B2B SaaS Growth Glossary
152 plain-language definitions covering SaaS metrics, SEO, growth, product, brand, pricing, and user behaviour. No jargon. No fluff. Updated as I learn.
A
A/B Testing
A controlled experiment comparing two versions of something — a headline, CTA, pricing page — to determine which performs better. The foundation of data-driven optimisation.
Example: Testing 'Start free trial' versus 'Get started free' on your homepage CTA button.
A/B Testing Platform
Software for running controlled experiments on websites, landing pages, or in-product flows to determine which version performs better against a defined metric.
Example: Optimizely and VWO are common A/B testing platforms used by growth and product teams.
Activation
The moment a new user first experiences the core value of your product. Improving activation is often the highest-leverage growth lever for early-stage SaaS.
Example: For a project management tool, activation might be completing a first project and inviting a teammate.
Activation Rate
The percentage of new users who reach a defined meaningful milestone during onboarding — their first moment of real product value. A leading indicator of retention.
Example: If 1,000 users sign up and 300 complete their first core action, activation rate is 30%.
Aha Moment
The specific moment when a new user first experiences the core value of a product. Identifying and accelerating this moment is crucial for retention.
Example: For Twitter, the aha moment was identified as following 30 people and seeing a personalised feed.
Annual Plan Discount
A discount offered to customers who pay for a full year upfront instead of monthly. Improves cash flow and reduces churn by extending commitment periods.
Example: Offering 20% off for annual billing converts monthly subscribers into long-term committed customers.
ARR Bridge
A visual breakdown showing how ARR changed between two periods — new ARR, expansion ARR, churned ARR, and contracted ARR — to explain net growth.
Example: An ARR bridge shows you added $500K new, gained $200K expansion, but lost $150K to churn, for $550K net growth.
Attribution Model
A framework for assigning credit to marketing touchpoints in a customer's journey — determining which channels and content contributed to a conversion.
Example: A first-touch attribution model gives all credit to the first piece of content a customer ever engaged with.
B
Backlink
A link from another website pointing to your site. High-quality backlinks from authoritative sites are one of the strongest signals of trust and authority to search engines.
Example: Getting a link from a well-known SaaS blog to your churn reduction article boosts your domain authority.
Behavioural Segmentation
Grouping users based on how they interact with a product — actions taken, features used, frequency of visits — rather than who they are demographically.
Example: Sending different messages to power users who log in daily versus occasional users who log in monthly.
Bottom-up Sales
A go-to-market motion where individual end users adopt a product first, then champion it internally until the company pays for it. Common in PLG companies.
Example: A developer using a free API tier who then convinces their company to purchase an enterprise plan.
Brand Awareness
The degree to which a target audience recognises and recalls a brand. Early-stage awareness is built through content, community, PR, and consistent presence.
Example: Being cited in three industry newsletters in a month builds brand awareness among your target audience.
Brand Voice
The consistent personality and tone a brand uses across all communications. It reflects values, builds recognition, and creates emotional connection with an audience.
Example: Basecamp's brand voice is direct, opinionated, and anti-corporate — consistently applied across their blog and marketing.
Burn Rate
The speed at which a company spends its cash reserves each month. High burn with slow revenue growth is a warning sign for sustainability.
Example: Spending $200,000/month with $1M in the bank gives a 5-month runway.
Buyer Committee
The group of stakeholders involved in evaluating and approving a B2B SaaS purchase. Enterprise deals often involve 5-10 people across IT, finance, legal, and the business team.
Example: Knowing who is on the buyer committee allows you to tailor content and messaging to each stakeholder's concerns.
C
CAC Payback Period
The number of months it takes to recover the cost of acquiring a customer from their revenue. Shorter payback periods mean faster reinvestment into growth.
Example: A $600 CAC and $50/month gross margin means a 12-month payback period.
Category Design
A marketing strategy where a company creates and names a new market category rather than competing in an existing one — becoming the obvious leader of a space they defined.
