR agent product from Artisan. Ava handles email-based outbound prospecting: finding contacts, personalising messages, managing sequences, and booking meetings. Named models: Ava (email SDR). Pricing: Accelerate ~$2,500/month, Growth ~$4,000/month, Enterprise custom.

A voice AI infrastructure platform specialising in high-volume enterprise outbound call campaigns. Pricing: approximately $0.09/min on the enterprise tier. Bland targets use cases requiring large-scale outbound telephony rather than conversational inbound agents. Competes with Retell and Vapi.

Equivalent to SDR in most organisations. BDR is more commonly used in EMEA markets; SDR is the US-dominant term. Both refer to the junior outbound sales role that AI SDR platforms aim to automate or augment.

Canadian law governing commercial electronic messages. Stricter than US CAN-SPAM: requires prior express or implied consent before sending commercial email. Implied consent through a prior business relationship expires after 2 years. Violations: up to $1M per person per day or $10M per organisation per day.

US law (2003) governing commercial email. Key requirements: identify sending entity, include physical address, use non-deceptive subject lines, provide working unsubscribe mechanism, honour opt-outs within 10 business days. CAN-SPAM does not require prior consent for B2B email, unlike CASL and GDPR.

California statute requiring all-party consent to record or eavesdrop on confidential communications. Penal Code 632. Civil damages: $5,000 per violation or 3x actual damages. The Ambriz v Google ruling (N.D. Cal. 2023) extended CIPA obligations to AI-assisted real-time analysis of call content.

Revenue intelligence platform acquired by ZoomInfo in 2021 and now bundled into the ZoomInfo Sales platform. Provides call recording, transcription, and AI analysis similar to Gong. Not sold as a standalone product - requires a ZoomInfo licence.

AI sales coaching and call intelligence platform, originally Wingman (acquired by Clari 2022). Provides real-time conversation coaching, post-call summaries, and call library. Sold standalone ($500-$700/user/year) or as part of the Clari Revenue Platform.

AI systems designed to conduct human-like dialogue. In sales: voice AI agents (Retell, Vapi, Bland) and chat AI agents. Distinguished from generative AI tools that produce content without real-time dialogue. Conversational AI for outbound calling is subject to TCPA regulation under FCC Ruling 24-17.

AI that assists a human operator rather than acting autonomously. A copilot sales tool might suggest next best actions, surface talking points during a live call, or draft email replies for human review before sending. Contrast with agentic AI. Gong and Chorus are primarily copilots. Most AI SDR platforms are agents.

Total monthly spend on a sales channel divided by the number of qualified meetings booked that month. The primary ROI metric for AI SDR and voice AI deployments. April 2026 benchmarks: human SDR $480/meeting; Artisan Ava $167/meeting; 11x Alice $250/meeting; voice AI inbound $15-30/meeting.

Software (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) that tracks prospect and customer interactions. AI SDR and revenue intelligence platforms typically require CRM integration to function - they read contact records, log activities, and update opportunity stages automatically.

The process of analysing active pipeline opportunities to identify risk, forecast close probability, and prioritise AE attention. Revenue intelligence tools (Gong, Clari, Chorus) provide AI-driven deal inspection by analysing call data, email activity, and CRM signals.

Speech-to-text model from Deepgram commonly used in voice AI stacks. Achieves word error rate of approximately 8-12% in sales call audio. Used by Vapi and many self-hosted voice agent stacks for real-time transcription. Priced at approximately $0.0043/min.

The National Do Not Call Registry maintained by the FTC. Numbers on the DNC list cannot be called for marketing purposes without prior express consent. All outbound calling campaigns must be scrubbed against the DNC registry before dialling. Updated monthly. Failure to scrub: up to $51,744 per call (FTC civil penalties).

Text-to-speech AI company whose Turbo v2 model is widely used in voice AI agents. Provides highly natural-sounding synthetic voices in real time. Pricing: approximately $0.003/1,000 characters or included in Vapi's all-in rate. Used by Vapi as its default TTS provider.

AI meeting recorder and summariser targeting individual users with a free tier (unlimited recordings, AI summaries). Competes with Fireflies.ai and Otter.ai at the lightweight end; competes with Gong and Chorus for team deployments. Known for note quality over revenue intelligence features.

Federal Communications Commission ruling adopted February 8, 2024, clarifying that AI-generated synthetic voices constitute 'artificial or prerecorded voice' under TCPA. Requires prior express written consent before using AI voice agents for outbound marketing calls to wireless numbers.

AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarises calls. Free tier: 800 minutes storage. Pro plan: $10/user/month (approximately $96/year billed annually). Competes with Fathom, Otter, and at the enterprise end, Gong.

EU regulation governing personal data processing. Applies to any processing of data about EU/EEA residents, regardless of where the processor is located. For AI sales calls: requires lawful basis (typically consent or legitimate interest) for processing voice data and prospect contact information. Article 22 restricts fully automated decision-making.

Market-leading revenue intelligence platform. Records and transcribes sales calls, provides AI deal intelligence, pipeline risk flagging, and revenue forecasting. Pricing: approximately $5,000-$7,000 platform fee per year plus $1,400-$1,600 per user per year. Does not publish prices publicly.

Video meeting recorder and highlight tool with a free tier. Designed for teams that want bot-free recording (Grain joins as the host, not as a bot) and video snippet sharing. Does not offer the revenue intelligence depth of Gong or call analysis of Chorus.

A precise definition of the target customer most likely to benefit from and purchase a product. AI SDR performance depends heavily on ICP quality - a poorly defined ICP generates low-quality leads regardless of AI sophistication. Defining ICP is a prerequisite to AI SDR deployment.

11x's AI voice agent for inbound call qualification (formerly named Mike). Julian handles inbound calls, qualifies prospects against ICP criteria, and books meetings with AEs. Subject to CIPA and state two-party consent law in California and 12 other states.

