Sales & Customer Success Alignment Glossary: 30 Terms Every Revenue Team Must Agree On

Here's a real scenario that plays out every quarter. An account executive (AE) closes a deal and marks it "onboarded" in the CRM. The Customer Success Manager (CSM) inherits the account. They open the record and see a customer who hasn't logged in once. Hasn't completed core setup. Is already emailing questions the AE should have answered before handing off. Both teams used the word "onboarded." Neither meant the same thing.

That gap doesn't stay in the handoff. It compounds into a 90-day trust erosion. The health score looks fine until it crashes. And the net revenue retention (NRR) problem lands in a board review nobody expected.

Process gets most of the blame when Sales-CS alignment fails. But it's usually the vocabulary. Two teams can run the same playbook and fail because they define the same terms differently. And neither team realizes it until a customer churns.

This glossary is the canonical reference for the entire sales-cs-alignment collection. Every article in the collection links back here when a term needs a precise definition. Use it as a working tool: bring your AE team lead and CS team lead into the same room, open this document, and flag every term where your current definitions diverge. Those divergences are your alignment agenda.

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Most-Cited Terms in This Glossary

These are the terms with the highest search volume and definitional disagreement frequency across SMB and mid-market revenue teams. If your team only has 45 minutes for a glossary review, start and end here.

1. NRR (Net Revenue Retention): The metric that makes Sales and CS accountable to the same number. The most searched revenue term after ARR in B2B SaaS.
2. GRR (Gross Revenue Retention): Measures pure retention before upsell. The gap between GRR and NRR tells you how much expansion is masking retention weakness.
3. ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): Upstream definition that determines which customers arrive at CS. When ICP is wrong, CS inherits accounts that can't succeed, regardless of handoff quality.
4. RevOps (Revenue Operations): The function that owns the shared customer record, the handoff scoring system, and the NRR data model. The natural owner of this glossary.
5. CSM (Customer Success Manager): Post-sale relationship owner. The role whose job scope, renewal ownership, and expansion accountability must be explicitly defined for alignment to work.
6. Onboarded: The most inconsistently defined milestone in post-sale operations. 58% of SaaS companies have no shared definition.
7. At-Risk: Means nothing until the threshold is written down. When it's specific and numeric, save plays can be triggered proactively rather than reactively.
8. Handoff Packet: What travels from AE to CSM at Closed-Won. Often empty. The structured version of this is measured by the handoff scorecard.
9. Health Score: Composite signal. Useless if Sales context isn't in it alongside product usage data.
10. Save Play: A defined intervention with steps, owners, and a timeline. Not "let's jump on a call."

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How to Use This Glossary

This isn't a reading assignment. It's a facilitation tool.

Run a 45-minute session with the leaders who own Sales pipeline and CS retention. Go through the six sections below. For each term, ask one question: "Do we have a written, agreed definition right now?" If yes, confirm it matches what's here and move on. If no, or if each team has a different answer, you've found a gap worth closing before the next quarter.

Each term has a definition and a one-line example. The example exists because abstract definitions look identical until you apply them to a real account. The concrete case is where disagreement surfaces.

Link to individual terms from other documents using the anchor IDs in each section heading. When onboarding a new AE or CSM, send them this glossary in week one. When a new VP of Sales or CS joins, run the glossary review in the first 30 days before their prior-company definitions become the team's default.

Rework Analysis: The terms that cause the most alignment damage aren't the obscure ones. They're the high-frequency ones every team thinks they already agree on. NRR, onboarded, champion, and at-risk appear in weekly leadership reviews and quarterly board decks. But when Sales and CS each define "onboarded" differently, that word appears in every handoff conversation with different meanings, and nobody flags the divergence because both sides assume the other is using the same definition. The 45-minute glossary session described above isn't a documentation exercise. It's a disagreement discovery session. The goal isn't to produce a document. It's to find the terms where your team's two definitions don't match.

The data on what happens when teams actually close these gaps is in the Key Facts below. Start with the lifecycle terms: that's where most teams find their first gap.

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Key Facts: The Cost of Undefined Terms

• B2B companies with aligned Sales and CS definitions generate 38% higher sales win rates and 36% higher customer retention rates than misaligned teams, per MarketingProfs research.
• Companies that align Sales and CS on a written "at-risk" definition reduce reactive save-play activation time by 40%, per Gainsight's annual customer success survey.
• NRR improves by an average of 8-12 percentage points at companies that implement a shared customer record with jointly defined health-score inputs, per Gainsight's State of Customer Success benchmarks.

