MONGODB APPENDIX GUIDE 

 
TABLE OF CONTENTS: 
I. TECHNOLOGY/DATABASE 
A. Tech Fundamentals 
B. Database Fundamentals 
C. MongoDB Products  
D. Community vs. Enterprise Advance Framework 
E. Acronyms 
■ Technology and Database 
■ Products and Services 
 
II. SALES 
A. Value Framework Cheat Sheet 
B. Acronyms 
■ Internal Sales Roles 
■ Command of the Message 
■ Sales Process/Pipeline Generation 
■ Personas 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
TECHNOLOGY/DATABASE   
  
TECH FUNDAMENTALS 
 
Concept  Explanation  Why It Matters 

Bare Metal  A physical server with no virtualization that is  Term used by customers. You should know 
available for use by only one customer.  and understand it! 

Cloud Computing  The ability to remotely access and use  Foundational concept that’s required to 
computer hardware and software through the  understand and articulate the value 
Internet.  proposition of MongoDB Atlas and a fully 
managed platform of services. 

Cloud Native  Describes a solution designed to work only in  Phrase used to describe a customer/company 
the cloud (of one vendor) without alternative  that was “born in the cloud” and isn’t 
options.  encumbered by any legacy data center(s). 

Hybrid Cloud  Mix of on-prem, private cloud, and public  There are customers with legacy on-prem 
cloud setup. Any two of these together  solutions that are balancing those 
classify as “hybrid.”  investments against new(er) investments in 
“the cloud”, and you’ll need to understand their 
environment and be able to coach through 
MongoDB solutions and our value proposition. 

Multi Cloud  The use of multiple cloud computing services  Companies are increasingly seeking to 
in a single client-side architecture.  diversify their cloud infrastructures beyond a 
single provider. 

Private Cloud   Similar to “public cloud”, but with restricted  Customers unable or unwilling to move into 
access, usually in boundaries defined by an  the public cloud still want to emulate the 
enterprise.  public cloud for myriad reasons, and there 
solutions available for customers to attempt 
simulating their own public cloud 
environments but with the important caveat 
that these environments are self provisioned 
and self managed...and thus compromising 
several value propositions associated with a 
true public cloud. As a seller, you need to 
understand the difference and why customers 
might choose to build a “private cloud”, and be 
able to do discovery to learn more. 

Public Cloud  A cloud computing offering from a vendor that  Infrastructure provided by another provider 
allows anyone to use their services.  (GCP, AWS, Azure, etc.), that customers can 
rent/lease. Additionally, platform services 
and software applications may be made 
available for purchase or general use that is 
hosted on these clouds. This is important 
 because our flagship services and platform 
are available on GCP, Azure, and AWS. You 
need to understand how to articulate the 
value prop. 

Server  At a fundamental level, a server is essentially a  Closely associated with “bare metal”, it’s a type 
computer that houses your application and/or  of powerful computer and a term you’ll hear 
other technologies.  from customers. Servers have the same 
technology as a personal computer (RAM, 
Storage, CPUs), but it does not have the same 
interfaces as a personal computer as it lives in 
a data warehouse with hundreds (or 
thousands) of other servers. 
 
When a customer purchases a license of 
MongoDB, their instance of MongoDB will be 
installed on a server for use. 

Shadow IT  A term often used to describe IT systems and  You’ll run into this in customer accounts and 
solutions built and used inside organizations  it’s a strong signal the customer (or their 
without explicit organizational approval.  teams) are feeling pain around whatever 
Ex: John in infrastructure doesn't want to wait  they’re doing with shadow IT. 
3 weeks to get a new Exadata Server procured 
and installed so he goes to AWS and 
provisions a server using his credit card for 
the development of a new application for the 
business. John has just engaged in Shadow IT 

Virtual Machine  An operating system (OS) or environment that  Rather than devote huge bare metal 
is installed on software, which imitates  machines, virtual machines allow customers 
hardware.  to divide those hardware resources and run 
operating systems as self contained 
applications on top of bare metal, meaning 
users can make better use of those bare metal 
resources. It became super popular over the 
years, but it’s starting to be eclipsed by 
containers, which allow even better 
optimization of those bare metal resources. 

 
 
   
  
DATABASE FUNDAMENTALS 
An application called MyContacts illustrates examples in this guide. 
It is like the app you use on your phone, Outlook, or Gmail. 
  
