CRM glossary: sales and lead terms, explained
A CRM glossary for Indian sales teams: plain definitions of the lead, pipeline, messaging and tracking terms you meet when you set up and run a CRM, each with an example.
Terms A to Z
C
Cost per lead
Cost per lead is what you spend on a channel divided by the leads it brought — what each enquiry cost you before anyone called it.
CRM
CRM (customer relationship management) is software that keeps every customer, chat and deal on one record, so a team knows what happened and what is next.
CRM adoption
CRM adoption is how fully a team actually uses its CRM day to day — what it decides is whether the data in it can be trusted at all.
Custom fields
Custom fields are extra fields you add to CRM records to hold what your business needs to know, such as budget, property type or site visit date.
D
Deal stage
A deal stage is one step in a sales pipeline, defined by what must be true of a deal before it moves there, such as a quote having been sent.
Deduplication
Deduplication in a CRM is finding and merging records that describe the same person or company, so everyone sees one history of what happened.
DKIM
DKIM is an email signature that lets inboxes check a message really came from your domain — what it protects is your deliverability and your name.
DLT
DLT is the blockchain-based registry TRAI requires for commercial SMS in India, recording who each sender is and what message templates they may send.
DPDP Act
The DPDP Act is India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: what it sets are the rules for collecting and using people's personal data.
Drip campaign
A drip campaign is a series of automated messages sent on a set schedule after a trigger, so each lead hears what matters to them at the right time.
F
Field mapping
Field mapping matches each column in a file you import to the field it belongs in, so what arrives lands in the right place in the CRM.
Follow-up cadence
A follow-up cadence, or sales cadence, is a schedule of touches after an enquiry, setting what channel to use and when, until the lead replies or is closed.
I
IMAP
IMAP is the standard way an email app reads mail that stays on the server, so what you see is the same on every device and app.
Inbound vs outbound leads
Inbound leads come to you through ads, search and forms; outbound leads are people you reach first — what changes is who starts the conversation.
L
Lead attribution
Lead attribution records which channel and campaign brought each lead, so you can see what your marketing spend actually produced.
Lead capture
Lead capture is collecting enquiries from forms, ads, calls and chats into one list, with who asked, what they asked about and where they came from.
Lead conversion rate
Lead conversion rate is the percentage of leads that become paying customers, showing what share of your enquiries turns into revenue.
Lead leakage
Lead leakage is the share of enquiries a business paid for or earned that never get a proper response, whatever the reason they slipped through.
Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing is staying useful to a lead who is not ready to buy yet — what you send, when, and on which channel — until they are.
Lead qualification
Lead qualification is deciding whether an enquiry is a real potential buyer, based on what they need, their budget, their timing and who decides.
Lead routing
Lead routing, or lead assignment, is the set of rules that decides which salesperson owns a new lead, and what happens when no one picks it up.
Lead scoring
Lead scoring is a points system that ranks each lead by who they are and what they have done, so sales calls the likeliest buyers first.
Lead source
A lead source is the channel that brought in an enquiry, such as a Meta ad, IndiaMART or a walk-in, showing what your marketing actually delivers.
R
Role-based access control (RBAC)
Role-based access control grants permissions to roles rather than to people, so what someone can see and do follows from the job they hold.
Round robin assignment
Round robin assignment gives each new lead to the next rep in turn, so work is shared evenly — what it ignores is who is best placed to win it.
S
Sales CRM
A sales CRM is a CRM built around selling: it tracks leads, follow-ups and deals so each rep knows what to do next and managers see the pipeline.
Sales funnel
A sales funnel is the path from first interest to purchase, drawn as stages that fewer people reach — what it shows is where you lose them.
Sales pipeline
A sales pipeline is the set of stages every deal moves through, from first conversation to won or lost, showing what is open and what it is worth.
Speed to lead
Speed to lead is the time between a lead enquiring and your first real response: what a buyer experiences while they compare you with others.
W
Webhook
A webhook is an automatic message one system sends to another's URL when something happens, telling it what changed so it does not have to keep asking.
WhatsApp 24-hour window
The WhatsApp 24-hour window is the time after a customer's last message when a business may reply with any text; what it sends after that must be a template.
WhatsApp template message
A WhatsApp template message is a pre-approved format a business uses to start or restart a chat, with blanks for details such as what was ordered.
Win rate
Win rate is the share of closed deals your team won, showing what proportion of real opportunities turn into customers rather than being lost.