Plain definitions of the terms that decide deals — what they mean, why they matter, and what breaks when nobody owns them.
The go/no-go call on whether to respond to an RFP at all — made once, on the record, against consistent criteria, before any response work begins.
Also: go/no-go, pursuit decision, qualification gate
Read the definition →A cross-functional function that owns non-standard deal decisions — pricing exceptions, approvals and terms — so they get made consistently and on the record.
Also: deal support, deal management, commercial desk
Read the definition →The share of submitted proposals that convert. A useful number that hides the more important one — how many of the losses were predictable at intake.
Also: RFP win rate, bid win rate, capture rate
Read the definition →A maintained store of approved answers to recurring buyer questions. The difference between a library and a folder of old submissions is governance.
Also: Response library, answer library, content repository, knowledge base
Read the definition →Three different buyer documents that get treated as one. Which one you've received tells you where the buyer is and how much influence you still have.
Also: request for proposal, request for information, request for quote, RFx
Read the definition →Sales ops supports the sales org. Revenue ops spans sales, marketing and customer success. The distinction matters less than which problems each actually owns.
Also: sales ops, RevOps, GTM operations, commercial operations
Read the definition →A buyer's structured assessment of a vendor's security, privacy and infrastructure practices — one of the longest stages in enterprise procurement.
Also: vendor risk questionnaire, vendor security assessment, third-party risk review
Read the definition →Eight first-hand essays on the same machinery — what breaks in questionnaires, approvals and handoffs, and what to do about it.
Most of these terms describe the same underlying gap from different angles. If several of them look familiar, the problem is the system between them.
No pitch. If I can't help, I'll say so.
