What are leads, contacts, accounts, and deals in Freshsales CRM? - YouTube

Meet John, a salesperson at a software company.

He uses multiple tools to sell his products to prospects across the globe—email and

phone to communicate with prospects and a spreadsheet to keep a tab on all of his contacts.

But, here’s the catch!

As the company grows, the number of customers and prospects grow quickly and with it the

sheer number of emails to send, phone calls to make, relationships to build, and deals

to close.

And that’s when John and his team, decide to invest in Freshsales—an all-in-one sales CRM.

Freshsales empowers you at every step along the way, by allowing you to Convert your leads,

close deals faster, and nurture existing customers to help you build better, more meaningful,

long-lasting relationships.

Wait, but what is a Lead or a Deal?

Like John, if you’re new to the world of CRM, then it is possible that you may be unaware

of the terminology such as Leads, Contacts, Accounts or Deals presented to you.

Let’s look at a simple example, shall we?

Say John meets a prospect, Sam Jackson, at a conference.

Sam handles Supply and Logistics for Acme Corp and is on the lookout for a software

similar to what John’s company sells.

So, Sam and John exchange business cards.

What happens after that?

Now, at the outset, Sam is an unqualified contact as he has not yet explicitly showed

any intent to purchase John’s product.

However, Sam is in the market to buy a product like that of John’s.

This makes Sam a Lead.

John enters Sam’s name and contact information and creates a Lead in Freshsales.

John also has many such leads that come in through various sources like Freshsales webforms

on his company’s website, Google and Facebook ads, email campaigns and more.

More leads equal More confusion.

Nope.

Not with Freshsales.

With AI based lead scoring, John can now identify which leads are hot and ready to convert and

which leads are cold as the arctic ice.

Thanks to a good fit between Sam’s requirements and John’s offering, Sam shows great interest

and becomes a hot lead.

Sam is now a hot lead.

What next?

John emails Sam and gets a positive response from him.

John feels that there is a good chance of Sam purchasing the product.

This makes him a qualified prospect, or a Contact.

John, therefore, converts Sam into a Contact on Freshsales.

Leads - Check Contacts - Check

Accounts and Deals?

Interestingly, whenever a Contact is created, two associated entities are created along

with it- Accounts and Deals.

But why?

Let's explore!

An Account is the name of the company for which the Contact works, or in this case

Acme Corp, the company for which Sam works.

The Acme Corp Account may have multiple requirements from one or more ‘Contacts’ like Sam and

John may be capable of promoting multiple products, or Deals, to the same Account.

And, what is a deal?

Simply put, an Account is a business entity, and a Deal is a business opportunity

A deal usually concludes in one of two ways— Deals Won or Deals Lost.

Also, each deal has multiple stages.

John can update the status of a deal by merely moving it from one stage to another.

More importantly, all deals in Freshsales carry a deal value to estimate what revenue

comes in.

But wait, did John win the deal?

Yes, he did :) With help from Freshsales and some great salesmanship, John was able to

make a deal with Sam (Acme Corp) for 1000$.

Interestingly, in the future, if John pursues a new Deal from Acme Corp through another

person, say, Max, both the Deal and the Contact would be associated to the Account Acme Corp.

To quickly sum up, a Lead is a prospective buyer who could be interested in your product.

When the Lead shows promise to buy, you can convert him/her into a Contact.

A deal is a sales opportunity with this Contact.

An Account has the company information of this Contact and all associated Deals.

Simple, isn’t it?

So go on, use Freshsales to Convert your prospects, Close deals and Nurture customers to build

lasting relationships.