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Customer Lifecycle Terms

These terms define the stages a customer moves through from contract signature to renewal. If your CRM stages and your CS platform stages use different language for the same milestones, every handoff report will be wrong.

Won

A deal marked Closed-Won in the CRM. Revenue is contracted. The handoff process begins. "Won" does not mean the customer has started using the product. It means the commercial agreement is signed and the account is transitioning from the Sales motion to the CS motion.

Example: AE receives a signed MSA and marks the opportunity Closed-Won. The account appears on the CS team's onboarding queue. Nothing has been configured yet.

Onboarded

The customer has completed the agreed implementation milestones and is actively using the product for its primary use case. "Onboarded" is not synonymous with "kickoff completed" or "went live." It requires four criteria: technical completion, adoption trigger, success milestone, and sponsor confirmation. The exact criteria must be written in the customer record before kickoff.

See What "Successfully Onboarded" Actually Means for how to write your team's definition and operationalize the milestone.

Example: The customer's integration is live, three core users have completed their first workflow, the champion has confirmed the primary use case is running, and the CSM has marked "Successfully Onboarded: Yes" in the customer record.

Adopted

The customer is using the product regularly across the features tied to their stated success criteria. Adoption is measured, not assumed. It requires defining which features count as "core" for each customer type and what usage frequency constitutes regular use. An adopted customer is not necessarily an expanding customer, but unadopted customers churn at significantly higher rates at renewal.

Example: An account using the CRM module daily, with 8 of 10 licensed seats active and the pipeline reporting feature running on its own each week, is adopted. An account with 2 of 10 seats active and no CRM activity in 14 days is not.

Expansion

Any increase in contract value after the initial close: seat additions, tier upgrades, cross-sells, new modules. Expansion is tracked separately from renewal. Expansion ARR is the primary growth lever for existing accounts and is the difference between NRR above 100% and NRR at 100%. Who owns expansion motions (CSM, AM, or AE) must be decided explicitly because ambiguity here erodes both relationships and revenue.

Example: A customer who started with 10 seats adds 5 more in month 7, generating $9,000 in expansion ARR.

Renewal

The point at which a customer's contract term ends and a decision is made to continue. A renewal is not a passive administrative event. It's a commercial decision that requires active management. The renewal conversation should start 90-120 days before the contract end date, not in the week it lapses. Who owns the renewal process (AE, AM, or CSM) varies by team model and must be decided explicitly to avoid ownership gaps at the most critical moment in the customer lifecycle.

Example: A 12-month contract renews on November 1. The CS team should initiate the renewal conversation no later than August 1, with a health check, expansion discussion, and contract review scheduled before October 1.

Churn

A customer who does not renew. Logo churn counts the account lost. Revenue churn counts the ARR lost. Gross and net churn are calculated differently. Tracking only logo churn hides the revenue impact of losing larger accounts. Tracking only revenue churn can mask a deteriorating customer base masked by a few retained high-value accounts.

Example: 100 customers at the start of the year. 10 churn by year end. Logo churn = 10%. If those 10 accounts represented 25% of ARR, revenue churn = 25% despite 10% logo churn.

Save Play

A defined intervention triggered when a customer reaches a risk threshold. A save play has named steps, assigned owners, a timeline, and a specific goal. "Let's jump on a call" is not a save play. It's a reactive panic. An effective save play runs before the customer asks to cancel, not after. The trigger conditions (which health score threshold, which red flag) must be written in advance.

Example: A save play triggered when health score drops below 40 for 14 consecutive days: Day 1, CSM sends personal check-in email. Day 3, CSM proposes a 30-minute call. Day 7, CS Manager joins the call. Day 14, AE and CSM co-present a revised success plan.

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Roles & Relationships

These terms define who owns what in the post-sale motion. The most common source of AE-CSM conflict is undefined ownership, not bad people, but ambiguous roles.

AE: Account Executive

Owns the sales cycle from qualified opportunity to Closed-Won. Primary accountability is new ARR. In the most common model, AE accountability ends at contract signature. In NRR-tied comp models, AE retains accountability for the first renewal or for expansion within the first 12 months. What the AE must complete before disengaging from an account should be defined in the handoff process, not left to individual judgment.

Example: AE closes a $48,000 ARR deal, completes the handoff packet, joins the kickoff call, and transitions account ownership to the CSM within 14 days of close.

