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.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that aligns a company's sales, marketing, and customer service teams to drive predictable revenue.
An Account Executive (AE) is a sales professional responsible for closing new business deals and managing existing client relationships to drive revenue.
Learn about B2B intent data, including how B2B intent data enhances sales strategies, sources of B2B intent data, leveraging B2B intent data for competitiveness.
X-Sell, or cross-selling, is a sales strategy of selling additional, related products or services to an existing customer base.
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 knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
“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.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue kept from existing customers, including upsells, downgrades, and churn.
Contact discovery is the process of finding accurate contact details for potential leads, including names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
The lead qualification process is how you determine which prospects are most likely to become customers by evaluating them against specific criteria.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
Sales workflows are a set of automated actions that streamline the sales process, helping teams engage leads consistently and close deals faster.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
Lookalike audiences are groups of potential customers who share similar characteristics and behaviors with your existing, high-value customers.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that look and feel like native mobile apps, offering features like offline access and push notifications.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
A sales intelligence platform is software that provides sales teams with data and insights about prospects to help them sell more effectively.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
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.
Outbound lead generation means proactively reaching out to potential customers who haven't yet expressed interest to introduce them to your brand.
Sales coaching is a process where managers help reps improve their skills and performance through personalized feedback, training, and guidance.
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.
A messaging strategy defines what your brand says, how it says it, and where it says it to connect effectively with your target audience.
A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is a key performance indicator that calculates the average revenue generated from each user or subscriber.
Learn about B2B data enrichment, including benefits of B2B data enrichment, implementing B2B data enrichment strategies, B2B data enrichment vs. data cleaning.
A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.
Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) is a focused strategy where SDRs target key stakeholders within specific, high-value accounts.
Competitive analysis means identifying your rivals and assessing their strategies to pinpoint your own business's strengths and weaknesses.
Programmatic advertising uses AI and real-time bidding to automate the buying and selling of digital ad space, targeting specific audiences.
Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
A consumer is an individual or entity that buys products or services for personal use, not for resale. They are the final user in a supply chain.
Sales enablement content refers to the materials and tools that empower your sales team to engage prospects and close deals more efficiently.
Load testing is a type of performance testing that determines how a system behaves under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions.
A lead generation funnel is a systematic process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of your brand to becoming qualified leads.
Lead enrichment adds third-party data to your raw lead lists, creating fuller prospect profiles for more effective and personalized outreach.
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.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Lead qualification is the process of determining which prospects are most likely to become paying customers based on predefined criteria.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
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.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
A sales coach is a mentor who trains and guides sales reps to enhance their skills, boost performance, and ultimately close more deals effectively.
Sales and marketing analytics involves measuring and analyzing performance data to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI).
White labeling is when a company puts its own branding on a product or service that was actually produced by a different company.
Logo retention is a key B2B metric that measures a company's ability to retain its customers, or 'logos,' over a specific period.
A sales methodology is the framework that guides how your sales team approaches the entire sales process, from prospecting to closing deals.
Learn about B2C2B, including how B2C2B transforms sales, key strategies for B2C2B success, & differences between B2C2B and B2B2C.
Account management is the post-sales practice of building and nurturing long-term relationships with a company's most valuable clients.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.
Voice broadcasting is an automated system that delivers a pre-recorded voice message to a large list of phone numbers simultaneously.
Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
Sales development is the process of identifying and qualifying potential customers to create a pipeline of sales-ready leads for closers.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
Digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through various online and digital channels like social media or search engines.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
Consultative selling is an approach where salespeople act as expert advisors, diagnosing customer needs to provide the most suitable solutions.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
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.
Audience targeting is the process of segmenting consumers into specific groups to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing messages.
The marketing mix is the set of marketing tools a company uses to sell products, defined by the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
Event marketing is a strategy where brands engage directly with target audiences through live events like trade shows, conferences, or webinars.
Triggers are predefined conditions that, when met, automatically launch a workflow or action, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
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.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a tool that centralizes customer data to help manage interactions and nurture relationships.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
Learn about bounce rate, including understanding bounce rate implications, key factors affecting bounce rate, & reducing your bounce rate effectively.
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.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
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.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
Learn about B2B data, including sources and types of B2B data, leveraging B2B data for sales success, & ensuring the accuracy of B2B data.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
Event tracking is the method of collecting data on specific user actions, or 'events,' on a website or app, such as clicks or downloads.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable, recurring income a business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
Learn about buyer intent data, including sourcing and interpreting buyer intent data, & key metrics in buyer intent analysis.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is an action plan that outlines how a company will reach target customers and achieve a competitive advantage.
Webhooks are automated messages sent by an app when a specific event occurs. They push real-time data to another app's unique URL.
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.
Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.
Sales enablement provides sales teams with the necessary tools, content, and information to help them sell more effectively and efficiently.