PRINTABLE FIELD NOTES
GTM terminology
Use this before an interview or during a focused review.
GTM terminology
Commercial reasoning is the discipline of proving customer value and agreeing how to act on it.
| AE / CE / GTM | Account Executive owns commercial coordination; Customer Engineer contributes technical discovery, validation and customer outcomes. Go-to-market is the coordinated path to customers. Boundaries vary by team. |
|---|---|
| Champion / economic buyer | A champion advocates internally; an economic buyer can authorize spend. The most technical attendee may be neither. |
| PoC / pilot | A proof of concept tests a technical uncertainty. A pilot tests a bounded real usage path, adoption and operating model. Define exit criteria. |
| Adoption / time-to-value | Usage that realizes intended value / elapsed time until the customer achieves a meaningful outcome. Login counts alone can mislead. |
| Upsell / cross-sell | Expand the existing service scope / add a complementary solution. Both require a customer problem and adoption evidence. |
| QBR / renewal | Quarterly Business Review revisits outcomes and priorities. Renewal decisions are influenced by realized value, trust and alternatives well before contract expiry. |
| ROI / TCO / payback | ROI = (benefit − cost) / cost. Total Cost of Ownership includes migration, labor and operation. Payback = initial investment / periodic net benefit, when positive. Avoid double counting. |