Lead, account, deal: what they actually mean

Most CRM confusion in the first week is vocabulary, not software. Three words do most of the damage, and every vendor defines them a little differently. Here is how Desk CRM uses them.

Account

An account is the organisation you are selling to. A company, a firm, a shop. It is the thing that stays constant while people come and go, and it is where the long-term history lives: every task, every note, every deal ever opened with them.

If you sell to individuals rather than businesses, an account is simply that person. You do not have to invent a company that does not exist.

Lead

A lead is a person. Someone with a name, a phone number, and usually an email - the human being you actually speak to. A lead normally belongs to an account, because most people work somewhere.

Leads move through their own stages, because a person’s relationship with you has its own progression: not contacted, contacted, qualified, and so on. That is separate from whether any particular deal is going well.

Deal

A deal is a specific opportunity to be paid: one project, one order, one contract, with a value and an expected close date. An account can have several over the years, and several open at once.

The distinction that matters: losing a deal does not mean losing the account. Keeping those separate is what lets you go back in six months to a customer who said no in March.

And tasks, which tie it together

A task is a piece of work with a time attached - call this person on Thursday, send the quote by Friday. Tasks hang off whichever of the three they belong to, and they are the part of a CRM that actually changes behaviour, because they are what produces the reminder.

An account is who you sell to. A lead is who you talk to. A deal is what you get paid for.