Outbound & GTM Glossary

Glossary of LinkedIn Outbound & B2B GTM Terms

A reference glossary for LinkedIn outbound, signal-based prospecting, and B2B go-to-market terminology as used at Bottle Rocket Growth. Definitions are opinionated and reflect how we actually use these terms in practice.

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): The specific intersection of firmographics, technographics, buyer persona, and trigger signals where a prospect is most likely to convert. A useful ICP is a one-page document with clear inclusion and exclusion rules. See our ICP framework for the four-layer approach.
Signal-Based Outbound: Outbound prospecting that uses dated, verifiable events (funding, hiring, technology adoption, leadership change) to qualify prospects before adding them to a sequence. Contrasts with firmographic-only outbound, which just matches prospects to a static profile.
Trigger Signal: A dated event that indicates a prospect has a reason to consider buying right now. Structural signals (funding, hiring, leadership changes), technology signals (stack adoption, migrations), and intent signals (public commentary, review activity).
Signal Decay: The half-life of a trigger signal. Funding news is typically hot for 90 days, leadership changes for 60, hiring bursts for 30. Signals older than their decay window are noise.
DFY (Done-For-You): An outbound agency engagement model where the agency owns and operates the LinkedIn sender profiles and runs every part of the motion on behalf of the client. BRG's full-service engagement tier.
IOY (Infrastructure-On-You): An outbound agency engagement model where the client provides their own LinkedIn sender profiles and the agency orchestrates campaigns on those accounts. BRG's client-owned infrastructure tier.
Borrowed Sender Profile: A LinkedIn account owned by an outbound agency and used to send messages on behalf of the agency's clients. Alternative to client-owned profiles. See our sender strategy post.
HeyReach: A LinkedIn outbound sequencing platform that supports multi-sender orchestration, conditional branching, and centralized reply management. BRG's primary sequencing tool across all client engagements.
Apollo: A prospecting and sales intelligence platform used for firmographic and persona data, basic signals (funding, employee growth), and list building. One of the core sources in the BRG enrichment stack.
Clay: A workflow and enrichment orchestration platform that combines data from dozens of sources with AI and conditional logic. Used at BRG to build multi-signal prospect lists and run custom enrichment columns.
TheirStack: A technographic data provider that reads technology stack information from public job postings. Used to identify technology adoption and migration signals at target companies.
Sequence: A pre-written series of LinkedIn or email messages sent to a prospect over a defined time period. BRG's baseline LinkedIn sequence is five steps: connection request, post-accept message, two follow-ups, and a breakup message.
Connection Acceptance Rate: The percentage of LinkedIn connection requests that get accepted. Baseline target for B2B outbound is 30 to 45 percent. Below 25 percent indicates an ICP or connection note problem.
Positive Reply Rate: The percentage of accepted connections that reply with something other than an explicit rejection. Target 8 to 15 percent. The distinction between positive reply and any reply matters because "not interested" is a reply but not a useful one.
Meeting-Booked Rate: The percentage of positive repliers who book a meeting. Target 35 to 50 percent. Below this indicates handoff or objection-handling problems, not messaging problems.
Warmup: The process of gradually ramping activity on a new LinkedIn sender profile to avoid platform throttling or restriction. BRG uses a 30-day warmup protocol for client-owned profiles. See sender strategy.
Reply Routing: The process of automatically directing positive replies from outbound sequences into a tool or channel where they can be handled quickly. BRG routes positive replies into client Slack channels, HubSpot tasks, or Salesforce leads within 15 minutes.
Top-of-Funnel (TOFU): The earliest stage of the sales funnel, where a prospect first becomes aware of a vendor. LinkedIn outbound is a TOFU motion. Messaging at this stage focuses on relevance and interest, not conversion.
GTM (Go-To-Market): The combined set of strategies, teams, and processes a company uses to bring its product to market and generate revenue. Includes sales, marketing, revenue operations, customer success, and partnerships.
BDR / SDR: Business Development Representative or Sales Development Representative. Outbound roles responsible for generating qualified meetings. BRG outbound campaigns supplement or replace internal BDR and SDR motions.
MQL / SQL: Marketing Qualified Lead and Sales Qualified Lead. Definitions vary by company but generally: MQL has shown interest (content download, webinar), SQL has been validated by a rep as a real buying opportunity. BRG deliverables are typically meetings or SQLs, not MQLs.
Firmographic: Company-level attributes: industry, employee count, revenue, geography, funding stage. Foundational but insufficient alone for modern outbound. Needs to be combined with technographics and signals.
Technographic: Data about what technology a company uses. Sources include job postings (TheirStack, BuiltWith), network traffic analysis, app store reviews, and product documentation. Useful both for qualification and for messaging context.
BRG ICP Engine: Bottle Rocket Growth's internal tool that combines signals from Apollo, Clay, TheirStack, and custom scrapers into ranked prospect lists filtered through client ICP rules. Part of every DFY and IOY engagement.

Glossary of LinkedIn Outbound & B2B GTM Terms

Related Reading