Concept  Explanation  Why It Matters 

Data  Known things.  Data is diverse and evolving. Data is at the 

   heart of the applications we use every day. 
Data can be words, dates, images, audio,  Systems need to accommodate data of all 
video, and other forms.   types, and are capable of adapting to new or 
changing types of data. 

Database  Software that manages data.  Databases have existed as long as software. 
   They are a critical piece of virtually all 
Strictly speaking, managed data is called a  applications. 
database, and the software that manages the    
data is called a database management system  Databases store data, secure data, and 
(DBMS). For simplicity, we use database to  manage access: the key operations are 
refer to the software.  create, read, update, delete (CRUD). 

Data Model  The way the database organizes the data.  Relational databases (RDBMS) use a data 
   model that is very different from the way data 
There are a few important data models:  is organized in applications (i.e., objects of 
relational (most popular), key-value (most  object oriented languages), adding complexity 
simple), document (MongoDB), and graph  and slowing dev cycles. Each contact in 
(niche). The way data is organized for a  MyContacts could be spread across dozens of 
specific application is called schema.  tables in an RDBMS. This saves space, but 
   adds complexity. 
Each contact in MyContacts is a record in the    
database. Depending on the data model, each  In contrast, data objects are very closely 
contact would be organized very differently.  aligned with the document data model used by 
For example, in a relational data model, a  MongoDB, making apps faster to build 
contact would be spread across many tables,  because developers are more productive. 
while in MongoDB a contact would be a single  Each contact in MyContacts corresponds to a 
document.  single document in MongoDB. 

DevOps  This refers to a new style of IT organization in  Customers are increasingly organizing 
which there is no wall between development  themselves into DevOps-styled orgs to build 
(creation) and operations (maintenance) in an  better, faster software. You need to 
IT organization. These groups are cross  understand this working dynamic because 
functional and more agile as a result.  Atlas/MongoDB can help DevOps to further 
  improve their operating efficiency. 
Query Language &  How the application communicates with the  SQL is used by relational databases. It is 
Drivers  database.  usually accompanied by an additional 
   technology layer, Object Relational Mapping 
Each time you want to add, update, or delete a  (ORM), to simplify access for developers and 
contact, MyContacts sends a query in the  bridge the difference between the data model 
query language the database speaks, and  and programming language model. 
drivers connect the application to the    
database (they are different for each language  MongoDB Query Language (MQL) provides all 
– Java, .NET, JavaScript, etc.).  of the sophistication of SQL, including 
   aggregation, with a convenient syntax that is 
Some query languages only allow you to do  natural and intuitive for developers. This 
simple things (look up a contact by their phone  makes developers more productive, and 
number). SQL and MongoDB allow much more  removes the need for ORM layers that add 
(“How many of my contacts currently work at  complexity and reduce performance in 
IBM?”).  relational databases. 

Indexes: Primary &  Indexes allow the database to find data  RDBMS and MongoDB support secondary 
Secondary  efficiently.  indexes natively, including special kinds of 
   indexes (e.g., geospatial, compound, text 
All databases have at least one index, called a  search). 
Primary Key Index. In MyContacts, this could    
be the phone number. Without secondary  Key-value databases like Cassandra and 
indexes, a database would have to look at  Couchbase only support primary keys, and 
every one of your contacts to find the one you  force you to build your own by making copies 
are looking for (this is called a table scan).  of the data: for each field – last name, first 
   name, city, company – the application would 
How useful would MyContacts be if you could  copy every contact with that field as the 
only look people up by phone number? Not  primary key. This 1) means the data is out of 
very. Secondary indexes allow you to find data  sync across the copies, 2) makes updates 
by other fields. i.e. by first name, last name,  slow, and 3) adds work and complexity. 
city, or company. 
ACID Transactions:  These are the guarantees the database  Users have come to expect ACID guarantees 
A​tomicity  provides to the application.  from the database. 
C​onsistency*       
I​solation  ● Atomicity: An operation is all or nothing.  If you get all four of these properties in your 
D​urability  If you change a phone number AND  database, building applications is much 
   address in MyContacts, they both get  easier. If you throw away any ONE of them, 
*Note: not to be  updated, or the whole operation is  then building an application becomes very 
confused with  aborted and “rolled back.”  difficult. 
strong & eventual  ● Consistency: The system ensures the 
consistency.  data is valid. All contacts must have a 
unique phone number. 
● Isolation: Operations on the same record 
don’t interfere with one another. A 
contact will only be updated by one user 
at a time. 
● Durability: Operations can’t be lost. For a 
power failure or database crash, all the 
updates you made to your contacts won’t 
be lost. 