AM: Account Manager

In some models, owns the commercial relationship post-sale, covering renewals and expansions, without a dedicated CSM role. Common in transactional SMB where the deal size doesn't justify separate CS coverage. AMs often lack the technical depth to troubleshoot adoption issues, which creates a gap in accounts that need implementation support alongside commercial management. See renewal ownership models for how to structure the AE-AM-CSM decision.

Example: A $6,000 ARR SMB account is managed by an AM who handles renewal, upsell, and relationship, with support escalation going to a shared CS pool rather than a dedicated CSM.

CSM: Customer Success Manager

Owns the post-sale customer relationship. Primary accountability is retention and health. May or may not own renewal revenue depending on the team model. When CSMs own renewal quota, they carry a commercial motion alongside their retention role. This creates efficiency but also tension if a customer needs candid bad news about a struggling implementation. See renewal ownership models for how to structure the decision.

Example: CSM owns 35 accounts. Primary KPIs: NRR across the book, health score distribution, time-to-onboard. Secondary KPI: expansion ARR if the model includes CSM-owned upsell.

CSE: Customer Success Engineer

Technical counterpart to the CSM. Handles implementation, integrations, and technical escalations during and after onboarding. The CSE relationship is particularly important for accounts with complex integration requirements. The technical details that AEs commit to during deals must travel to the CSE, not just the CSM.

Example: An account with a custom API integration relies on the CSE to configure and test the connection during onboarding. If the AE committed to a non-standard integration in the deal, the CSE needs to know before kickoff, not after.

Champion

The internal user or manager who advocated for the purchase and continues to drive adoption internally. The champion is often the person the CSM builds the closest relationship with during onboarding. Champion departure is one of the highest-probability churn predictors. When the champion leaves, internal advocacy disappears and the product loses its internal political support regardless of whether the product is working. See champion transition from AE to CSM for how to manage this handoff without losing the relationship.

Example: The Director of Operations championed the implementation, trained the team, and drove adoption for 8 months. She left for a new company. Her replacement doesn't know the tool and hasn't been onboarded. This is a red flag requiring immediate action.

Sponsor

Internal executive at the customer company who approved the purchase. High organizational authority, low day-to-day involvement in the product. Sponsor relationships matter most at renewal. If the CSM has only built the champion relationship and the sponsor doesn't remember the product when renewal comes up, the champion has to fight for the budget alone. AEs should identify the sponsor during the sales cycle and ensure the CSM has their contact information at handoff.

Example: The VP of Revenue approved the contract. She hasn't logged into the product but gets the executive-level QBR deck. At renewal, her sign-off is what matters.

Exec Sponsor

A senior leader at your company (VP or above) paired with a senior stakeholder at the customer. Used for strategic accounts to signal long-term commitment and open a direct executive communication channel. Exec sponsor relationships are activated for at-risk strategic accounts and for expansion conversations that require executive alignment.

Example: Your VP of Customer Success is exec sponsor for your top 10 accounts. She joins the annual business review and is available for escalation outside the normal CSM-to-champion path.

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Health Scoring

Health scoring terms are only useful if your team has defined what "healthy" and "at-risk" mean in writing. These definitions drive automated alerts, save-play triggers, and resource allocation. And they only work if Sales context (deal promises, champion stability, ICP fit) feeds into them alongside product usage data. See customer health scoring with sales-context inputs for how to wire these inputs into a working health model.

Health Score

A composite numeric or color-coded signal summarizing the risk profile of a customer account. Combines usage data, support ticket volume, NPS or CSAT scores, engagement frequency, and in well-designed models, sales-context inputs from the handoff packet (ICP fit, champion stability, commitment complexity). A health score that relies only on product usage data misses the context that explains why usage is what it is.

Example: An account scores 72/100 (usage: 30/40, engagement: 20/30, sentiment: 10/10, support load: 12/20). Below 70 triggers review. Above 85 flags for expansion conversation.

Red Flag

A specific, observable signal that an account may churn. Red flags differ from a declining health score in that they're discrete events, not trend lines. Examples: login frequency drops 50% or more within 30 days, champion leaves or is promoted to a role without product oversight, renewal meeting declined twice, a key integration breaks and isn't fixed within 5 business days, NPS drops from 8+ to 5 or below within one survey cycle.

Example: The primary user hasn't logged in for 22 days. The champion hasn't responded to the CSM's last two emails. These two signals together constitute a red flag requiring same-week outreach.