The AI model that generates text or interprets user input in a voice AI or AI SDR system. In voice AI stacks: GPT-4o Mini is the most commonly used LLM (balances cost and quality). Claude 3 Haiku and Llama 3.1 8B are lower-cost alternatives. LLM inference is typically the most expensive component in a self-hosted voice AI stack.

In voice AI, the delay between a human finishing speaking and the AI agent beginning its response. Sub-500ms latency feels natural. Above 800ms feels robotic. Retell achieves 250-400ms. Vapi achieves 300-500ms. Critical quality metric for sales call voice agents where conversational rhythm matters.

One of the lawful bases for processing personal data under GDPR (Article 6(1)(f)). Requires a balancing test showing the processing is necessary for a legitimate business interest and does not override the data subject's rights. For cold outreach to EU contacts: B2B may pass this test; B2C typically does not.

The percentage of AI SDR outreach sequences that result in a meeting being booked. Industry benchmarks: 1-3% for cold email sequences. The denominator that drives cost-per-meeting calculations alongside platform fee.

The AI capability that enables a voice agent to understand the meaning and intent behind what a human says. NLU is embedded in the LLM component of a voice AI stack. Quality of NLU determines whether the agent handles objections, out-of-script questions, and ambiguous answers correctly.

Percentage of sent emails opened by recipients. AI SDR platforms optimise subject lines and send timing to improve open rates. Industry benchmark for cold B2B email: 25-40% open rate; 2-5% reply rate. AI-generated personalisation can push open rates above benchmark but results vary significantly by industry and sequence quality.

The total expected compensation (base salary + commission) for a sales hire if they hit 100% of quota. Used in the fully-loaded human SDR cost calculation. A $65k OTE SDR costs approximately $84,500/year fully loaded (30% benefits + $2k tooling), or $7,042/month.

The set of activities that creates new sales opportunities: outbound prospecting, inbound lead qualification, content marketing response, and event-driven outreach. AI SDR and voice AI tools primarily serve pipeline generation. Revenue intelligence tools serve post-pipeline stages.

The consent standard required by TCPA for outbound marketing calls using AI-generated voice. Must name the specific calling entity, disclose AI voice use, provide a revocation mechanism, and be captured with timestamp and source. Required before the first call. Generic 'marketing partners' consent does not satisfy this standard under FCC Ruling 24-17.

AI Sales Engagement Platform that augments human SDR workflows rather than replacing them. Unlike 11x and Artisan, Regie requires human rep approval before sending emails. Pricing: $3,000-$7,000/month platform plus $59-$89/user/month. Best suited to teams wanting AI content generation with human oversight.

Voice AI infrastructure platform offering managed STT + LLM + TTS + telephony. Pricing: $0.07/min inbound, $0.12/min outbound. Latency: 250-400ms. Known for ease of deployment and competitive pricing. Lower-cost alternative to Vapi with fewer model customisation options.

The category of AI tools (Gong, Chorus, Clari Copilot) that record, transcribe, and analyse sales conversations to improve deal inspection, coaching, and forecasting. Distinguished from AI SDR (which generates pipeline) and voice AI infrastructure (which runs phone agents). See also: Copilot.

Junior outbound salesperson responsible for prospecting, cold outreach, and booking qualified meetings for Account Executives. AI SDR platforms attempt to automate or augment this function. Average fully-loaded SDR cost: $65-$85k OTE + 30% benefits + $2k tooling = $86,500-$112,500/year.

An automated multi-step outreach plan (typically email-centric with optional LinkedIn and call steps) for engaging a prospect. AI SDR platforms generate and manage sequences. Typical sequence: email 1 (day 1), follow-up (day 4), final outreach (day 9), optional LinkedIn step. Sequence optimisation is a major driver of AI SDR performance.

The component that converts human speech to text for LLM processing in a voice AI stack. Common providers: Deepgram Nova-2 ($0.0043/min), AssemblyAI, Whisper (OpenAI). Deepgram is the most common choice in production voice AI deployments due to low latency and competitive accuracy.

No-code voice AI platform with a visual interface for building phone agents without coding. Pricing: approximately $0.13/min. Best suited for non-technical teams deploying simple inbound qualification agents. Less flexible than Vapi for complex agent logic but significantly easier to configure.

US federal law (47 U.S.C. 227) restricting automated calls and texts to consumers. Extended to AI-generated voice calls by FCC Ruling 24-17 (February 2024). Key restriction: prior express written consent required before marketing calls to wireless numbers using AI or robocall technology. Statutory damages: $500-$1,500 per call.

The component that converts LLM text output to spoken audio in a voice AI stack. Common providers: ElevenLabs Turbo v2 (natural, ~$0.003/1k chars), Cartesia Sonic (low latency), OpenAI TTS (integrated). TTS quality determines how natural the voice agent sounds. Latency of TTS is a critical factor in overall call response time.

Voice AI infrastructure platform with the broadest model flexibility in the market. All-in pricing: $0.25-$0.33/min including STT (Deepgram), LLM (user's choice), and TTS (ElevenLabs default). Latency: 300-500ms. Best for teams that need to swap models independently or build complex multi-turn agent logic.

The platform layer (Retell, Vapi, Bland, Synthflow) that provides the technology stack to build AI phone agents: speech-to-text, LLM orchestration, text-to-speech, and telephony. Distinguished from AI SDR (email-based) and revenue intelligence (call analysis). Cost structure: per-minute pricing.

The percentage of words incorrectly transcribed by a speech-to-text system. Lower is better. Deepgram Nova-2 achieves approximately 8-12% WER in sales call audio with background noise. High WER causes LLM misunderstanding and degraded conversation quality in voice AI agents.