Consistency  Whether the database guarantees data is the  Strong consistency is intuitive, and how 
Model*: Strong &  most recent version or potentially stale.  relational databases and MongoDB are 
Eventual     designed. Applications can be written using 
   Databases maintain multiple copies of the  conventional approaches, without adding 
*Note: not to be  data for high availability. A strongly consistent  unnecessary complexity. 
confused with ACID  database guarantees you always see the most    
consistency.  recent version of the data. However, during a  Eventual consistency (Cassandra) adds 
failure (i.e. power loss) for a brief period of  complexity and can compromise 
time (seconds) the database is unavailable  performance. For example, you could 1) 
while it performs failover.  increase the balance of your checking 
   account from $100 to $200, 2) get 
An eventually consistent database makes  confirmation from the database that the 
compromises in consistency to ensure that  transaction succeeded, then 3) ask for the 
even during failure there is no time the  current balance and get $100. Good luck 
database is unavailable. It does so by allowing  writing an app that doesn’t mind such 
you to read and write to any copy of the data.  behavior. 
The downside is that it can potentially return    
stale data. In a few cases, availability is more    
important than consistency. 
High Availability &  Being able to answer queries, even when  MongoDB can tolerate unplanned downtime, 
Failover  something goes wrong.  as well as planned downtime such as upgrades 
   and migrations. Modern deployments must 
Things break. When they do, users of  assume many types of failure will occur 
MyContacts shouldn’t notice. Availability is  routinely (e.g. server crash, network partition, 
measured in terms of time the system is NOT  data center power loss). MongoDB detects 
down in year, usually with “nines,” where “three  these, and recovers from them automatically. 
nines” is 99.9% (8 hrs of downtime/yr, 10    
min/week), “four nines,” “five nines,” and so on.  Conversely, relational databases were 
   designed to write data to disk on a single 
A database will “fail over” to a redundant copy  server. While replication can help to provide 
of the data to remain available, either  “hot” and “warm” standbys, these options have 
automatically (e.g., as in MongoDB), or  drawbacks, including the need for manual 
manually (many relational databases), or  failover. 
through expensive add on features. 

Encryption   Encryption is when security measures are  At Rest: Condition in which your data is not 
designed to lock the viewing/editing/or  being accessed or transferred and is merely 
access of data. You need to have a basic level  sitting in storage. Put together, this concept 
working knowledge to speak credibly about  refers to the idea that when your data is not 
MongoDB and our various offerings.  being accessed or queried, it is secure. In 
relation to MongoDB, this is only available with 
EA and Atlas offerings. 
 
In Flight: Movement of data over a network or 
from one machine to another.Put together, 
this concept refers to the idea that even when 
your data is being accessed and transported 
over the network, it will remain secure. In 
relation to MongoDB, all MongoDB offerings 
including free version have encryption 
in-flight 

Replication (Replica  Automatically copies data across multiple  MongoDB provides native replication for up to 
Set)  servers.  50 copies, including many features that make 
   it easy to deploy across data centers for 
Databases typically achieve high availability by  availability and keeping copies of data near 
storing multiple copies of the data on  users for low latency. 
different servers, racks, and data centers.    
Replication moves the data between servers.  Most databases provide very simple 
   replication for one copy. 
See High Availability & Failover. 
Scalability  The ability of a system to perform more work  RDBMS are typically hard to scale and limited 
as more resources are allocated to it.  to vertical scaling. Vertical scaling has several 
   drawbacks: a) bigger servers typically cost 
Scalability is usually measured as a)  more per unit than smaller servers (i.e., this is 
operations per second (read and write  the opposite of a volume discount), b) you buy 
queries), or b) the volume of data. Resources  more capacity than you need to address 
are usually measured in terms of the number  future needs, c) migrating takes your app 
of servers and their size. There are two ways  offline. 
to do more work:    
   MongoDB scales with horizontal and vertical 
Vertical scaling (aka scaling up): use a bigger  scaling. Horizontal scaling has many 
server. Bigger servers are more expensive,  advantages: a) costs scale linearly, b) 
but have fixed operational overhead.  elasticity - pay for and add capacity only when 
Horizontal scaling (aka scaling out): use more  you need it, c) adding capacity requires no 
servers. Commodity servers are cheap, but  downtime. Users can take advantage of both 
each adds incremental operational overhead.  horizontal and vertical scaling in the way that 
is best for their needs. 