Example: Salesforce defined 'CRM software' as a category; HubSpot defined 'inbound marketing'.
Champion
An internal advocate within a customer organisation who believes in your product and actively promotes it to decision-makers and colleagues.
Example: A product manager who pushes for your tool in quarterly planning meetings is your internal champion.
Churn Prediction
Using data signals — usage decline, support volume, NPS drop — to forecast which customers are at risk of cancelling before they actually do.
Example: A model that flags accounts with 80%+ churn probability 30 days before renewal enables proactive intervention.
Churn Rate
The percentage of customers or revenue lost during a given period. High churn signals a retention problem and directly threatens sustainable growth.
Example: Starting a month with 200 customers and losing 10 gives a 5% monthly churn rate.
Cognitive Load
The mental effort required to process and use a product. High cognitive load causes users to disengage. Good design reduces cognitive load through clarity and simplicity.
Example: A dashboard with 20 competing metrics creates high cognitive load — simplifying to 5 key numbers reduces it.
Cohort Analysis
Grouping users by a shared characteristic — often their signup date — and tracking their behaviour over time to reveal retention, engagement, and revenue patterns.
Example: Comparing how the January cohort retained versus the March cohort after 90 days.
Cohort Retention
Tracking what percentage of a specific cohort of users or customers remains active over time. Reveals whether retention is improving or worsening across signup generations.
Example: Comparing 6-month retention of the January cohort versus the July cohort to measure product improvements.
Compounding Growth
Growth that builds on itself each period — gains add to the base so future gains are larger. SEO and retention both produce compounding growth effects.
Example: A blog post ranking for 1,000 monthly visitors keeps growing without additional spend.
Content Cluster
A group of interlinked content pieces — a pillar page plus supporting articles — that collectively build topical authority around a subject.
Example: A cluster on 'SaaS growth' includes a pillar page plus articles on PLG, churn reduction, and pricing strategy.
Content Decay
The gradual loss of organic traffic and rankings a piece of content experiences as it becomes outdated or is overtaken by newer, better content from competitors.
Example: A 2021 article on SaaS trends will naturally decay unless updated with current data and insights.
Content-led SEO
A growth approach where high-quality, genuinely helpful content drives organic search visibility — built around audience intent rather than keyword manipulation.
Example: Writing a deep guide on SaaS pricing models that ranks for multiple related searches.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of users or visitors who complete a desired action, such as signing up, upgrading, or purchasing. Measures funnel efficiency at every stage.
Example: 500 pricing page visitors and 25 sign-ups gives a 5% conversion rate.
Core Web Vitals
Google's set of user experience metrics — Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift — used as ranking signals.
Example: A slow-loading pricing page that shifts layout can hurt both user experience and search rankings.
Customer Data Platform
A system that collects and unifies customer data from multiple sources into a single profile, enabling consistent personalisation across channels.
Example: A CDP combines data from your website, product, email, and CRM to build a complete customer view.
Customer Health Score
A composite score calculated from product usage, support tickets, NPS, and other signals that predicts whether a customer is likely to renew or churn.
Example: A customer with declining logins, an open complaint, and a low NPS score gets a red health score.
Customer Success Platform
Software designed to help customer success teams monitor account health, automate check-ins, and proactively identify at-risk or expansion-ready customers.
Example: Gainsight and ChurnZero are customer success platforms used to reduce churn at scale.
D
Data Warehouse
A centralised repository for structured data from multiple sources — product, CRM, billing, marketing — used for analysis and reporting at scale.
Example: BigQuery and Snowflake are common data warehouses for SaaS companies running complex growth analyses.
DAU/MAU Ratio
The ratio of daily to monthly active users, expressed as a percentage. Indicates how habit-forming a product is. A ratio above 50% is considered strong stickiness.
Example: 10,000 DAU and 30,000 MAU gives a 33% DAU/MAU ratio — room for improvement.
