An account is a formal record used to track transactions and activities for a specific person, item, or entity. While commonly associated with banking and finance for tracking money, the concept also extends to business for managing client relationships and to the internet for providing access to digital platforms.
The word "account" first appeared in 14th-century English, borrowed from the Anglo-French 'acunte'. This term originated from the Latin verb 'computare', which means "to count" or "compute". Its etymology underscores the word's foundational link to the act of tallying and reckoning values.
The practical application of accounts evolved with the rise of double-entry bookkeeping. For centuries, transactions were meticulously recorded in manual ledgers. As commerce grew more complex, these physical books gave way to the sophisticated digital accounting systems used today.
The term 'account' is versatile, appearing in various aspects of daily life and business. Its meaning shifts depending on the context, but it always refers to a record or arrangement for a specific purpose.
While both are core accounting concepts, an account and an accrual serve distinct functions in financial reporting.
The concept of an account is central to accounting, operating within a broader framework of related terms. These concepts work together to ensure financial activities are recorded accurately and systematically, forming the backbone of any financial reporting system.
This is how you can scale personalized outbound campaigns.
How does an "account" in a CRM differ from a "lead"?
A lead is an unqualified prospect, while an account is a qualified organization you have a business relationship with. Leads are typically converted into accounts, contacts, and opportunities after they have been vetted by your sales or marketing teams.
What is the significance of parent-child account relationships?
This hierarchy links a main corporate headquarters (parent) with its subsidiaries or branches (children). It provides a complete view of a business entity, which is crucial for strategic selling, identifying cross-sell opportunities, and understanding complex organizational structures.
Why is enriching account data so important for sales?
Enriched data provides a 360-degree view of a prospect, including firmographics, technographics, and buying signals. This enables highly personalized outreach, better lead scoring, and ultimately, higher conversion rates for outbound campaigns.
Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.
Learn about behavioral analytics, including implementing behavioral analytics successfully, & key metrics in behavioral analytics.
The marketing mix is the set of marketing tools a company uses to sell products, defined by the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
Buying criteria are the specific requirements and standards a customer uses to evaluate products or services before making a decision.
Key accounts are a company's most valuable customers, vital due to their significant revenue contribution and strategic importance for growth.
A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
Gamification applies game mechanics like points, badges, and leaderboards to non-game activities to boost engagement and motivate users.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
Learn about B2B sales, including key strategies for B2B success, types of B2B sales models, & B2B vs. B2C sales: understanding the differences.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
ABM orchestration aligns marketing and sales actions across channels to deliver seamless, personalized experiences to high-value accounts.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
Learn about B2C2B, including how B2C2B transforms sales, key strategies for B2C2B success, & differences between B2C2B and B2B2C.
Closed Lost is a sales term for a deal that didn't go through. The prospect decided not to buy, or the sales team disqualified them.
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a prospect who has shown interest based on marketing efforts but isn't yet ready for a sales conversation.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
Buyer’s remorse is the sense of regret or anxiety that can arise after making a purchase, often questioning if it was the right decision.
A sales intelligence platform is software that provides sales teams with data and insights about prospects to help them sell more effectively.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
Lead qualification is the process of determining which prospects are most likely to become paying customers based on predefined criteria.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
Shipping solutions are services or software that streamline the logistics of getting products to customers, from label printing to final delivery.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
A buying signal is any action from a prospect that indicates they are interested in making a purchase, helping sales teams prioritize leads.
A custom API integration is a bespoke connection between software, enabling them to communicate and share data to meet unique business requirements.
Consultative selling is an approach where salespeople act as expert advisors, diagnosing customer needs to provide the most suitable solutions.
Docker is a tool that packages applications and their dependencies into isolated environments called containers for easy deployment and scaling.
A Marketing Qualified Opportunity (MQO) is a lead vetted by marketing as a genuine sales opportunity, ready for direct sales follow-up.