Sharding  This is a MongoDB specific term. Sharding  Imagine you are housing customer data in 
refers to a splitting of your replica set for  your replica set and you organize it A-Z. Now 
benefits of speed, performance, location  that your business is taking off, the original 
based access, and other reasons.  P2S replica set you created when you first 
  procured MongoDB is starting to reach the 
limit in storage and processing capabilities. 
To increase performance, you split that 
replica set into 2 shards with one shard being 
for A-M and the second for N-Z. You can now 
continue to accept more users and grow as 
your business grows 

Latency  The time between cause and effect, or how  Low latency helps ensure a great user 
long you wait for what you asked for.  experience. Looking up, adding, or updating a 
   contact in MyContacts should be really fast. 
Latency is typically measured in milliseconds.    
Low Latency = good. High Latency = bad. 

Throughput  The amount of work you can do in a given  High throughput allows you to support many 
time.  users with low latency, even when they’re all 
   getting responses at the same time. 
Throughput is a measure of performance,    
typically measured in operations per second.  Low Throughput = bad. High Throughput = 
good. 
Joins  An instruction to the database to combine  SQL joins are a staple of relational databases, 
data from more than one table (in relational  where data is often split across networks of 
databases) or collection (in MongoDB).  interconnected tables. 
  
In MongoDB, most of the time all the data for a 
record tends to be located in a single 
document, which makes accessing data 
simple, high-performance, and easy to scale. 
  
However, for analytics and reporting, it’s very 
possible that you will need to access data that 
spans multiple collections (just like you would 
access data that spans multiple tables in a 
relational database). To do this, you would 
need a join. 

Microservices  Small applications built with a very specific  Modern applications are built using 
business process in mind. Microservices are  microservices, and you need to have a 
not dependent on one another for releases or  foundational awareness and understanding of 
upgrades. Teams are often self-contained and  that to sell effectively and have credibility in 
have expertise at each layer of the stack.  front of a customer(s). Microservices scale as 
Microservices communicate with one another  the demand on the business process grows. 
through common protocols like HTTP.   
The business process dictates the choice of: 
● Development Language 
● Data Model 
● Database 
● Infrastructure 

On-Prem (aka  In older times, on-prem would refer to having  Many companies still self manage their 
On-Premise or  hardware and software on-premise, meaning  infrastructure and applications today and it’s 
Self-Managed)  in the company's own data centers.  important to understand that - along with the 
Nowadays, this can also refer to managing  implications. This will help you be able to most 
hardware and software investments internally  effectively articulate the value proposition of 
whether or not it is actually in the company's  a fully managed service. 
data center 

Node  A "node" is a single instance of a database  It’s a concept you’ll hear from customers and 
technology.  SAs in relation to the customer’s 
environments set-up and dictates the 
EA-pricing models. 

  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 MONGODB PRODUCTS 
  
Concept  Explanation 

MongoDB Community  MongoDB’s free version of our open document database. There are no tools or services 
included with this version.  

Enterprise Advanced  The Enterprise Advanced subscription of MongoDB offers support and SLA when the 
customer runs our database on their own infrastructure. Customers are given operational 
tooling, advanced analytics and data visualization, platform integrations and certification, 
along with on-demand training for their teams. 

Atlas  This is our fully-managed cloud database. It can be deployed across AWS, Google Cloud, 
and Azure. 

Data Platform  MongoDB is a true data platform with a comprehensive suite of tools to make working 
with data remarkably easy for everyone, from developers to analysts to data scientists. 