Demand Generation
Marketing activities designed to create awareness and interest in a product among potential buyers — broader than lead generation, focused on building long-term pipeline.
Example: Publishing educational content on LinkedIn and running webinars are demand gen activities.
Differentiation
The qualities that make a product meaningfully distinct from competitors in ways that matter to target customers. True differentiation is specific, believable, and hard to copy.
Example: Positioning as the only project management tool built specifically for creative agencies is strong differentiation.
Domain Authority
A third-party score estimating how likely a website is to rank in search engines based on its backlink profile and overall trustworthiness. Not a Google metric, but widely used.
Example: A new domain typically starts at DA 1 and grows over months of content and link building.
Dunning
The automated process of recovering failed subscription payments through retry logic, customer emails, and grace periods — directly reducing involuntary churn.
Example: A dunning sequence that retries a failed card three times and sends email reminders can recover 20-30% of failed charges.
E
Expansion
Growth in revenue from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, or seat additions. Expansion revenue is the most efficient form of growth because acquisition costs are near zero.
Example: A team upgrading from 5 to 20 seats generates significant expansion revenue without any new sales effort.
Expansion Revenue
Additional revenue generated from existing customers through upgrades, upsells, or cross-sells. A sign of strong product-market fit and customer success.
Example: A customer upgrading from $99/mo to $299/mo generates $200 in monthly expansion revenue.
F
Feature Adoption
The rate at which users discover and regularly use specific product features. Low feature adoption can signal poor discoverability or unclear value communication.
Example: If only 10% of users use your collaboration feature, it may need better in-product promotion.
Feature Flag
A software development technique that enables or disables features for specific users or groups without deploying new code. Used for staged rollouts and A/B tests.
Example: Rolling out a new dashboard to 10% of users first to gather feedback before a full launch.
Featured Snippet
A selected search result that Google displays at the top of the SERP in a special box, pulling content directly from a webpage to answer a query. Also called 'Position Zero'.
Example: A clearly structured definition of 'what is ARR' can earn a featured snippet on Google.
Feedback Loop
A cycle where outputs from a system feed back as inputs, either amplifying (positive loop) or dampening (negative loop) the original behaviour.
Example: More users create more content → more content attracts more users → a positive feedback loop.
Free Trial
A time-limited period during which new users access full or partial product features without paying. Designed to demonstrate value and convert users to paid plans.
Example: A 14-day free trial gives users enough time to experience product value and make an informed decision.
Freemium
A pricing model where a product's basic version is free, with paid tiers unlocking advanced features. Reduces acquisition friction but requires strong free-to-paid conversion.
Example: Notion, Slack, and Calendly all use freemium to lower the barrier to first use.
Friction
Any point in a user journey where unnecessary complexity, confusion, or effort slows the user down or causes them to abandon an action.
Example: Requiring credit card details before a free trial is friction that reduces signup conversion.
Funnel
The sequential stages a user moves through from first awareness to becoming a paying customer — typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, and Retention.
Example: A SaaS funnel: blog post → free trial signup → onboarding → paid plan → renewal.
G
Go-to-Market Strategy
The plan defining how a company will reach its target customers and deliver its value proposition — covering channels, messaging, pricing, and sales motion.
Example: A PLG go-to-market might focus on free trials, in-product upsells, and community rather than outbound sales.
Gross Margin
Revenue minus the direct costs of delivering the service (hosting, support, infrastructure). SaaS companies typically target 70-80%+ gross margins.
Example: $1M in revenue with $200K in COGS gives an 80% gross margin.
Growth Loop
A self-reinforcing cycle where output from one growth action becomes the input for the next. More powerful than funnels because they compound over time.
Example: Users create content → content ranks on Google → new users discover the product → they create more content.
H
Heatmap
A visual representation of where users click, scroll, and hover on a webpage. Used to understand attention patterns and identify usability issues.
Example: A heatmap revealing that users never scroll past the first section suggests the CTA needs to move higher.
