Marketing Playbook
Glossary Index and Hard to Find Definitions
of Marketing & Selling Terms, Acronyms, Jargon

A-B | C-D | E-M | N-R | S-Z

S

Saddle-stitching—A method of binding where the pages of your catalog are stapled down the spine. You’ll see this binding in pamphlets, booklets and magazines. Play 100.

Sales Funnel—An illustration of the Sales process showing a large number of (unqualified) Suspects entering the Funnel, being filtered out in subsequent levels or stages, and a smaller number of Customers exiting the Funnel.

Sales Process, Sales Process Diagram—a flowchart depicting the steps your sales team follows to find, qualify, and win new business and increase business opportunities with existing clients. We divide the process into four stages: Stage 1) Thinking, targeting, planning, strategy; Stage 2) Reaching, outreach, lead generation, lead qualification, lead distribution; Stage 3) Engaging, pipeline management, prospect engagement, presentation, proposal; and Stage 4) Keeping, retaining, re-engaging. TREK for short. Play 1, TREK Methodology.

Sales Reps, Sales People, Sales Representatives—See Reps.

Service Mark—See SM Symbol.

SIC—Standard Industrial Classification. Announced in 1972, SIC codes are four-digit numerical codes assigned by the U.S. government to business establishments to identify their primary business. Also see NAICS. Play 86.

Spam—Spam is unsolicited e-mail also known as junk mail or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial e-mail.) By sending e-mail to only to those who have requested to receive it, you are following accepted permission-based e-mail guidelines. Play 25, 31, 98.

SMB—Small and Medium Businesses, typically $5M to $200M revenue and at least 4 Reps. In European countries, this segment is refered to as SME for Small and Medium Enterprises.

SM Symbol—The service mark symbol is used to indicate that a trade service is claimed as a service mark. The two letters should appear superscripted in upper case (SM). See also Registered Trademark. Play 7.

Stock Illustration, Stock Photography—Illustration and photography available to graphic designers and web designers that may be used instead of principal photography or original illustration for sake of saving time and money. In this book, I make use of stock and original works of art. Stock art may be made available on a royalty-free basis or on a rights-managed basis. Play 60.

Style Sheets—In traditional print publishing and on the Web, style sheets specify how a document should appear, standardizing such elements as fonts, page layout and line spacing, repeated content, and so forth. Web style sheets help ensure consistency across Webpages, but HTML coding can also override the sheets in designated sections of the pages. See also CSS.

Sumatra—My favorite blend of Starbucks coffee. If you want to make my day, buy me a cup of Sumatra. Play 4.

Suspect—A person you think may qualify as a potential Customer.

T

Thumbnail—A small version of a graphic image, typically in .jpg or .gif format.

Tchotchke—Tchotchke, chachka, premiums or advertising specialties are promotional items, usually three dimensional, used by a company to promote a product, service, brand, idea, organization or other element. Such items are frequently used in promotional direct mail campaigns, as giveaways at tradeshows and sales meetings, for customers, and many other uses. Premium items carry the company name, symbol, brand, trademark or other identity, and must be used correctly. Play 26, 47, 96.

.tif, .tiff—Tagged Image File Format, a widely accepted bitmapped graphic file format. Plays 5, 60.

TM symbol—The trademark symbol is used to indicate that a name or design is claimed as a trademark, but has NOT been formally recognized as a registered trademark by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The two letters should appear superscripted in upper case (TM). See also Registered Trademark. Play 7.

TREK—The methodology embodied in the online and printed versions of the Marketing Playbook as well as all of the consulting work from Venture Marketing. A full description is here. Play 1.

Trademark—See Registered Trademark. Play 7.

U

Upload—To send a file from one computer or server to another.

Up-Sell—The process of selling more expensively priced products and services to customers, which can create a sense of ill will if customer interprets it as a bait-and-switch. See also Cross-Sell.

US1—When you select PRNewswire’s US1 distribution list, you’re distributing your news release directly into the newsrooms of more than 4,200 news organizations and 3,000 web sites throughout the United States. Play 36.

V

Vector Graphic—A graphic image drawn in shapes and lines, called paths. Think back to your geometry class and drawing a line from coordinates (0,0) to (4, 4).The most popular computer program for creating vector graphics is Adobe Illustrator. Vector graphics may be scaled to any size without loss of resolution, which is why all logos should be created in vector format and then converted to bitmap format for posting to web sites and including in Microsoft Office programs like Word and PowerPoint.

W

Webcast—A digitized streaming broadcast of a video on the internet.

Web conference—An online learning event or meeting of participants from disparate geographic locations with communication taking place via text, audio, video, or electronic whiteboard. They are often archived for on-demand access. Play 97

Whitelist—A whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist. Instead of listing IP addresses to block, a whitelist includes IP addresses that have been approved to deliver e-mail despite blocking measures. It is common practice for ISPs to maintain both a blacklist and a whitelist. When e-mail service providers, like Constant Contact, say they are “whitelisted” it means that their IP addresses are on a specific ISP’s whitelist and are confident that e-mails sent using their service will be delivered. Play 98.

White Paper—A technical document published by the seller, which explains a certain technology in order to educate consumers. The terminology used may be somewhat technical, but the goal of a white paper is usually to describe the technology or product in terms most people can understand. It explains the company’s position relative to the product and is not typically “fair and balanced.” Play 82.

WYSIWYG—What You See Is What You Get (pronounced “wizzy wig”), a WYSIWYG program allows designers to see text and graphics on screen exactly as they will appear when printed out or published online, rather than in programming code.

Z

Zip file—1) A file that has been compressed, often with the .ZIP format originated by PKWARE. 2) A file on a Zip disk, not necessarily compressed. 3) A compressed file with the .EXE extension that is self-extracting (can be unzipped simply by opening it).