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.
Microservices is an architecture where apps are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other over APIs.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Sales development is the process of identifying and qualifying potential customers to create a pipeline of sales-ready leads for closers.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Single Sign-On (SSO) is an authentication method allowing users to access multiple applications with one set of login credentials.
Buying criteria are the specific requirements and standards a customer uses to evaluate products or services before making a decision.
Firmographics are descriptive attributes of organizations, used to segment companies by characteristics like industry, size, and location.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
Audience targeting is the process of segmenting consumers into specific groups to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing messages.
An Operational CRM is a system that automates and improves customer-facing business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service.
A value statement is a clear, concise declaration of the unique benefits a company provides to its customers, outlining its core purpose.
Event tracking is the method of collecting data on specific user actions, or 'events,' on a website or app, such as clicks or downloads.
Process Builder is a Salesforce automation tool that lets you create 'if/then' business processes with a user-friendly visual interface.
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.
Learn about B2B data, including sources and types of B2B data, leveraging B2B data for sales success, & ensuring the accuracy of B2B data.
Direct sales involves selling products directly to consumers in a non-retail setting, such as at home, online, or person-to-person.
Consultative selling is an approach where salespeople act as expert advisors, diagnosing customer needs to provide the most suitable solutions.
Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
Event marketing is a strategy where brands engage directly with target audiences through live events like trade shows, conferences, or webinars.
Outbound lead generation means proactively reaching out to potential customers who haven't yet expressed interest to introduce them to your brand.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
Sales and marketing analytics involves measuring and analyzing performance data to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI).
Application Performance Management (APM) monitors and manages an application's performance, availability, and the experience of its end-users.
Learn about B2B sales, including key strategies for B2B success, types of B2B sales models, & B2B vs. B2C sales: understanding the differences.
A sales kickoff (SKO) is an annual event for a sales team to celebrate wins, align on goals, and get motivated for the upcoming year.
Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) is a focused strategy where SDRs target key stakeholders within specific, high-value accounts.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is a key performance indicator that calculates the average revenue generated from each user or subscriber.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that look and feel like native mobile apps, offering features like offline access and push notifications.
End of Day (EOD) refers to the close of business hours. It's a common deadline for tasks and reports to be completed before the workday ends.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a web security vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into trusted websites.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
Programmatic advertising uses AI and real-time bidding to automate the buying and selling of digital ad space, targeting specific audiences.
User interaction is any action a user takes within a digital interface, like clicking a button, scrolling a page, or filling out a form.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the ethical gathering and analysis of market data to inform strategic business decisions and gain an advantage.
Voice broadcasting is an automated system that delivers a pre-recorded voice message to a large list of phone numbers simultaneously.
Lookalike audiences are groups of potential customers who share similar characteristics and behaviors with your existing, high-value customers.
Learn about B2B data erosion, including causes of B2B data decay, strategies to combat data erosion, & measuring the impact of data erosion.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Learn about B2B intent data providers, including evaluating intent data quality, leveraging intent data for growth, & B2B intent data: key providers comparison.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model where affiliates earn a commission for promoting another company’s products or services.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
A sales intelligence platform is software that provides sales teams with data and insights about prospects to help them sell more effectively.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) is the portion of the market your business can realistically serve with its current products and sales channels.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid and deliverable, which helps improve campaign performance.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
Lead qualification is the process of determining which prospects are most likely to become paying customers based on predefined criteria.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool helping sales teams find and engage with the right leads and accounts on the LinkedIn network.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
Retargeting marketing is a digital advertising strategy that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or brand online.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
Marketo is a marketing automation platform used by B2B marketers to manage lead generation, nurturing, email marketing, and analytics.
Net new business is revenue from customers who have never purchased from your company before. It’s a crucial indicator of sustainable growth.
Total Addressable Market (TAM) represents the maximum revenue a company can earn by selling its product or service in a specific market.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
Sales objections are reasons or concerns raised by a potential customer as to why they are hesitant or unwilling to make a purchase.
A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
An email cadence is a scheduled sequence of emails sent to prospects over a specific period to nurture leads and drive engagement.
Account management is the post-sales practice of building and nurturing long-term relationships with a company's most valuable clients.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
A channel partner is a company that works with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell their products, software, or services to customers.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel.
A custom API integration is a bespoke connection between software, enabling them to communicate and share data to meet unique business requirements.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
Product recommendations are a marketing strategy that uses customer data to suggest relevant products, boosting sales and customer engagement.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Customer buying signals are the actions, behaviors, or statements a prospect makes that indicate they are moving towards a purchase decision.
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.
Objection handling in sales is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns about a product or service to move the deal forward.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the predictable income a company expects to receive from its customers over a one-year period.
Generic keywords are broad search terms that lack specific details like brand or location. They attract a wide audience with less specific intent.