B2B prospecting glossary

This glossary defines 55 B2B prospecting terms, from channels to legal rules and metrics. Each term has a neutral definition and, where useful, what it means at murmur.

Updated

Also available in: Français

This B2B prospecting glossary defines the terms you meet when looking for new customers among businesses: channels, data, legal rules and metrics. Each definition is neutral; the “At murmur” note explains, where useful, how the term applies to our platform.

Contents

A

A/B test

A comparison of two versions of a message, sent to two comparable groups, to keep the one that gets more replies.

ABM (account-based marketing)

An approach that focuses sales and marketing effort on a chosen list of accounts, each treated as a market in its own right.

At murmur: you can import your list of websites, and each business gets an opening written from its own site. murmur does not target named people.

AI SDR (AI prospecting agent)

A tool presented as able to prospect on its own, end to end: targeting, writing, following up, replying.

At murmur: that is not our model. The AI reads, personalises and sorts; you choose the target, approve the message and lead the conversation.

B

B2B database

A set of information about businesses (activity, location, website, legal identifiers) used to target prospecting.

At murmur: 44.1 million businesses in 164 countries as of 26/10/2026, from public sources (websites, directories, registers). Having a business in the database is not the right to contact it: the rules change from one country to the next.

B2B prospecting

Looking for new customers among businesses, as opposed to selling to consumers (B2C).

At murmur: murmur handles the first written contact.

C

CAPTCHA

A test meant to tell a human from a bot before a form is submitted: a tick box, images to recognise, an invisible challenge.

At murmur: a submission that fails is never charged; credits are only debited on proof of submission.

Cold email

A prospecting email sent to someone who has not asked to be contacted, often from dedicated domains and mailboxes. Since 1 February 2024, Gmail has required senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to use SPF, DKIM and DMARC and to offer one-click unsubscribe.

At murmur: no cold email. The message goes through the business’s contact form; see cold email alternatives.

Cold outreach

Contacting a business that does not know you yet.

At murmur: the contact is cold but not blind: the opening starts from what the business says about itself on its website.

Company register

A public register listing a country’s businesses and their legal identifiers: Companies House in the United Kingdom, the SIRENE directory in France.

At murmur: the database holds 28.5 million legal identities as of 26/10/2026.

A regime in which you may only prospect someone after obtaining their agreement. In Germany, Austria, Denmark, Italy and Spain, it applies to electronic marketing, even between businesses.

At murmur: we do not send to those countries without documented consent (our reading, country by country).

Contact form

A form a business publishes on its website to receive requests: name, email address, message, sometimes a phone number or subject.

At murmur: as of 26/10/2026, 4,689,755 confirmed contact forms across 24,388,970 websites analysed, about 19%.

Contact form outreach

A first sales contact submitted through the form a business publishes on its own website.

At murmur: it is our channel. murmur submits a message personalised for each business, under the sender’s identity, in the countries where its sending rules allow it (the full guide).

Cooldown

A minimum period during which a business that has already been contacted is not contacted again, to avoid approaching it too often.

Credit

A unit of usage on a prospecting platform, counted as you go.

At murmur: each contact costs 0.1 to 3 credits depending on the target business; the cost is shown before launch and charged on proof of submission. The Starter plan gives 300 credits a month for €89 excluding VAT (pricing).

CRM and RevOps

A CRM is the tool that manages customer relationships (contacts, opportunities, history); RevOps is the function that aligns marketing, sales and service around revenue.

At murmur: murmur is not a CRM. Replies are handled in your workspace, and your lists can be exported to your own tools.

D

Deduplication

Finding and merging the records that refer to the same business, so it is not contacted several times.

At murmur: at collection, records sharing the same Google place or the same normalised address are merged; at sending, an identity fingerprint (shared phone, email or company number) avoids contacting the same business twice in a campaign, even when it runs several websites.

Deliverability

An email’s ability to reach the inbox rather than the spam folder. It depends on domain authentication, sender reputation and complaint rates: Gmail asks for a spam rate below 0.3%.