Helpdesk Software
A tool for managing customer support requests — organising tickets, routing queries, and tracking resolution times. Directly impacts customer satisfaction and retention.
Example: Intercom and Zendesk are widely used helpdesk tools in SaaS companies.
I
In-app Messaging
Notifications, tooltips, and banners displayed within a product to guide users, announce features, or prompt key actions. A direct retention and activation tool.
Example: A tooltip that appears when a user first visits the integrations page explaining what each integration does.
Internal Linking
The practice of linking between pages on your own website to help search engines understand site structure and distribute authority across pages.
Example: Linking from your SaaS metrics article to your ARR explainer passes authority and helps readers navigate.
Involuntary Churn
Customer loss caused by payment failures rather than deliberate cancellation. Often underestimated — a significant source of churn that can be largely recovered through dunning.
Example: Expired credit cards cause involuntary churn that has nothing to do with product satisfaction.
J
Jobs to Be Done
A framework for understanding why customers buy a product — focused on the 'job' they hire the product to accomplish rather than demographics or features.
Example: A customer doesn't buy project management software — they hire it to reduce chaos and missed deadlines.
K
Keyword Difficulty
A score estimating how hard it is to rank on page one for a given keyword, based on the authority of pages currently ranking. Typically measured on a scale of 0-100.
Example: A keyword difficulty of 70+ usually means you need significant domain authority to compete.
L
Land and Expand
A sales and pricing strategy where customers start small — a single team or use case — and then expand usage and spend over time as they experience value.
Example: Selling to one department of a large company, then expanding to the whole organisation over 12 months.
Lead Generation
The process of attracting and capturing contact information from potential customers who have shown interest in your product or content.
Example: Gating a research report behind an email form is a lead generation tactic.
Logo Retention
The percentage of customers (logos) that remain subscribed at the end of a period, regardless of revenue changes. Shows how well you keep customers, not just revenue.
Example: Starting with 100 customers and ending with 85 gives an 85% logo retention rate.
Long-tail Keyword
A specific, multi-word search phrase with lower search volume but higher intent and lower competition. Often easier to rank for and more likely to convert.
Example: 'How to reduce SaaS churn for B2B startups' is a long-tail keyword versus just 'churn'.
LTV:CAC Ratio
A benchmark of business efficiency comparing customer value to acquisition cost. A 3:1 ratio is generally considered healthy; below 1:1 means you are losing money on every customer.
Example: LTV of $3,000 and CAC of $1,000 gives a healthy 3:1 ratio.
M
Marketing Automation
Software that automates repetitive marketing tasks — email sequences, lead scoring, campaign management — based on user behaviour and predefined rules.
Example: Automatically sending a trial expiry email three days before a free trial ends is marketing automation.
Mental Model
The internal framework a user builds for understanding how a product works. If the product's behaviour conflicts with the user's mental model, friction and confusion follow.
Example: Users expect saving to be automatic in modern SaaS — showing a manual 'save' button conflicts with their mental model.
Messaging Framework
A structured document defining how a company communicates its value proposition, positioning, and key messages to different audiences — ensuring consistency across all channels.
Example: A messaging framework covers headline, subheadline, three core benefits, and objection responses for each buyer persona.
N
Narrative
The overarching story a company tells about why it exists, what it stands for, and where the world is going — giving customers a reason to believe in the mission beyond the product.
Example: Basecamp's narrative: the world has been oversold on complexity; simple software makes better businesses.
Network Effects
A phenomenon where a product becomes more valuable as more people use it. The most powerful growth moat in software — Slack, LinkedIn, and Figma all benefit from network effects.
Example: A collaboration tool with network effects means the more teammates use it, the more valuable it becomes for everyone.
North Star Metric
The single metric that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers. It aligns the whole team around the outcome that matters most for long-term growth.
Example: Slack's North Star Metric is messages sent — a proxy for team collaboration and product value.
