An enthusiastic contact inside the prospect's business who loves your product, returns your calls instantly, and possesses absolutely zero purchasing authority.
What they actually mean
"We have spent three weeks pitching to a very polite junior associate who cannot buy a stapler without written permission."
Heard in the wild
"Our champion in operations is incredibly excited about the software and is currently trying to find out who holds the budget."
A comprehensive, beautifully formatted guide on how to perform a business function, designed to be stored in a shared folder and never opened by anyone actually doing the job.
"We’ve created a new outbound sales playbook to standardise our approach to cold leads."
Translation
"Here is some homework you will ignore."
The strategic decision to stop trying to sell to a prospect, usually made immediately after realising they have no money and do not like you.
"We decided to qualify them out of the sales pipeline early to focus on high-intent accounts."
Translation
"They hung up on us three times."
A mythical, highly cooperative target client who possesses an infinite budget, an urgent business need, and absolutely no procurement department to ruin the deal.
"This lead doesn't quite fit our ICP, but they seem keen."
Translation
They have zero budget and are just using us for free consulting.