 
   
  
MONGODB COMMUNITY VS ENTERPRISE ADVANCED 
Feature  MongoDB Community Edition  MongoDB Enterprise Advanced 

Automated Deploy, Configuration,     Cloud Manager Premium or Ops 

Maintenance, Zero Downtime  Manager 
Upgrades 

Encrypted Backup and Point-In-Time     Cloud Manager Premium* or Ops 

Recovery  Manager 

Monitoring and Alerting     Cloud Manager Premium or Ops 

Manager 

Visual Query Profiler and Automated     Cloud Manager Premium or Ops 

Index Rollouts  Manager 

Encrypted & In-Memory Storage     ✔ 

Engines  

MongoDB Compass  ✔  ✔ 

MongoDB Connector for BI     ✔ 

Security: Role-Based Access Control,  ✔  ✔ 

PKI Certificates, SSL/TLS, 
Field-Level Redaction, Read-Only 
Views  

Advanced Security: LDAP     ✔ 

Authentication & Authorization, 
Kerberos Authentication, x.509 
Certificates, Auditing 

Platform Certification     ✔ 

On-Demand Training     ✔ 

Support SLA     1 hr 

License Type  SSPL  Commercial 

 
  
TECHNOLOGY & DATABASE ACRONYMS 

Acronym  Stands For  Meaning 

Binary JSON  A binary representation of JSON (JavaScript Object 

BSON 
Notation) documents 

CRUD  Create, Read, Update, Delete  An acronym for the fundamental operations of a 
database 

DBA  Database Administrator  Member of Ops team responsible for 

managing database in production 

DBaaS  Database as a Service  Cloud-based approach to the storage and 

management of data 

DBMS  Database Management System  Software that handles the storage, retrieval, security 
and management of data in a computer system 

DC  Data Center  A facility used to house a large number of computer 

systems and associated components 

DDL  Data Definition Language  Used to define data structures (e.g., create 
collection, create index.) 

DML  Data Manipulation Language  Used to manipulate data itself (e.g., insert, delete, 
update) 

GUI  Graphical User Interface  The way in which users interact with an application 

HA  High Availability  Term to describe degree of redundancy in system. 

HDFS  Hadoop Distributed File System  HDFS allows us to distribute files across multiple 
machines for parallel processing 

HW  Hardware  Physical device 

IaaS  Infrastructure as a Service  A form of cloud computing that provides virtualized 

computing resources over the Internet - typically only 
the bare minimum of resources (compute, storage, 
networking) 

IP  Internet Protocol  Most often tied to the concept of an IP address in 
   networking - the unique network identifier of a 
device 

JSON  JavaScript Object Notation  An open-standard format that uses human-readable 

text to transmit data objects consisting of key–value 
pairs 
 MSA  Microservices Architecture  A software development technique that arranges an 
application(s) as a collection of loosely coupled 
services, which are not dependent upon one another 
for uptime or operation 

MQL  MongoDB Query Language  Data manipulation language used to work with data in 
MongoDB databases 

OS  Operating System  A common interface for software and services for 
hardware 

PaaS  Platform as a Service  Includes IaaS resources as well as software such as 
databases, dev/test tools, security, & middleware 

PHI  Personal Health Information  Similar to HIPAA type information, PHI is a type of 
data that requires advanced security and is regulated 
by multiple regulatory agencies. 

PII  Personally identifiable information  Personally identifiable information (PII) is any data 
that could potentially identify a specific individual. 
Any information that can be used to distinguish one 
person from another and can be used for 
de-anonymizing anonymous data can be considered 
PII. 

QA  Quality Assurance  Team that tests software against the set of 
requirements set forth in the requirements 
document prior to release 

RAC  Real Application Cluster  Software for clustering and high availability in Oracle 
database environments. 

RAM  Random Access Memory  RAM refers to the amount of flash storage a server 
has. This is the "working" memory of a system that 
allows your server to process more information at a 
time. Because it is "flash" storage, if an outage were 
to occur, you would lose all the data in RAM that has 
not been written to the hard drive of your server. The 
more RAM you have, the faster and more information 
your server can process. 

RDBMS  Relational Database Management System  A database management system based on the 
relational model 

SQL  Structured Query Language  Standard DML used to work with relational database 
management systems. 

SSD  Solid State Disk  Storage device that is faster than a standard hard 
disk drive 
 SW  Software  Application code that runs on a physical device 

TTL  Time To Live  A type of index that MongoDB can use to 
automatically remove documents from a collection 
after a certain amount of time 

TTV  Time To Value  The amount of time that an organization takes to 
realize benefits off of their initial investments. Not to 
be confused with ROI, TTV is about speed to market 
or to a realized positive outcome from work done on a 
project. 

VM  Virtual Machine  An operating system or application environment that 

      is installed on software, which imitates dedicated 
hardware. Multiple VMs can live on a single physical 
machine. 

