Salesforce.com Basics Part 1: Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities

I've done Saleforce.com consulting for many small businesses and the thing that I realized is that many small business have little to no process at all. Therefore when it comes time to implement Salesforce.com, owners have a difficult time understanding the basic concepts and are reluctant to change.

I found with the larger companies I worked with, explaining Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities was a breeze. This is because larger companies have an established sales process and these terms are not new to employees.

So I've decided to write a couple of tutorials to help new users understand the very core components of Salesforce.com. Advanced users may find this boooooooring but that's OK this post isn't for you.

OK! New folks let's start off by talking about Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities.

Accounts:
Accounts in Salesforce.com represent all of the organizations or companies that are you DO BUSINESS with. Note that these are not just your customers but business parters and maybe even competitors. Accounts hold information about a company or an organization and nothing else. For example it would contain information about the employee count, annual revenue, stock ticker and anything else you need to know about the organization. If WalMart was one of your customers you'd create an Account called WalMart. Then other users would click on Accounts tab to find the WalMart Account and open it for more information. If you wanted to find out how to contact Sam Walton, that record would be stored in a different place.


Contacts:
And that leads us to Contacts. In Salesforce.com you also have Contacts. A Contact record contains information for each individual you do business with (like Sam Walton). A Contact Record stores information like phone number, email address and birthday. An important concept to understand is that a Contact MUST be associated with an Account. You cannot create a Contact without specifying which Account it belongs to. If you want to find out Sam Walton's contact information you'd find him in the Contacts tab. Alternatively you can also go to the WalMart Account record and scroll down. There (under the Contacts section) you will see all those Contacts that you have at WalMart.


Opportunities:
Finally Opportunities are the potential sales deals that are either dead or alive. Every Opportunity belongs to an Account. So if you were working on a sales pitch or deal with your customer WalMart, you'd probably create an Opportunity to track that. In the Opportunity you'd track everything about that deal. You'd track everything from what stage you are in the sales process to how much potential revenue you think this deal will close. If you have an RFP for this deal, the Opportunity would be a good place to upload it. Again all Opportunities belong to an Account. If you want to see all the current and past sales deals with WalMart you'd click on the WalMart Account and scroll down to the Opportunities Section. Or, you can click on the Opportunities tab to browse through all the deals in your system.

Hope this clarifies some confusion. If there are any questions fire away. Next time we'll talk about Leads