At murmur: the notion does not apply as such, since the message is submitted through a form; its equivalent is proof of submission.

Demand generation and GTM engineering

Demand generation builds interest in an offer before the sale; GTM engineering builds automated go-to-market workflows from data and APIs.

At murmur: murmur does not create demand. Its API and MCP server are announced but not yet available.

F

Follow-up

A further message to a business that did not reply to the first one. According to Instantly, 42% of replies to cold emails in its 2025 campaigns came from follow-ups.

At murmur: a campaign can include one follow-up, submitted through the same form after a delay you set.

G

GDPR and UK GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (EU 2016/679) and its UK counterpart govern any processing of personal data, prospecting included: legal basis, information, right to object. Under UK GDPR, the right to object to direct marketing is absolute.

At murmur: we identify ourselves, we state where the data comes from, and any request to stop applies across all our clients.

Generic address

An organisation’s impersonal address (contact@, info@, sales@), as opposed to a named address. In France, the CNIL says that the generic addresses of legal persons are not subject to the information and objection principles it sets out for prospecting professionals.

At murmur: a website’s generic contact form is, like a generic address, an impersonal contact point.

Go-to-market (GTM)

The plan for bringing an offer to market: target, positioning, channels, sales cycle.

At murmur: murmur covers one stage, the first contact, between defining the ideal customer and the sales conversation.

Growth hacking

A method of testing acquisition channels quickly and measuring what they deliver.

At murmur: murmur can be used to test the contact form channel on one segment. It relies on no tricks and no bought lists, and promises no result.

Growth marketing

Steering growth through experimentation across the whole customer journey.

At murmur: a first-contact channel to test on one segment before widening it.

I

ICP (ideal customer profile)

A description of the businesses most likely to buy an offer: sector, size, area, signals.

At murmur: the platform can suggest profiles from your website, which you then adjust.

Inbound

Acquisition through incoming requests, prompted by content, search or advertising.

At murmur: the replies you receive answer your message; they are not inbound requests.

Intent data

Signals meant to show that a business is looking to buy: searches, visits, hiring.

At murmur: murmur does not sell intent data; it relies on public information about each business’s activity to target and personalise.

L

L.34-5 CPCE

The article of the French Post and Electronic Communications Code that governs direct electronic marketing in France. It bans email prospecting using a natural person’s details without prior consent; towards legal persons, an opt-out regime applies.

At murmur: France is a “framed opt-out” country, where we prospect.

Lead

A sales contact who has shown interest in an offer. A raw lead still needs qualifying; a qualified lead is ready for a sales conversation.

Lead generation

All the actions that produce sales contacts interested in an offer.

At murmur: murmur opens conversations; the businesses that reply with interest become your leads. murmur sells neither leads nor meetings.

Legitimate interest

One of the GDPR’s legal bases: processing is allowed when it serves a legitimate interest of the organisation without overriding people’s rights. In France, the CNIL accepts it as a basis for prospecting a professional when the message relates to their profession.

LLM (large language model)

An artificial intelligence model trained on large volumes of text, able to read and write.

At murmur: the AI reads each business’s website and writes the message’s opening; you approve examples before anything is sent.

M

Multichannel prospecting

Prospecting that combines several channels (email, LinkedIn, phone, post) around the same target.

At murmur: murmur adds one channel, the contact form; it runs no email sequences, LinkedIn or phone calls.

N

A legal person is a legal entity (a company, an association); a natural person is a human being, including when they trade on their own. Prospecting law protects them differently: in the UK, sole traders are treated as individuals under PECR.

At murmur: sole traders are handled separately; when a UK recipient’s status is in doubt, we treat them as an individual, and in Sweden sole proprietorships are excluded from our targeting.

O

Objection (opt-out)

A regime in which you may prospect without prior agreement, provided you identify yourself and offer a simple way to refuse further contact.

At murmur: a public opt-out page lets any business ask not to be contacted again. The request, confirmed through a link valid for 48 hours, applies across all murmur clients.

Opening line

The first sentences of a prospecting message, the ones that decide whether it gets read. A good opening shows you know the business you are writing to.

