Agency operations glossary

Terms

Term	Definition
Agency operating system	One platform that runs an agency's sales, proposals, delivery, marketing and client reporting in a shared record.
Approval workflow	The path a piece of work takes from draft to publication, with a named person's sign-off in the middle.
Brand voice	How a brand sounds in writing: its tone, vocabulary, and the things it will and will not say.
Client portal	A private area where an agency's clients sign in to see work, reports, approvals and messages.
Content calendar	A schedule of the posts and campaigns going out, by channel and date, across one or many clients.
Conversion rate	The share of leads or proposals that move to the next step, usually measured as enquiries to proposals and proposals to won.
Discovery report	A researched report on a prospect's market, competitors and position, with the questions needed before quoting.
Engagement	The agreed piece of ongoing or project work between an agency and a client, with its terms, fees and deliverables.
Handover	The point where responsibility for a client, project or task passes from one person or team to another.
Lead source	The channel an enquiry came from, such as a referral, a website form, a social message or a phone call.
Lead triage	The first decision about a new enquiry: whether it fits, who owns it and what the first reply is.
Milestone	A named point in a project with a due date and a condition that shows it is finished.
Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)	The predictable revenue an agency expects each month from retainers and other repeating fees.
Multi-tenant	A software design where one running application serves many separate customers, called tenants, with their data kept apart.
Next action	The single specific thing that happens next on a lead or task, with a person and a date attached.
Per-seat pricing	A pricing model that charges for each person on your team who uses the software, not for each client.
Pipeline stage	A named step a lead passes through on the way to becoming a client or being lost.
Proposal open tracking	Seeing when a client opens a proposal and how many times they return to it.
Request for information (RFI)	A written question an agency asks a client to answer before work or pricing can be fixed.
Response time	How long a website takes to answer a request, measured in milliseconds or seconds.
Retainer	An ongoing agreement where a client pays a regular fee for a defined scope of work or a block of availability.
Sales pipeline	The list of every prospect between first contact and a decision, organised by stage.
Single sign-on (SSO)	A way for people to sign in to several tools with one existing company account.
Statement of work	A document that lists the deliverables, responsibilities, timeline and conditions for a piece of work.
Status report	A regular summary for a client of what is done, what is next and what is blocked on a project.
TLS certificate expiry	The date a website's security certificate stops being valid, after which browsers warn visitors away.
Uptime	The share of time a website responds correctly, usually shown over the last 24 hours or 30 days.
White-label software	Software made by one company and presented to customers under another company's name and branding.

Glossary

Terms

Founding agencies, by invitation