You can’t adopt CRM without

speaking the language. Let’s

clarify a few commonly

confused Salesforce terms.

Want to know how to build a great CRM platform

using all these Salesforce objects?

Download Prialto’s FREE CRM Management Toolkit

here.

Contacts vs. Accounts vs.

A contact is an individual person. An account is the

larger group, company or organization with which a

contact is affiliated. Usually, you have more than one

live point of contact at each account. That’s why

you’ll almost always have more contacts than

accounts in your CRM database.

A lead, on the other hand, is someone who hasn’t

even entered an account hierarchy yet. Leads are

cold, unassociated and often not yet verified.

Contact

Account

Leads

Consultant vs. Administrator Consultants are external contractors who help you customize your

Salesforce platform at the outset. A successful CRM administrator is

someone on your internal team who is tasked with managing,

setting up and tweaking your company’s CRM on an ongoing basis.

A collection of

reports on a single

page. These are

usually presented in

a graphic format of

some sort.

Data groups that are

sliced and filtered by

field across multiple

CRM objects.

Reports may be

graphic as well.

Dynamic action lists

based in a single

Salesforce object.

These are very

nimble and

especially helpful for

prioritization.

Reports vs. Dashboards vs. Views

Looking for something a bit more comprehensive? Check out Hubspot’s Salesforce Glossary.

Refine Your

Salesforce Lingo

APIs vs. Salesforce Applications Salesforce gives developers a plug with your database information on it, which they can fit into a matching socket in the applications that they create. The Salesforce plug is called an API, and is almost never directly used by most of us. Instead, some of your favorite Salesforce AppExchange programs – apps like Marketo or Mail Chimp - are built on APIs.