Salesforce users need insight when they go over their data. They’ll find companies and other business entities, people who are potential sources of business, sales events, sales figures, people on the list with whom your company has not yet made a relationship with, and so on.
What is an Contact
Salesforce has all of that information organized into several categories. For example, a person on your list that your company has a business relationship with is called a contact. As opposed to a lead, leads are people who are also on your list but who have not yet bought anything from you.
Leads are also potential people that you could do business with. They still have to make up their minds if they will buy from you or not, you still need to qualify them so that you can establish a business relationship with your leads.
When leads are converted, you can then classify them as contacts. That means your lead has already bought something – i.e. a business relationship has been formed. A contact in Salesforce can also be someone who has purchased something from you previously.
Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities
There are a few other concepts that you need to be familiar with as they are used in Salesforce. For instance, you will have contacts that are part of a company that you may or may not have had transactions with.
The company that is associated with a contact (e.g. the contact is a purchasing officer or maybe a manager in that company), then the company is called an account in this CRM system.
Of course a potential sale of your company’s product or service can be made via both the contact and/or the account (i.e. potential sales via company personnel or a business to business transaction). Either way, these potential sales are referred to in Salesforce as opportunities.