Go-to-market terms, explained plainly
One page per concept. Each starts with a single-sentence definition, then the formula, the benchmark, and what to actually do about it.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend required to win one new customer over a given period, calculated by dividing that spend by the number of new customers acquired.
Read the answerCustomer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is the total gross profit a business expects to earn from a single customer across the entire relationship, before the cost of acquiring that customer.
Read the answerLTV:CAC ratio
The LTV:CAC ratio divides customer lifetime value by customer acquisition cost, and a ratio of roughly 3:1 is the widely used benchmark for efficient, sustainable growth.
Read the answerCAC payback period
CAC payback period is the number of months of gross profit required to recover the cost of acquiring a customer, and for most SMBs a payback under 12 months is considered healthy.
Read the answerRevenue leak
A revenue leak is demand a business has already paid to generate but fails to convert into revenue, caused by friction in the website, funnel, follow-up, or handoff between teams.
Read the answerConversion rate optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of systematically increasing the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action—a purchase, signup, or booking—without increasing traffic.
Read the answerGo-to-market (GTM) stack
A go-to-market (GTM) stack is the connected set of software a company uses to find, win, and retain customers—typically spanning CRM, marketing automation, analytics, enrichment, and support.
Read the answerHidden SaaS tax
The hidden SaaS tax is the recurring software spend a company carries on unused seats, duplicated tools, and forgotten subscriptions that no longer serve any active workflow.
Read the answerAI readiness
AI readiness is the degree to which a business has the data quality, documented workflows, tooling access, and team adoption required for AI to produce measurable results rather than experiments.
Read the answerAI implementation team
An AI implementation team is the small group of named owners—an executive sponsor, a process owner, a data or systems owner, and a builder—responsible for taking an AI initiative from idea to a live, maintained workflow.
Read the answerGTM debt
GTM debt is the accumulated cost of shortcuts in go-to-market systems, data, and handoffs—manual reporting, usage data that never reaches the CRM, undefined ownership—that keeps working until it starts distorting revenue nobody can explain.
Read the answerAI token cost management
AI token cost management is the practice of tracking model usage by task, matching each job to the cheapest model that can do it well, and budgeting that spend as a metered operating cost rather than a fixed software subscription.
Read the answerNet Revenue Retention (NRR)
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures how much recurring revenue a company keeps and grows from its existing customers over a period, expressed as a percentage where anything above 100% means expansion is outpacing churn and downgrades.
Read the answerPre, pre-sales (ICP and positioning work)
"Pre, pre-sales" is the company, product, and buyer-context work—ICP definition, positioning, and qualification criteria—completed before any outbound sequence, asset, or AI agent is deployed against a list.
Read the answerBuild vs. buy (GTM tools)
Build vs. buy is the three-way choice between legacy enterprise software, AI-native tools, and an in-house build, and the deciding question is who maintains the result in year two rather than what it costs in month one.
Read the answerWebsite tech stack lookup
A website tech stack lookup is a check that surfaces the front-end technologies powering a given site—framework, CMS, analytics, and supporting scripts—so a team can describe, in plain language, what their website is actually built on.
Read the answerAI agent governance
AI agent governance is the set of controls that make an AI agent's actions reviewable and reversible: a record of what it did, a way to undo it, and a named person accountable for the outcome.
Read the answerService Level Agreement (SLA)
A service level agreement (SLA) is a formal commitment to a measurable level of service—uptime, response time, accuracy, or resolution—together with how it is measured and what remedy applies when the commitment is missed.
Read the answerAI reliability
AI reliability is how consistently an AI system produces correct, usable results under real production conditions, which is a separate property from capability—what the system can do at its best.
Read the answerVendor lock-in (AI ecosystems)
Vendor lock-in in AI ecosystems is the accumulated cost of moving a workflow off one provider, created when models, embeddings, orchestration logic, and stored data are tied to that provider's formats and interfaces.
Read the answerOutcome-based pricing
Outcome-based pricing is a model in which a buyer pays for a defined, measured result—such as a resolved ticket, a qualified meeting, or a recovered dollar—rather than for seats, licenses, or units of usage.
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