At-Risk

An account whose health score has crossed a defined threshold indicating intervention is required. At-risk is not a feeling. It's a number. When an account hits the at-risk threshold, a save play must be activated within a defined time window. The difference between a team that catches churn early and a team that's always surprised is whether "at-risk" means something specific and actionable or just "not great."

Example: Health score below 45 for two consecutive weekly measurements = at-risk. At-risk status triggers a save play within 48 hours and escalates visibility to the CS Manager.

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Handoff Terms

These are the terms that govern what travels from Sales to CS at Closed-Won. Ambiguity here produces the information gaps that force CSMs to reconstruct context the AE already had, and customers to answer the same questions twice.

Handoff Packet

The structured collection of deal information transferred from AE to CSM at Closed-Won. A complete handoff packet includes: use case and business problem, stakeholder map (champion, sponsor, day-to-day contact, objectors), commitments made during the sale, technical requirements, timeline expectations, and deal context notes (why they bought now, what almost killed the deal). See the handoff scorecard for what "complete" means in scored form.

Example: An AE completes the handoff packet in the CRM within 48 hours of close. CSM reviews it before the kickoff call and arrives knowing the customer's success criteria, their stakeholder structure, and any non-standard promises made.

Kickoff

The first joint meeting between the customer, CSM, and often the AE after Closed-Won. Sets the onboarding plan, defines success criteria, agrees on the implementation timeline, and establishes the go-live milestone. The kickoff is where the handoff packet context becomes a shared agreement with the customer, not just an internal document. See joint kickoff call agenda for structure and outcomes.

Example: Kickoff call on Day 5 post-close. AE opens with a context summary, CSM leads the success criteria discussion, customer confirms or corrects the record, and both teams align on a 30-day onboarding plan before ending the call.

Deal Context

The qualitative background of a sale: why the customer bought, what pain drove urgency, who influenced the decision, what objections were raised, what almost killed the deal. Deal context is distinct from deal data (ARR, close date, contract terms). It's the narrative that explains the numbers. CSMs can't ask customers why they bought without sounding like they weren't briefed. Deal context in the handoff packet prevents that.

Example: Deal context note: "Customer had a failed implementation with a competitor 18 months ago. The main objection was implementation complexity. We committed to a dedicated CSE for the first 60 days. Champion is the COO, who was skeptical until the trial showed the pipeline reporting. CFO signed but isn't engaged."

Expectations Document

A written record of commitments made during the sales cycle (timelines, features, integrations, outcomes) signed off by both AE and CS before kickoff. The expectations document is the tool that prevents the "Sales over-promised, CS under-delivers" failure mode. It doesn't have to be formal. A CRM notes section or a shared doc both work. But it has to be written and confirmed before the customer arrives at kickoff expecting something the CSM wasn't told about.

See preventing sales over-promises for how to build the pre-close CS review that creates this document.

Example: Expectations document records: "Integration with existing ERP by Day 30. Go-live milestone: first automated report running by Day 45. Custom dashboard for CFO review completed by Day 60." CSM confirmed scope before kickoff.

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Renewal & Expansion

The metrics in this section determine whether Sales and CS are rowing toward the same outcome. NRR is the most important single number for a post-sale revenue team, and it requires both teams to understand what they're contributing to it.

NRR: Net Revenue Retention

Net Revenue Retention is revenue retained and expanded from existing customers, net of churn and contraction. NRR above 100% means the existing customer base is growing without any new logos. NRR is the primary metric for joint Sales-CS accountability in companies that tie both teams to the health of existing accounts. It's calculated as: (Starting ARR + Expansion ARR − Churned ARR − Contracted ARR) / Starting ARR.

See the cost of a broken handoff: NRR math for how handoff quality translates directly into NRR outcomes.

Example: January ARR: $1,000,000. Expansion in Q1: $80,000. Churn in Q1: $40,000. Contraction: $10,000. NRR = ($1,000,000 + $80,000 − $40,000 − $10,000) / $1,000,000 = 103%.

GRR: Gross Revenue Retention

Gross Revenue Retention is revenue retained from existing customers, not counting expansions. Measures pure retention before upsell. GRR can never exceed 100%. It only measures what was kept, not what was grown. A company with GRR of 92% is losing 8% of its ARR to churn and contraction before any expansion is counted. The gap between GRR and NRR tells you how much your expansion motion is masking underlying retention problems.

Example: Starting ARR: $1,000,000. Churn: $40,000. Contraction: $10,000. GRR = ($1,000,000 − $40,000 − $10,000) / $1,000,000 = 95%. NRR might be 103% if expansion is strong, but the 5-point retention gap is still real.

