Understanding leads, opportunities, accounts and contacts in CRM

Leads, Opportunities, Contacts and Accounts are entities in CRM. In this post I will explain their role in CRM. Lets start with easiest one.

Accounts
Accounts are companies we are doing business with.

Contacts
Contacts are people working in other companies (which are Accounts in CRM), it is anyone working in other company if we are dealing with them, it can be for taking orders, approvals or invoices.

Leads
Leads are potential sales. They can be someone new to business or an existing customer. Depending on organizational sales process initial processing (it may be reviewing a lead or contacting the person or something else) qualify or disqualify a lead. In CRM qualified lead become opportunity.

Opportunities
In CRM an opportunity can be created in two ways:
1. A qualified lead becomes an opportunity, also it becomes contact automatically
2. We directly can add an opportunity without having a lead for it