O
Objection Handling
The process of addressing and overcoming concerns or hesitations that prospects raise during the sales process. Effective objection handling is based on deep ICP understanding.
Example: When a prospect says 'it's too expensive,' a strong response ties the price to the specific ROI they will achieve.
On-page SEO
Optimisation techniques applied directly to a webpage — including title tags, meta descriptions, headings, internal links, and content quality — to improve search rankings.
Example: Using your target keyword in the H1, first paragraph, and at least one subheading is basic on-page SEO.
Onboarding
The process of helping new users understand and adopt a product quickly. Poor onboarding is one of the biggest causes of early churn in SaaS.
Example: A well-designed onboarding flow guides users to their first 'aha moment' within minutes of signing up.
P
Packaging
How product features and capabilities are bundled together into plans or tiers. Good packaging makes the upgrade path clear and aligns feature availability with customer needs.
Example: Putting collaboration features in the Team plan drives upgrades from solo users to teams.
Persona
A semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer based on research, including their goals, challenges, job role, and decision-making process.
Example: A SaaS persona might be 'Growth-focused Maya, a 32-year-old VP of Marketing at a Series A startup.'
Pillar Page
A comprehensive, long-form page covering a broad topic in depth, with links to more specific cluster content. The hub of a content cluster strategy.
Example: A pillar page on 'SaaS metrics' links out to individual articles on ARR, churn, NRR, and LTV.
Pipeline Velocity
The speed at which leads move through your sales pipeline and convert to revenue. A product of deal volume, win rate, average deal size, and sales cycle length.
Example: Shortening the average sales cycle from 45 days to 30 days increases pipeline velocity by 33%.
Pirate Metrics
A framework by Dave McClure covering the five stages of SaaS growth: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue — also known as AARRR.
Example: Using the AARRR framework to audit where most users drop off in your growth funnel.
Positioning
The intentional decision about how a product is perceived in a customer's mind relative to alternatives. Positioning shapes messaging, pricing, and who you target.
Example: Positioning your tool as 'the Notion for lawyers' immediately sets expectations and attracts a niche audience.
Price Anchoring
A psychological pricing technique where a higher reference price is shown first to make the actual price seem more reasonable or attractive by comparison.
Example: Showing an 'Enterprise' plan at $999/mo makes the $199/mo Growth plan feel like a bargain.
Price Elasticity
How sensitive customer demand is to price changes. High elasticity means a price increase causes significant churn; low elasticity means customers tolerate price changes without cancelling.
Example: If raising price by 20% causes only 5% churn, the product has low price elasticity — a sign of strong value.
Product Analytics
Tools that track how users interact with a product — which features they use, where they drop off, and how usage correlates with retention and revenue outcomes.
Example: Mixpanel and Amplitude are product analytics tools used to understand in-product behaviour.
Product-Market Fit
The point at which a product satisfies a strong market demand — users actively want it, use it repeatedly, and are genuinely disappointed when it's unavailable.
Example: A common signal: 40%+ of users say they'd be 'very disappointed' if the product disappeared.
Programmatic SEO
Creating large volumes of pages using templates and structured data to target a wide range of similar keywords at scale — usually powered by a database.
Example: A SaaS comparison site creating a unique page for every 'Tool A vs Tool B' combination is programmatic SEO.
Proof of Concept
A limited, time-bound pilot of a product in a customer's environment to demonstrate that it works as promised before a full purchase commitment is made.
Example: Running a 30-day POC with a shortlisted enterprise customer before finalising a contract.
Q
Quick Ratio
A SaaS growth efficiency metric: new MRR plus expansion MRR divided by churned MRR plus contraction MRR. A ratio above 4 signals very efficient growth.
Example: Adding $50K new MRR and losing $10K gives a quick ratio of 5 — healthy growth.
R
Referral Programme
A structured incentive system encouraging existing customers to refer new users or customers. One of the most cost-efficient acquisition channels when done well.