  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
PRODUCTS/SERVICES ACRONYMS 

Acronym  Stands For  Meaning 

ACV  Annual Contract Value  Value of a subscription over 12 months 

AGPL  Affero General Public License  MongoDB’s community server open source license 

API  Application Program Interface  Specifies how software components should interact. 
APIs are used when programming graphical user 
interface (GUI) components. 

APM  Application Performance Monitoring  A category of monitoring that takes into account all 
elements of the application stack to determine the 
root cause of performance issues 

AWS  Amazon Web Services  Cloud computing resources offered by Amazon 

Azure  Azure  Cloud computing resources offered by Microsoft 

BI  Business Intelligence  A variety of software applications used to analyze an 

organization's raw data to deliver business insights 

CMS  Content Management System  An application that stores content and serves it to 
users 

CSAT  Customer Satisfaction  Measurement of customer satisfaction, expressed as 

a percentage 

EA  Enterprise Advanced  MongoDB’s commercial database offering 

ELS  Extended Lifecycle Support  Support provided beyond the official end of life of a 
product. 

GCP  Google Cloud Platform  Cloud computing resources offered by Google Inc. 

IoT  Internet of Things  Physical assets and devices connected to each other 
   to share information. An IoT application handles data 
from these assets or devices for a particular purpose. 

LDAP  Lightweight Directory Access protocol  Protocol for accessing and maintaining directory 
information over a network 

NDA  Non-Disclosure Agreement  A legal contract between at least two parties that 
outlines confidential material, knowledge, or 
information that the parties wish to share with one 
another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict 
access to or by third parties. It is a contract through 
 which the parties agree not to disclose information 
covered by the agreement. 
 

PS  Professional Services  This is an arm of MongoDB's revenue. It refers to 

technical and educational packages that we offer 
customers wanting to get more out of MongoDB than 
just licenses and support. They are a separate org 
than Sales and their packages are taught/done by 
Consulting Engineers. Most, if not all, PS packages are 
on-site (exceptions are possible but not advertised) 
and are limited to 12 participants (usually, again, 
exceptions are possible but not advertised) 

RPO  Recovery Point Objective  The amount of data, measured in time, that an 
organization needs to be able to recover to. 

RTO  Recovery Time Objective  The amount of time following a failure after which the 
system needs to be back online. 

SLA  Service Level Agreement  A contract between a service provider (internal or 
external) to deliver a particular level of service within 
a particular period of time 

SSL/TLS  Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer  Communication security protocol for data transfer 
Security  across networks (‘data in flight’) 

SSPL  Server Side Public License  Adopted by MongoDB in 2018; keeps core database 
free-and-modifiable, but offers strong legal 
protection against other vendor building competing 
service(s) with MongoDB. 

TCO  Total Cost of Ownership  The purchase price of an asset plus the costs of 
operation. When choosing among alternatives in a 
purchasing decision, buyers should look not just at an 
item's short-term price, which is its purchase price, 
but also at its long-term price, which is its total cost 
of ownership. 

UAT  User Acceptance Testing  A phase of software development in which the 

software is tested in the "real world" by the intended 
audience. 

VPC  Virtual Private Cloud  A pool of services, offered on a public cloud, that are 
configurable and offer a degree of isolation from 
other users/customers on the same public cloud. 

 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
SALES 
  
VALUE FRAMEWORK CHEAT SHEET 
Access the Value Framework ​here.​  
Component  Description  Guidelines 

   ● Paints a picture of an undesirable state of being.  ● Customer language 

Current State  ● Elaborates on the pain point, goal or need that the Value Driver 
(Before  addresses. 
Scenarios)  ● Conveys empathy with the buyer’s situation. 
● Guiding Question​: ​“How would the customer express the current 
situation?” 

   ● The bad things that result from the Before Scenarios.  ● Measurable 
Negative  ● Often expressed as unfavorable operational or financial outcomes  ● Customer language 
Consequences  (e.g., high OpEx and CapEx). 
● Basis for quantifying the value of the pain. 
● Guiding Question: “How would the customer express the tangible 
business implications of the current situation?” 

Future State  ● Creates a “stand‐in‐the‐future” vision of how life could be better for  ● Customer language 
(After Scenarios)  the buyer after resolving the pain points. 
● An opportunity to educate the customer on industry best practices. 
● Guiding Question: “How would the customer describe the ideal state? 