Expansion ARR

Additional ARR generated from existing customers in a period: seat additions, tier upgrades, cross-sells, new modules. The source of NRR above 100%. Expansion ARR ownership (who initiates and closes expansion motions: CSM, AM, or AE) must be defined explicitly. When it's ambiguous, expansion conversations either don't happen or trigger channel conflict that damages the customer relationship.

Example: A customer adds 5 seats at $150/seat/month in month 8 = $750/month = $9,000 expansion ARR annualized.

Logo Retention

Percentage of customer accounts renewed in a period, regardless of dollar value. A company can have high logo retention but declining NRR if the accounts being retained are smaller than the accounts churning. Logo retention is a useful signal for go-to-market reach and customer satisfaction, but not a reliable proxy for revenue health.

Example: 100 customers, 92 renewed = 92% logo retention. But if the 8 churned accounts were the 8 largest, revenue churn might be 35%. Logo retention looked fine; the business wasn't.

Dollar Retention

Percentage of ARR retained and grown from a cohort. Equivalent to NRR in most usage. The terms are often interchangeable in board reporting and investor conversations. When a CFO asks "what's your dollar retention?", they mean NRR.

Example: A January cohort of $500,000 ARR. By December, the same cohort represents $520,000 ARR (net of churn + expansion). Dollar retention = 104%.

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Compensation & Incentives

Compensation terms determine what behavior your Sales and CS teams actually exhibit, not what their job descriptions say. Misaligned comp is the root cause of most handoff quality failures: AEs hand off poorly because it doesn't cost them anything, and CSMs don't escalate bad-fit accounts because they're measured on retention regardless of fit.

NRR Comp Plan

A compensation structure that ties a portion of AE or CSM variable pay to net revenue retention from their accounts (retention plus expansion, minus churn). NRR comp plans align Sales incentives to long-term account health rather than just new logo volume. When AEs have NRR accountability, handoff quality improves because a poor handoff creates churn that hits their own paycheck. See compensation aligned on NRR for design patterns.

Example: AE earns 80% of commission on close, 20% on the 12-month NRR performance of their cohort. An account that churns in month 6 claws back a portion of the close commission.

Retention Bonus

A fixed or variable incentive paid to Sales for accounts that renew above a defined threshold, separate from the new-logo commission structure. Retention bonuses are common in companies that don't want to redesign the full AE comp plan but want to add a post-sale accountability signal. Simpler than NRR comp plans, but also less precise. They reward renewal without measuring expansion or quality of retained accounts.

Example: AE earns a $2,000 quarterly bonus if 90%+ of their closed accounts from 12 months ago have renewed at or above original ARR.

Expansion Quota

A revenue target assigned to CSMs or AMs for upsell and cross-sell within their book of accounts. When present, CSMs carry a commercial motion alongside their retention role. The expansion quota creates alignment between CS and Sales on growth, but requires training CSMs on how to manage commercial conversations without compromising the trust relationship they've built as the customer's advocate.

Example: CSM has a $200,000 annual expansion quota across 30 accounts. Expansion sourced through CS motion counts toward the number; expansions sourced by the AE from the same account do not.

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Alphabetical Quick Reference Index

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Glossary Maintenance

A glossary no one updates is a glossary no one trusts. Assign one owner (typically RevOps or whoever runs the Sales-CS alignment cadence) to review these definitions quarterly. For teams that also want to align on upstream demand-gen terms, the marketing-sales alignment glossary covers the MQL, SQL, and ICP vocabulary that flows into these post-sale definitions.

Trigger a redefinition session when: a new product line adds a different buyer type; a go-to-market shift changes what "successfully onboarded" looks like; churn increases unexpectedly in a cohort where the handoff was considered complete; or a new Sales VP or CS VP joins who brings different definitions from their prior company. Gartner's ICP development framework is a useful companion exercise when redefining terms after a go-to-market shift: ICP and glossary alignment are two sides of the same targeting problem. New leaders bring prior-company vocabulary that silently diverges from current practice, and that divergence compounds for months before anyone names it.

Version-control the document. When a definition changes, record the date and the reason. Verbal alignment doesn't survive headcount changes. Which terms break first when a new VP joins? The FAQ below covers the highest-frequency disputes teams actually hit in practice.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between NRR and GRR?

