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.
Outbound lead generation means proactively reaching out to potential customers who haven't yet expressed interest to introduce them to your brand.
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.
Learn about big data, including understanding big data characteristics, benefits of leveraging big data, & challenges in managing big data.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Content Rights Management involves controlling the use and distribution of copyrighted digital media to protect intellectual property.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) is the portion of the market your business can realistically serve with its current products and sales channels.
Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.
Email personalization uses subscriber data—like their name, interests, or past behavior—to create highly relevant and targeted email campaigns.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
CRM enrichment is the process of adding third-party data to your existing customer profiles to make them more complete and accurate.
GPCTBA/C&I is a sales qualification framework for understanding a prospect's goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, and authority.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
Load testing is a type of performance testing that determines how a system behaves under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions.
Learn about buyer, including identifying your ideal buyer, understanding buyer's journey, & evaluating buyer decision processes.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
A sandbox is an isolated testing environment where new or untrusted code can be run safely without affecting the host device or network.
Learn about brag book, including crafting your outstanding brag book, essential components of a brag book, & brag book vs. resume: unveiling the differences.
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
A Letter of Intent (LOI) is a document declaring the preliminary commitment of one party to do business with another, outlining the chief terms.
A Marketing Qualified Opportunity (MQO) is a lead vetted by marketing as a genuine sales opportunity, ready for direct sales follow-up.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
Learn about business continuity, including understanding key components, steps to ensure continuity, common challenges, & best practices.
Learn about B2B marketing attribution, including challenges in B2B marketing attribution, & key metrics for effective attribution.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.
Sales coaching is a process where managers help reps improve their skills and performance through personalized feedback, training, and guidance.
A buying signal is any action from a prospect that indicates they are interested in making a purchase, helping sales teams prioritize leads.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
Customer centricity is a business approach that puts the customer at the heart of every decision, aiming to build loyalty and long-term value.
"Smile and dial" is a high-volume sales tactic where reps make numerous cold calls from a list, often with little to no prior research.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
“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.
Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
ABM orchestration aligns marketing and sales actions across channels to deliver seamless, personalized experiences to high-value accounts.
X-Sell, or cross-selling, is a sales strategy of selling additional, related products or services to an existing customer base.
A sales intelligence platform is software that provides sales teams with data and insights about prospects to help them sell more effectively.
A marketing automation platform is software that automates marketing actions. It helps manage tasks like email campaigns and lead nurturing.
Learn about B2B intent data, including how B2B intent data enhances sales strategies, sources of B2B intent data, leveraging B2B intent data for competitiveness.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
A Target Account List (TAL) is a focused list of high-value companies that a business specifically aims to convert into customers.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Outbound sales is when reps proactively contact potential customers through cold calls or emails to generate leads and build a sales pipeline.
Competitive analysis means identifying your rivals and assessing their strategies to pinpoint your own business's strengths and weaknesses.
Customer buying signals are the actions, behaviors, or statements a prospect makes that indicate they are moving towards a purchase decision.
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a sales specialist who finds and qualifies new leads, building a pipeline for the sales team.
Learn about B2B data, including sources and types of B2B data, leveraging B2B data for sales success, & ensuring the accuracy of B2B data.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
Logo retention is a key B2B metric that measures a company's ability to retain its customers, or 'logos,' over a specific period.
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to their organization, motivating them to contribute to the company's success.
A Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) is a target company that has shown significant engagement, indicating it's ready for the sales team to pursue.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
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 B2C2B, including how B2C2B transforms sales, key strategies for B2C2B success, & differences between B2C2B and B2B2C.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
A landing page is a standalone web page created for a marketing campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking an ad or email link.
Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
The marketing mix is the set of marketing tools a company uses to sell products, defined by the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
A sales demo is a presentation where a sales rep shows a prospect how a product or service works and solves their specific problems.
A Call for Proposal (CFP) is a document that solicits proposals, often through a bidding process, for a specific project or service.
Generic keywords are broad search terms that lack specific details like brand or location. They attract a wide audience with less specific intent.
Account management is the post-sales practice of building and nurturing long-term relationships with a company's most valuable clients.
Lead enrichment adds third-party data to your raw lead lists, creating fuller prospect profiles for more effective and personalized outreach.
A performance plan is a formal document outlining an employee's goals, expectations, and metrics for success over a specific period.
A Request for Information (RFI) is a formal process for gathering information from potential suppliers before issuing a more detailed proposal.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.
A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
White labeling is when a company puts its own branding on a product or service that was actually produced by a different company.
The Dark Funnel describes customer buying activities that are untrackable by companies, such as private chats and word-of-mouth referrals.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
Product recommendations are a marketing strategy that uses customer data to suggest relevant products, boosting sales and customer engagement.
Programmatic advertising uses AI and real-time bidding to automate the buying and selling of digital ad space, targeting specific audiences.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
Closed Won is a CRM status for a sales deal that has been successfully concluded, resulting in a signed contract and a new customer.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool helping sales teams find and engage with the right leads and accounts on the LinkedIn network.
Accounts Payable (AP) is the money a company owes its suppliers for goods or services bought on credit. It's listed as a current liability.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
Objection handling in sales is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns about a product or service to move the deal forward.
Learn about B2B data enrichment, including benefits of B2B data enrichment, implementing B2B data enrichment strategies, B2B data enrichment vs. data cleaning.
Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.