Real Estate Sales Glossary: 50 Terms Indian Teams Should Know

This real estate sales glossary defines the terms that come up daily on an Indian property sales floor — the CRM jargon, the funnel vocabulary, the channel-partner and RERA language — in plain English, one or two sentences each. It’s meant as a reference you can scan or link to, with several terms pointing to deeper guides. For the bigger picture on where the industry is heading, start with our overview of real estate sales tech in India.

Terms are grouped roughly alphabetically.

A

Absorption rate — The percentage of available inventory booked in a given period. A core signal among the metrics that predict a sellout.

Account — In generic CRM language, the company or entity a deal belongs to. The concept fits B2B poorly in real estate, which is part of why real estate CRM is hard.

Attribution — Crediting a booking (or lead) to the marketing source that produced it, so you know which channels actually work. See marketing attribution.

Auto-assignment — Automatically routing an incoming lead to a salesperson the moment it arrives, with no manual step. See auto-assign leads.

B

BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) — Buyers close to a decision, evaluating specific options. The stage where comparison and pricing content matters.

Booking — The point a buyer commits to a unit, usually with a token/booking amount. In real estate it’s the start of a long payment-to-possession relationship, not the end.

Booking amount — The initial payment a buyer makes to reserve a unit, ahead of the full agreement.

C

Cadence — The defined rhythm and number of follow-up touches a rep makes before a lead is considered lost. See how many follow-ups before conversion.

Channel partner (CP) — An external broker or agency that brings buyers to a developer in exchange for commission. Managing them well is covered in channel partner management.

Cold lead — A lead that has gone unresponsive or stalled. Not dead — often revivable, as in re-engaging cold leads.

Commission — The payout a channel partner earns on a booking they sourced. Tracking it reliably is core to broker commission management.

Conversion rate — The percentage of leads (or site visits) that turn into bookings at a given stage. The funnel’s health metric.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) — What you pay, on average, to acquire one lead. Lowering it is the goal of reducing cost per lead.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) — Software to capture, track and convert leads. For the property-specific version, see what a real estate CRM is.

D

Deduplication — Detecting and merging the same lead that arrived from multiple sources, so reps don’t double-work it. See duplicate lead detection.

DPDP Act — India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, governing how customer data must be handled. Its CRM implications are in DPDP Act and real estate CRM.

Drip campaign — An automated sequence of messages sent to a lead over time to nurture them. See email drip campaigns.

E

Expected value (of a lead) — A lead’s worth, calculated as booking value × margin × conversion probability. The honest way to size the cost of a lost lead.

F

Field sales — Selling done out of the office — at sites, with CPs, on the move — which demands a mobile-first CRM.

Follow-up — Any contact attempt after the first, chasing a lead toward a site visit or booking. The single most under-done activity in average teams.

Forecast — A projection of future bookings based on pipeline and velocity. See forecasting property bookings.

Funnel — The staged journey from enquiry to booking. The Indian property version is mapped in real estate lead funnel stages.

H

Hot lead — A high-intent lead likely to convert soon — typically post-site-visit or strongly qualified.

Hybrid site visit — A buyer journey combining a virtual tour to shortlist and a physical visit to decide. Explored in the future of site visits.

I

Inbound lead — A lead that comes to you (portal enquiry, ad form, walk-in), as opposed to one you prospect.

Inventory — The units available to sell in a project. Tracking how fast it moves underpins sellout prediction.

IVR — Interactive Voice Response — the call-routing system that, integrated with a CRM, captures phone enquiries. See call tracking integration.

K

KPI (Key Performance Indicator) — A core metric used to track sales performance, such as response time or conversion. See real estate sales KPIs.

KYC — Know Your Customer — the identity documentation collected during booking. Managed alongside booking documents.

L

Lead — Any prospective buyer who has shown interest. The unit of everything in sales.

Lead leakage — Leads lost to slow response, no follow-up, or disputes — usually invisible until audited. The economics are in the cost of a lost lead.

Lead scoring — Ranking leads by likelihood to convert, manually or with AI. See lead scoring for property inquiries and AI lead qualification.

Lead source — Where a lead came from (99acres, Meta ads, CP, walk-in). Tracking source ROI tells you where to spend. See track lead source ROI.

M

MOFU (Middle of Funnel) — Buyers actively evaluating, past awareness but pre-decision.

MIS — Management Information System — the reports that give leadership a pipeline view. Increasingly automated.

N

Nurturing — Keeping a not-yet-ready lead warm over a long cycle until they’re ready to act. See lead nurturing for long sales cycles.

No-show — A buyer who books a site visit and doesn’t turn up. A costly leak; see reducing site-visit no-shows.

O

Objection handling — Addressing a buyer’s hesitations (price, location, timeline) on the path to close. See objection handling in property sales.

Onboarding — Bringing a new channel partner (or rep) into your system and process. For CPs, see onboarding channel partners at scale.

P

Pipeline — The set of live deals organised by stage. The heart of sales management; see the sales pipeline guide.

Possession — Handover of the completed unit to the buyer — the end of the post-sales journey.

Proptech — Technology built for property — listings, transactions, sales and management. The Indian state of it is our trends overview.

R

RERA — The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, governing developer and broker conduct in India. See the RERA compliance guide.

Round robin — A method of distributing leads evenly across reps in rotation. Compared with manual in round-robin vs manual assignment.

S

Sales velocity — The rate at which units get booked (units per week/month). A leading sellout indicator.

Site visit — A buyer’s in-person visit to the project — the highest-intent funnel moment. Converting it is covered in site-visit-to-booking conversion.

Speed-to-lead — How fast a rep makes first contact after a lead arrives. Often one of the most important leading indicators; see lead response time.

T

Tier-2 / Tier-3 city — Smaller Indian cities with distinct, broker-led property markets. See tier-2 and tier-3 real estate sales.

TOFU (Top of Funnel) — Early-stage buyers building awareness, not yet evaluating specifics.

V

Vertical CRM — A CRM purpose-built for one industry (here, real estate) rather than a generic horizontal tool. The trade-offs are in real estate CRM vs generic CRM.

Virtual tour — An online walkthrough used to shortlist before a physical visit — a filter, not a replacement.

W

Walk-in — A buyer who arrives at the sales gallery without a prior appointment.

Webhook — An automated trigger that pushes data between systems in real time — how a CRM stays in sync with other tools. See CRM API and webhooks.

WhatsApp Business — The dominant communication channel in Indian property sales. Capturing leads from it is covered in WhatsApp lead capture.

The takeaway

A shared vocabulary makes a sales team faster — fewer crossed wires, cleaner reviews, better-briefed channel partners. Bookmark this glossary, share it with new joiners, and follow the links when a term deserves a deeper read.

Next step: Put the language to work with our real estate lead management guide.