At murmur: the AI writes each message’s opening from the business’s website, in the recipient’s language; the rest of the message is yours.

Outbound

Prospecting in which the seller makes the first contact: email, phone, LinkedIn, contact form.

At murmur: an outbound channel that goes through the target business’s contact form.

P

PECR

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, the UK rules on electronic marketing. According to the ICO, you can email corporate bodies (companies, LLPs, government bodies), but sole traders are treated as individuals (regulation 22), and B2B marketing calls must be screened against the TPS and the Corporate TPS (regulation 21).

At murmur: the United Kingdom will be the self-service platform’s next country, where we prospect under strict conditions.

Personalisation

Adapting a message to its recipient, from a simple merge field (the business’s name) to a text written from what the business says about itself.

At murmur: the opening is written from each business’s website; your offer, instructions and signature remain the foundation of the message.

Pipeline

All the opportunities in progress, sorted by stage, from first contact to signature.

At murmur: murmur feeds the start of the pipeline; the rest of the sale stays with you.

Proof of submission

Evidence that a message was actually delivered.

At murmur: credits are only charged on proof of submission; a message whose delivery is not established is not billed.

Q

Qualified meeting

A sales meeting with someone who matches the target and has an identified need.

At murmur: murmur does not sell meetings; it opens conversations that you lead.

R

Reachable businesses

The businesses in a target that can actually be contacted through a given channel, given the contact details available and the country’s rules.

At murmur: their number is shown before you commit; it depends on whether a contact form exists and on each country’s rules.

Reply address

The email address at which the recipient of a message can answer the sender.

At murmur: it is the only thing you need to set up. Once forwarded to murmur, replies are sorted in your workspace; otherwise they simply arrive at that address.

Reply rate

The share of messages sent that receive a reply. For cold email, Instantly measures 3.43% on average across 2025 campaigns; other studies publish 0.45% to 3.7% depending on the method.

At murmur: replies are sorted in your workspace; murmur does not yet publish an aggregate rate.

S

SDR and BDR

Sales development representative and business development representative: salespeople tasked with finding new customers and opening conversations. The exact split between the two roles varies from one company to another.

At murmur: research and the first message are taken care of; these salespeople keep the conversation.

Sending domain

The domain name prospecting emails are sent from, often separate from the main domain to protect its reputation. It must be authenticated with SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

At murmur: no sending domain to buy or configure.

Sequence

A scheduled series of messages and actions (emails, invitations, calls) sent to a prospect over time, which stops when they reply.

At murmur: a campaign has a first message and, if you wish, one follow-up.

SIRENE, SIREN and SIRET

SIRENE is the French directory of businesses and establishments kept by INSEE. The SIREN number (9 digits) identifies a business, and the SIRET number (14 digits) each of its establishments.

At murmur: the SIRENE directory, with 16.8 million establishments, is one of the database’s sources.

Social selling

Using professional social networks to get known, build relationships and open sales conversations.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC

Three email authentication protocols: SPF lists the servers allowed to send for a domain, DKIM signs messages, and DMARC says what to do with those that fail. Since 1 February 2024, Gmail has required all three from senders of more than 5,000 messages a day.

At murmur: nothing to configure, since no prospecting email leaves your domain.

Submission

Filling in and sending a contact form with a message.

At murmur: each message is submitted under the sender’s name, with their reply address, during the recipient’s business hours or at a schedule you set.

Suppression list

A list of people or businesses that have asked not to be contacted again, checked before every send. In the UK, for example, B2B marketing calls must be screened against the TPS and the Corporate TPS.

At murmur: one suppression list shared by all clients; a business on it is contacted by none of them.

T

TAM (total addressable market)

The theoretical size of an offer’s market, in number of businesses or in revenue.

At murmur: alongside that theoretical market, the platform shows how many businesses in your target can be reached.

W

Warm-up

Gradually increasing the sending volume of a new mailbox or domain, to build its reputation with mail providers.

At murmur: unnecessary, since no prospecting email leaves your mailboxes.

Sources