Process Builder is a Salesforce automation tool that lets you create 'if/then' business processes with a user-friendly visual interface.
A Point of Contact (POC) is the designated individual or department that serves as the main hub for information and communication on a matter.
Product recommendations are a marketing strategy that uses customer data to suggest relevant products, boosting sales and customer engagement.
Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool helping sales teams find and engage with the right leads and accounts on the LinkedIn network.
User interaction is any action a user takes within a digital interface, like clicking a button, scrolling a page, or filling out a form.
Programmatic advertising uses AI and real-time bidding to automate the buying and selling of digital ad space, targeting specific audiences.
Buying intent is the collection of online cues and behaviors that signal a prospect is actively researching and moving toward a purchase decision.
Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is an action plan that outlines how a company will reach target customers and achieve a competitive advantage.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
Learn about B2B data erosion, including causes of B2B data decay, strategies to combat data erosion, & measuring the impact of data erosion.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) is a focused strategy where SDRs target key stakeholders within specific, high-value accounts.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Sales coaching is a process where managers help reps improve their skills and performance through personalized feedback, training, and guidance.
Logo retention is a key B2B metric that measures a company's ability to retain its customers, or 'logos,' over a specific period.
A use case is a detailed description of how a user interacts with a system to achieve a specific goal, outlining the steps from start to finish.
Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
A product champion is an internal evangelist who drives a product's adoption and success by ensuring it solves real problems for their team.
Sales enablement technology refers to software and tools that equip sales teams with the resources they need to close more deals efficiently.
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any form of content, like images, videos, or text, created and shared by users on online platforms.
A lead generation funnel is a systematic process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of your brand to becoming qualified leads.
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a sales specialist who finds and qualifies new leads, building a pipeline for the sales team.
Retargeting marketing is a digital advertising strategy that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or brand online.
A persona map visually outlines a target customer, detailing their goals, behaviors, and pain points to help your team build genuine empathy.
Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
Learn about brag book, including crafting your outstanding brag book, essential components of a brag book, & brag book vs. resume: unveiling the differences.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
“End of Quarter” (EOQ) refers to the final weeks of a business quarter when sales teams rush to meet quotas, often leading to a flurry of deals.
Voice broadcasting is an automated system that delivers a pre-recorded voice message to a large list of phone numbers simultaneously.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) is the portion of the market your business can realistically serve with its current products and sales channels.
Load testing is a type of performance testing that determines how a system behaves under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions.
A marketing automation platform is software that automates marketing actions. It helps manage tasks like email campaigns and lead nurturing.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
A System of Record (SoR) is the authoritative data source for a specific type of data. It acts as the single source of truth for an organization.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
Learn about bottom of the funnel, including maximizing conversions at the funnel's end, & strategies for nurturing bottom-funnel leads.
A cold email is an initial outreach sent to a potential customer with whom you've had no prior contact, aiming to introduce your business.
Contact discovery is the process of finding accurate contact details for potential leads, including names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
Net new business is revenue from customers who have never purchased from your company before. It’s a crucial indicator of sustainable growth.
Learn about B2B intent data, including how B2B intent data enhances sales strategies, sources of B2B intent data, leveraging B2B intent data for competitiveness.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel.
Closed opportunities are potential deals that have concluded. They are categorized as either 'closed-won' (a sale was made) or 'closed-lost'.
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that aligns a company's sales, marketing, and customer service teams to drive predictable revenue.
Triggers are predefined conditions that, when met, automatically launch a workflow or action, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is a key performance indicator that calculates the average revenue generated from each user or subscriber.
A canary release is a deployment strategy where new software is rolled out to a small user group first, minimizing risk before a full release.
Learn about buyer intent data, including sourcing and interpreting buyer intent data, & key metrics in buyer intent analysis.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.
A Single Page Application (SPA) is a web app that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current page rather than loading new pages.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
Sales objections are reasons or concerns raised by a potential customer as to why they are hesitant or unwilling to make a purchase.