Example: Dropbox's referral programme offering free storage to both referrer and referee drove explosive early growth.
Retention
The ability to keep customers subscribed and actively using a product over time. Retention is often more valuable to focus on than acquisition for sustainable SaaS growth.
Example: Reducing monthly churn from 5% to 2% can effectively double long-term revenue.
Revenue Churn
The percentage of MRR lost in a period due to cancellations and downgrades. More revealing than customer churn because it accounts for the value of lost accounts.
Example: Losing three small customers but one big customer can show low customer churn but high revenue churn.
Revenue Operations
The alignment of sales, marketing, and customer success teams around shared processes, data, and goals to drive predictable and efficient revenue growth.
Example: A RevOps team ensures that marketing, sales, and CS all use the same definitions for lead stages and conversion.
Rule of 40
A SaaS health benchmark: your revenue growth rate plus your profit margin should equal or exceed 40. Balances growth ambition with financial efficiency.
Example: Growing at 30% with a 15% profit margin = 45, passing the Rule of 40.
Runway
The number of months a company can operate before running out of cash, given its current burn rate. A critical survival metric for early-stage SaaS.
Example: With $2M in the bank and $100K monthly burn, you have 20 months of runway.
S
Sales Cycle
The average time between first contact with a prospect and closing a deal. Shorter cycles improve cash flow and reduce selling costs.
Example: An SMB SaaS might have a 7-day sales cycle; enterprise deals can take 6-18 months.
Search Intent
The underlying goal a user has when typing a query into a search engine. The four main types are informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.
Example: Someone searching 'best project management tools' has commercial intent — they are comparing options.
Search Volume
The average number of times a keyword is searched per month. Used alongside keyword difficulty to assess whether a topic is worth targeting.
Example: 'SaaS churn rate' might have 2,400 monthly searches — enough to justify a dedicated article.
Seat-based Pricing
A model where price scales with the number of users accessing the product. Common in B2B SaaS — easy to understand but can discourage adoption within organisations.
Example: Paying $20/seat/month means a 10-person team pays $200/month total.
Second-order Effects
The downstream consequences of an action that are not immediately obvious. In growth, second-order effects can be more significant than first-order outcomes.
Example: Cutting prices (first order: more signups) may erode perceived value and attract low-retention customers (second order).
Session Recording
A replay of an individual user's browsing session — every click, scroll, and form interaction — used to diagnose friction points in the user experience.
Example: Watching session recordings reveals users repeatedly clicking a non-clickable image, signalling confusion.
Social Proof
Evidence that other people — customers, experts, or the market — trust and value a product. Includes testimonials, case studies, review scores, and customer logos.
Example: Displaying G2 review badges and customer logos on your pricing page reduces buyer hesitation.
Stickiness
How consistently and habitually users engage with a product over time. High stickiness correlates with low churn and strong retention — often measured by the DAU/MAU ratio.
Example: A sticky product is one users return to daily or weekly without being prompted.
Switching Cost
The time, money, effort, or risk a customer would incur by moving to a different product. High switching costs improve retention and reduce competitive vulnerability.
Example: Deep CRM integrations and years of historical data create high switching costs for an enterprise customer.
Systems Thinking
An approach to understanding how parts of a system interact and influence each other — rather than viewing problems in isolation. Applied to growth, it reveals how metrics and levers connect.
Example: Realising that improving activation reduces churn, which improves NRR, which funds more acquisition — that's systems thinking.
T
Technical SEO
Optimisations made to a website's infrastructure — site speed, crawlability, indexability, structured data, and mobile-friendliness — to help search engines access and understand it.
Example: Fixing broken internal links and improving Core Web Vitals scores are technical SEO tasks.
Thought Leadership
Content and public communication that demonstrates deep expertise on a topic, building authority and trust with an audience before any sales conversation happens.
Example: Publishing original research on SaaS churn benchmarks is a thought leadership strategy.