NRR (Net Revenue Retention) includes expansion ARR in the calculation, so it can exceed 100% if existing customers are growing. GRR (Gross Revenue Retention) counts only retained ARR (expansion excluded), so it can never exceed 100%. The gap between the two numbers tells you how much your expansion motion is compensating for underlying retention weakness. A company with 88% GRR and 105% NRR is growing fast from upsell, but still losing 12% of its base to churn each year.

What is the difference between a champion and a sponsor?

The champion is the internal user or manager who advocated for the purchase and drives adoption day-to-day. The sponsor is the executive who approved the budget and holds organizational authority. They're often different people. The champion is your primary relationship during onboarding; the sponsor is your primary relationship at renewal. Losing the champion is a red flag for adoption. Losing the sponsor's attention is a red flag for renewal.

When does handoff begin?

Handoff begins at Closed-Won, not at kickoff. The moment a deal is marked Closed-Won, the AE should start populating the handoff packet: deal context, stakeholder map, commitments made, technical requirements. The CSM should review the packet before the kickoff call, not during it. Treating the kickoff as the handoff means the first customer-facing interaction is also the first time CS learns what was sold.

What is a save play and how is it different from a rescue call?

A save play is a defined, time-bounded intervention with named steps, assigned owners, and a specific goal. A rescue call is a reactive response to a customer who's already expressed intent to cancel. Save plays run before the customer asks to leave. They're triggered by health score thresholds or red flag signals. Rescue calls run after, and have a much lower success rate. Building save plays means defining the trigger conditions (which health score threshold, which red flag) before they're needed.

How should an SMB team with no dedicated CSM handle these definitions?

In transactional SMB, the AE or AM often carries both the commercial relationship and the retention responsibility. In that model, most of these definitions still apply. The handoff is between the "selling" mode and the "retaining" mode, even if the same person does both. The most important definitions to preserve: "onboarded" (when is implementation done), "at-risk" (what threshold triggers action), and "NRR" (the metric that keeps score on the combined motion).

How do you use this glossary in a team alignment session?

Use the 45-minute facilitation approach: open the glossary with both Sales and CS team leads in the room, and for each term ask "Do we have a written, agreed definition right now?" Don't debate the definition in the session, just flag whether one exists. Terms without a written definition go on an alignment agenda. Terms with divergent definitions (where Sales and CS give different answers) get prioritized first. The session is a discovery tool, not a training exercise. Budget one additional 30-minute working session per divergent term to write the shared definition and get both teams to sign off.

Which terms from this glossary cause the most misalignment in practice?

The highest-frequency definitional disputes, in order: (1) "Onboarded": 58% of SaaS companies have no shared written definition; (2) "At-Risk": commonly treated as a feeling rather than a threshold; (3) "Champion" vs. "Sponsor": often used interchangeably when they describe different relationships with different risk profiles; (4) "Expansion ARR" ownership: who initiates and closes expansion determines whether it happens at all; (5) "NRR" inputs: whether contraction counts, whether expansion from churned-and-won-back accounts counts. These five account for the majority of cross-team disputes in monthly revenue reviews.

When should the glossary be updated, and who owns it?

Assign one owner (typically RevOps or whoever runs the Sales-CS alignment cadence) and review quarterly. Trigger a redefinition session when a new product line changes what "onboarded" looks like, when a go-to-market shift changes the ICP, or when a new VP of Sales or CS joins. New leaders bring prior-company vocabulary that silently diverges from current practice. The divergence compounds for months before anyone names it. A glossary review in the first 30 days of a new leader joining is the most efficient way to surface and close those gaps before they become process failures.

How does this glossary connect to the ICP definition?

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) determines which customers arrive in CS, and therefore which onboarding definitions, health thresholds, and retention benchmarks apply. When ICP shifts (new buyer type, new segment, new use case), the downstream glossary terms shift with it. "Successfully onboarded" for a 10-seat SMB looks different from "successfully onboarded" for a 50-seat mid-market account. Running a glossary review simultaneously with an ICP refinement exercise ensures the definitions stay aligned with the customers actually being served. For the upstream ICP vocabulary that feeds into these post-sale terms, see the marketing-sales alignment glossary.

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Learn More

• What is Sales & Customer Success Alignment
• What "Successfully Onboarded" Actually Means
• The Cost of a Broken Handoff: NRR Math
• Handoff Scorecard: Did Sales Hand Off Well?
• Customer Health Scoring with Sales-Context Inputs
• Marketing-Sales Alignment Glossary
• Onboarding Fundamentals: What Post-Sale Teams Need