The words below describe a deal from the buyer's side, and from the seller's side it is so often confused with. Each definition starts with the short version, so you can quote it.
The buyer's side
Buyer motion
Buyer motion is something the buyer does that moves a deal forward: a reply that commits to something, a next step booked on their side, a new name from their side on the thread, a document leaving their side, an approval cleared. It is read as a sequence, because one reply on its own predicts very little.
Buyer commitment
A buyer commitment is a dated next step that someone on the buyer's side owns. The test question: does someone on the buyer's side owe us a step, on a date they named? See the five tests for a next step in the stalled-deals guide.
Seller activity
Seller activity is everything the selling team does on a deal: emails, calls, meetings, notes, fields filled in the CRM. It is real work, and it says nothing about whether the buyer moved.
Seller-side capture
Seller-side capture is any tool that records seller activity automatically, such as call recorders and tools that fill the CRM on their own. It makes the seller's record accurate and complete, and leaves the buyer's side unread.
Champion
A champion is the person on the buyer's side who wants the deal to happen and works for it internally. A champion who goes quiet late in a deal is one of the clearest warning signs.
Economic buyer
The economic buyer is the person who can approve the spend. A deal that reaches pricing before the economic buyer has taken part is at risk, whatever the champion says.
Single-threaded deal
A single-threaded deal runs through one person on the buyer's side. If that person leaves or loses the internal argument, the deal has nobody else to carry it.
The state of a deal
Stalled deal
A stalled deal is one where the buyer has stopped moving while the seller keeps working it: no new names, no dated step they own, no documents coming back, no approvals cleared. Its stage and close date often stay unchanged for weeks. See the stalled-deals guide.
Slipped deal
A slipped deal has missed its close date and moved to a later one. Most slipped deals were stalled for weeks before they slipped.
Happy ears
Happy ears is a manager's word for a deal the rep believes in and the buyer does not back. The rep hears agreement in politeness; the buyer's moves tell a different story.
Re-anchor
A re-anchor is a short message that restarts a buyer who has stopped, by naming the real reason out loud and asking for one small, dated step only the buyer can take.
Closed deals
Win-loss analysis
Win-loss analysis is the reading of won and lost deals to understand what made the difference. It can draw on buyer interviews, and on what the deals recorded along the way. See the win-loss guide.
Closed-lost reason
A closed-lost reason is what a sales team records when it marks a deal as lost, usually picked from a dropdown on the day the deal is closed out. It describes the loss from the seller's side. See the closed-lost reasons guide.
Closed-lost autopsy
A closed-lost autopsy is a read of every lost deal over a period, setting the day the buyer went still against the day the team stopped counting on the deal. The gap between the two dates is how early the loss could have been seen.
Ten-loss method
The ten-loss method is a hand-run win-loss analysis: your last ten losses next to ten wins from the same period, with the buyer's last move, its date and the stage where each deal stalled. The worksheet is free to download.
Read horizon
The read horizon is the last day of a closed deal you allow into the analysis: the day before it closed. Reading the signature day lets the outcome leak into the pattern, and a line like "we'll sign" looks predictive only because it was written after the decision.
Nudge
Nudge
Nudge, by Addvocate, reads your won and lost deals to learn how your buyers buy, then watches your open deals for the same moves. Its tagline is "The buyer's side of every deal." See about Nudge.
Headless sales software
Headless sales software works inside the tools a team already uses, such as Slack, Claude, ChatGPT and email, instead of asking the team to adopt a new app. Nudge works this way, with a web app only for the views that need a board.