Tiered Pricing
A pricing structure with multiple plans at different price points, each offering more features or capacity. Designed to serve different customer segments and drive upgrades.
Example: Starter at $29/mo, Growth at $99/mo, and Enterprise at custom pricing is a classic tiered structure.
Time to Value
The time it takes for a new user to experience the core value of a product after signing up. Shorter time to value leads to higher activation and lower early churn.
Example: Reducing signup steps from 8 to 3 shortened time to value from 12 minutes to under 3.
Top-down Sales
A sales motion where deals are initiated at the executive or budget-holder level, then rolled out to end users. Common in enterprise SaaS with complex procurement.
Example: Selling a security compliance tool to a CISO who mandates adoption across the engineering organisation.
Topical Authority
The degree to which a website is recognised by search engines as a deep, trustworthy source on a specific topic — built by covering a subject comprehensively over time.
Example: Publishing 20+ interconnected articles on SaaS pricing builds topical authority on that subject.
U
Usage-based Pricing
A pricing model where customers pay based on how much they use a product — API calls, messages sent, data stored — rather than a flat subscription fee.
Example: Twilio and AWS charge per API call or resource consumed, aligning cost with value received.
User Journey
The complete sequence of interactions a user has with a product or brand — from first awareness through purchase, onboarding, and ongoing use.
Example: Mapping the user journey for a free trial user reveals which steps cause the most drop-off.
User Segmentation
Dividing users into groups based on shared characteristics — behaviour, company size, industry, or lifecycle stage — to deliver more relevant experiences and communications.
Example: Sending different onboarding emails to solo users versus team users based on their plan and usage.
V
Value Proposition
A clear statement of the specific benefit a product delivers, who it is for, and why it is better than alternatives. The foundation of all marketing messaging.
Example: Stripe's value proposition: payments infrastructure for the internet — simple, powerful, and reliable.
Value-based Pricing
Setting prices based on the perceived value a product delivers to the customer, rather than cost-plus or competitor benchmarks. Aligns price with outcomes and enables premium positioning.
Example: If your tool saves a team $5,000/month, pricing at $500/month represents strong perceived value.
Viral Coefficient
The average number of new users each existing user brings in. A coefficient above 1.0 means the product grows exponentially without additional marketing spend.
Example: If each of your 1,000 users refers 1.2 new users on average, your viral coefficient is 1.2.
Viral Loop
A repeatable cycle where existing users naturally introduce new users to a product, who then become users and refer others. The engine behind viral growth.
Example: Dropbox's 'refer a friend for extra storage' created a powerful viral loop.
Voluntary Churn
Customer loss resulting from an intentional decision to cancel. Usually caused by lack of perceived value, poor fit, or competition. Requires product or positioning fixes.
Example: A customer who cancels saying 'we no longer need this' represents voluntary churn.
W
Weighted Pipeline
A sales forecast that multiplies the value of each deal by the probability of closing, giving a more realistic picture of expected revenue than raw pipeline value.
Example: A $100K deal at 50% close probability contributes $50K to the weighted pipeline.
Willingness to Pay
The maximum price a customer is willing to pay for a product. Understanding WTP by segment is foundational to setting prices that capture value without leaving money on the table.
Example: Enterprise buyers often have 10x the willingness to pay of solo users for the same core product.
Win Rate
The percentage of sales opportunities that result in a closed deal. A key efficiency metric for sales teams and an indicator of product-market fit and competitive strength.
Example: Closing 15 out of 60 qualified deals gives a win rate of 25%.
X
Y
Z
Zero-click Search
A search result where the engine answers the query directly in the SERP, meaning the user gets their answer without visiting any website. Growing rapidly with AI Overviews.
Example: Searching 'what is MRR' often returns a definition in the results, bypassing all linked pages.
Join 3,500+ founders & marketers
Get 1 new SaaS growth strategy in your inbox every Tuesday. No fluff, just real experiments and frameworks.