Positive Business  ● The good things that result from the After Scenarios.  ● Measurable 
Outcomes  ● Defined in terms that resonate with the economic buyer.  ● Customer language 
● Basis for quantifying the value of the solution (the “R” of the ROI).    
● Guiding Question: “Is this PBO compelling enough that the EB would    
reallocate discretionary funding?” 

Required  ● The minimum solution capabilities that are required to achieve the  ● Customer language 
Capabilities  Positive Business Outcomes and resolve the Negative 
Consequences. 
● Often appear as requirements in customer RFPs. 
● Basis for the technical buyer’s decision criteria. 
● Phrased in the customer’s language but influenced by your Defensible 
Differentiators. 
● Guiding Question: “Are these the highest priority solution 
requirements that will most impact the buying decision?” 

Metrics  ● Success measures the customer will use to gauge how well your  ● Customer language 
solution satisfies the Required Capabilities. 
● Often expressed as scorecard measures. 
● Guiding Question: “How will the technical buyer measure the success 
of our solution? 

How We Do It  ● Describes how your solution satisfies the Required Capabilities.  ● MongoDB language 
● Grouped at the major product or service offering level. 
● Guiding Question: “How do we want our sales teams to explain our 
solutions?” 
 How We Do It  ● How your product and service offerings satisfy the Required  ● MongoDB language 
Better  Capabilities better or differently than competitive offerings in a way 
that provides value to the customer. 
● Grouped at the major product or service offering level. 
● Guiding Question: “How do we want our sales teams to explain our 
solution differentiation?” 

Proof Points  ● Verifiable evidence that you can satisfy the Required Capabilities in a  ● Very specific 
way that achieves the Positive Business Outcomes. 
● Usually expressed as customer case studies, testimonials, etc. 
● Whenever possible, include tangible results (↑Revenue, ↓Cost, 
↓Risk). 

Discovery  ● Open‐ended, two‐sided questions that draw out customer pain  ● Both general and 
Questions  points, Positive Business Outcomes and Required Capabilities in a  value driver specific 
way that sets up a conversation around your solutions and  questions 
differentiators. 

Trap-Setting  ● This is a discovery question that influences require capabilities in a  ● N/A 

Questions  way that we know MongoDB can satisfy the requirement 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
INTERNAL SALES ROLES ACRONYMS 

Acronym  Stands For  Meaning 

ADR  Account Development Representative  Outbound member of the Sales Development team 

BDR  Business Development Representative  BDRs assist Enterprise reps with account research. 

CAE  Corporate Account Executive  CAEs are focused on companies that are $750M and 
under. 

CSM  Customer Success Manager  CSMs are focused on post sale implementation 
activities (e.g., onboarding, QBR’s). 

EAE  Enterprise Account Executive  EAEs are focused on companies that are >$750M. 

SA  Solutions Architect  SAs work closely with EAEs/CAEs and play a key role 
within deals (e.g., technical requirements, POC). 

SDR  Sales Development Representative  Inbound member of the Sales Development team 

RDs work to drive revenue and assure the continued 

RD  Regional Director 
successful trajectory of their strategically important 
territory; they report to their RVP. 

  
 
 
COMMAND OF THE MESSAGE ACRONYMS 

Acronym  Stands For  Meaning 

DQs  Open-ended, two-sided questions used in discovery 

Discovery Questions 
with customers 

EB  Economic Buyer  Who is the person that is signing off on this to 
allocate funds? Do you know who that is? 

NCs  The quantifiable outcomes of a customer’s Before 

Negative Consequences 
Scenario 

PBO  The quantifiable outcomes of a customer’s After 

Positive Business Outcome 
Scenario 

RCs  Required Capabilities  Solution capabilities that are required to achieve the 
PBOs and resolve the NCs 

TSQs  Trap-Setting Questions  DQs that introduce your Defensible Differentiators 

into the RCs 
  
 
 
 
SALES PROCESS/PIPELINE GENERATION ACRONYMS 

Acronym  Stands For  Meaning 

The All Interesting Moments report shows the 

AIM  All Interesting Moments 
campaign activity on leads & Contacts in your 
territory. You can use this report to help select your 
PG Top Targets because it shows your accounts with 
activity on the lead and contact level. 

A semi-automated heatmap you use to prioritize the 

AIP  Account Indicator Panel 
accounts you work on based on their propensity to buy 
MongoDB. 

