The Glossary Of CRM Terms – The Top Best CRM Terminologies You Need To Know!

Maxis CRM

Author

October 5, 2022

Customer relationship management is critical to the success of any business. However, establishing these relationships can be challenging and demanding without knowing the CRM terms. 

Let’s consider a scenario! Do you know anyone’s phone number by heart these days? Honestly, I only know about my own. Now just imagine having to manage not only phone numbers, but also email addresses, customer data, engagement histories, and business insights without the assistance of a trustable system. Ufff! Sounds challenging right? 

Although CRM may appear to be a complicated idea, its goal is actually quite simple: to keep all of your contacts unified and up to date.  Because we typically work in silos, it might be difficult to recall what you and your team have already discussed with a given contact, resulting in double work, obnoxious discrepancies, and potentially lost deals. And hence Customer Relationship Management systems help businesses develop repeatable, consistent customer engagement strategies. So without a halt, let’s check out the top best CRM terms you should know to make the most out of them.
Let’s get started with the CRM terminologies!

The Top Best CRM Terms That You Should Know : The CRM Glossary Of Terms

Pipeline – Among the CRM key terms, a pipeline outlines the steps that your sales team should take with each opportunity in order to close more deals, build stronger relationships, and increase sales. The sales pipeline is typically divided into four stages: lead, prospect, opportunity, and customer.

Lead – A lead is a sales opportunity. This is a potential customer in the primary stages of the sales pipeline. Leads can be generated from Inbound marketing, responses to an ad or other campaign, referrals, and other sources. 

Opportunity: Your “opportunity” is the critical period between finding a lead and closing or losing a deal. Opportunities are defined as prospects who have shown a high likelihood of becoming customers by making a purchase of a service.

Customer: A customer is a person or a business that is willing to make a purchase, has the financial means to do so, and has the authority to make purchasing decisions

360-degree Customer View – This is a complete customer view that includes all contact points, communication, marketing campaigns, opportunities, incidents, acquisition history, and all other aspects of the customer relationship.

Sales Forecast – A sales forecast is a prediction of your company’s future sales. This estimate is frequently based on previous sales performance, market trends, spending patterns, and other external factors influencing buyer behavior.

Account – A customer or potential customer of another organization is referred to as an account. Each customer, company, organization, and other contact has an individual or group record. In certain cases, the term “account” is used in the place of the company’s name in correspondence.

Activities- The various tasks, meetings, calls, or events that a sales team member will perform are referred to as activities. It can be registered automatically by the software or manually by your sales representatives.

CRM Analytical Reporting – This is a report that gives users detailed information about their customers. For example, demographics, purchasing trends, and period comparisons. These reports can also be used for segmentation, marketing campaigns, product development plans, and much more.

Auto-responder – You can save time by automating your email follow-up process with an autoresponder. Sales representatives can set up auto-responders to take action when certain events occur, such as automatically sending emails to leads and prospects when they are entered into the CRM.

Campaigns – Campaign is one that is most crucial among the CRM key terms. When a single activity (such as sending a welcome email to new customers) is sent to a list of accounts, contacts, or leads, then it is referred to as a campaign.

Contacts – A contact is someone with whom you or your sales team will communicate about a business opportunity. This is a unique record that contains a customer’s name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and other information. A contact can also be a prospect, a company, an associate, or any other party.

Contact Roles – Contact Roles specify how a particular contact is related to an account, opportunity, or case. A contact, for example, can have one or more contact roles. The role of  contact in an account or opportunity informs your sales reps about who to contact and when to contact them. Decision-maker, buyer, influencer, and job titles such as owner, president, and CEO are examples of contact role designations.

Custom Fields – Custom fields are fields that can be customized to meet the needs of your business. This feature allows users to create their own data fields in addition to standard ones like names, contact information, and roles.

Dashboards – A dashboard which is a key term in CRM, is a visual representation of your organization’s key metrics. It can also refer to a section of CRM software where C-level executives, managers, and analysts can view metrics, sales performance, and other critical data in a single location.

For example the dashboard in Maxis CRM gives you a seamless snapshot of all the metrics and  helps you have a broad overview of all the sales activities.

Forecast – The Forecast feature assists the sales team by estimating the number of future sales. This is a report that includes sales projections such as projected profits and revenue. It allows you to track sales pipelines and forecast sales targets for the month, quarter, and other time periods.

Indemnify and hold – This is a legal term in a CRM provider-end user contract. It essentially shields the CRM provider from liability in the event of an error, loss, damage, or technical blunder.

Lead Conversion – Lead Conversion process is the step that a sales team member must take in order to convert a lead. Leads are assigned to sales representatives, who evaluate customers and qualify them for opportunities. Leads are qualified and then converted into prospects and then to customers, if successful. 

Sales Forces Automation (SFA) – A company’s sales force automation software automates tasks such as contact management, order processing, inventory control, order tracking, sales forecasting, and performance analysis. 

Sandbox – Sandbox, as key term in CRM, is a technique for testing different versions of existing CRM software without affecting the current setup and databases. It enables you to test updates, new features, and coding changes before rolling them out as company-wide software updates.

Workflow- Workflow refers to the tasks, events, interactions, and activities that are required to complete a process. This is a catch-all phrase for the automation of CRM tasks using trigger-based rules.

User Role –  The User role helps to delegate user permissions to each user. The Admin role, for example, grants the user access to the entire CRM, whereas the Sales and Support roles restrict the user to features related to their specific job functions. 

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See? CRM terms are easy as pie right? Told you! CRM and CRM business terms are not that difficult after all! All you need is a cup of coffee, knowledge of all CRM business terms and the sword to win the game of Customer Relationship Management! Soooo, Do you think we overlooked any of the CRM terms in the CRM glossary of terms? If so, we’d love to hear all about it!

Maxis CRM

Author

October 5, 2022