A way to organize the bare-minimum critical research 

APL  Account Plan Lite 
required to successfully PG into an account. 

MAP Report  My Account Prioritization Report  Report in Salesforce that is used shows marketing 
engagement and sales engagement, which is used to 
help fill out Smoke Reports. 

A tool for evaluating the strength of a visible 

MEDDPICC 
Metrics | Economic Buyer | Decision Criteria |  opportunity. Sellers use this to identify the 
Decision Process | Paper Process | ID Pain |  information that has been captured, inconsistencies, 
Champion | Competition  gaps, expectations, and actions. 

MQL  A lead stemming from a potential prospect's 

Marketing Qualified Lead  engagement with our marketing-related content, 
signalling an interest in developing their knowledge of 
MongoDB. 

A meeting with a person of power and influence at the 

NBM  New Business Meeting 
account level ​to discuss solving a ​strategic pain​ that 
they have. 

A tool in the form of a spreadsheet that provides a 

PG Workstream  Pipeline Generation Workstream 
centralized place to organize your PG tools - AIP, APL 
and PRP/PG Planner - and diagnose obstacles to 
successful PG 

A detailed action plan - both strategic and tactical - to 

PRP  Pipeline Reconciliation Plan 
build a qualified pipeline. Based on prior research and 
discovery, a PRP outlines exact initiatives in specific 
accounts.  

The initial discussion - typically a cold call - with a 

QC  Qualification Call 
prospect that either rules them out of the process, or 
confirms their interest in MongoDB and identifies a 
reason to progress to a discovery meeting. The QC 
 collects useful info to pre-qualify and contextualise 
the discovery meeting. 

When, you, the xDR decide that you will call and/or 
SAL  Sales Accepted Lead 
email this person to discover more about his/her 
interest. To accept, the MQL must be put in your name 
and set to “Attempt Contact”. 

Occurs upon first sight of an opportunity through an 

SQL  Sales Qualified Lead 
acknowledgement of pain or referral. An opportunity 
is created in the 'Research' stage which then needs to 
be understood deeper and qualified. 

A SQL turns into an SQO when an opportunity moves 

SQO  Sales Qualified Opportunity 
from the Research to the Discovery stage in 
Salesforce. Some initial discovery has taken place; an 
unmet pain, need, or goal was uncovered and 
MongoDB was identified as a potential solution. The 
xDR and xAE will now qualify this pain before setting 
up an NBM. 

Occurs in the Scope stage of the MDB sales process. 

TFW  Technical Feasibility Workshop 
This is a face-to-face meeting with technical 
stakeholders in the customer’s organization and MDB 
technical resources. The goal is to capture and 
validate technical RCs, find potential technical 
champions, and establish credibility and confidence 
for using MongoDB.  

Mutually agreed upon set of accounts (b/w you and 

TT  Top Target 
your manager) on which you will focus your PG efforts 
for the quarter. 

Used predominantly in MongoDB as an email or similar 

VITO message  “Very Important Top Officer” Message 
message to a net new, high-value target that captures 
their interest in engaging with us. 

 
 
PERSONAS ACRONYMS 

Acronym  Stands For  Meaning 

CEO  Chief Executive Officer  The highest ranking executive in the company that 
has overall responsibility for creating, planning, 
implementing, and integrating the strategic direction 
of an organization. This includes responsibility for all 
components and departments of a business.   
It is also the responsibility of the CEO to ensure that 
the organization's leadership maintains a constant 
awareness of both the external and internal 
competitive landscape, opportunities for expansion, 
 customer base, markets, new industry developments 
and standards, and so forth. 

CIO  Chief Information Officer  Most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for 
the information technology and computer systems 
that support enterprise goals. 

CTO  Chief Technology Officer  CTOs are responsible for building technological 
products/services that meet the customer needs. 
They manage engineers and developers who design 
the products/services and evaluate the appeal and 
functionality of the final product/service versions. 
Different from a CIO in the sense that CTOs are 
concerned with technologies that grow the business 
externally. 

CISO  Chief Information Security Officer  The senior-level executive within an organization 
responsible for establishing and maintaining the 
enterprise vision, strategy, and program to ensure 
information assets and technologies are adequately 
protected. 

CDO   Chief Digital Officer   An executive-level position who is in charge of a 

company's digital strategy internally and externally