SMB key terms

A record that represents a company, organization, or household you do business with. It groups related contacts, opportunities, and activities so your team sees one shared view of the customer relationship.

A record storing an individual person's details, such as name, email, and phone, usually linked to an account. Contacts are the people your small business communicates with during sales and service.

A person or company that has shown interest but has not yet been qualified as a real sales opportunity. Leads are tracked separately until someone decides to convert them.

The process of turning a qualified lead into an account, contact, and optionally an opportunity in one step. It moves the record from marketing interest into the active sales pipeline.

A record representing a potential sale tied to an account, with an amount, close date, and stage. It lets a small business forecast revenue and track deals through the pipeline.

The collection of open opportunities grouped by stage, showing what revenue is in progress. Sales teams review it to spot stalled deals and estimate upcoming income.

A defined step an opportunity passes through, such as Prospecting or Closed Won, often paired with a probability percentage. Stages standardize how a team reports deal progress.

A logged task or event, such as a call, email, or meeting, attached to a record. Activities create a history of customer touchpoints so nothing is forgotten.

A record capturing a customer question, problem, or request that needs service follow-up. Cases track status, priority, and ownership so issues reach resolution.

A shared list where unassigned cases wait to be picked up by service agents. Queues help small teams route work by topic or region instead of assigning each case manually.

A workspace layout built for service agents that shows a case alongside related details, history, and tools on one screen. It reduces clicks so agents resolve issues faster.

An automated rule that reassigns or notifies someone when a case ages past a threshold or meets a condition. It prevents important customer issues from sitting unresolved.

A written help document, such as a how-to or FAQ, stored in Salesforce and shared with agents or customers. Articles let a small team answer common questions consistently.

A record used to plan and measure a marketing effort, such as an email blast or event. It tracks who was targeted and what responses or revenue resulted.

Software that sends messages and performs follow-up actions automatically based on customer behavior or schedules. It lets a small marketing team nurture many leads without manual effort.

A feature that captures form submissions from your website directly as lead records in Salesforce. It removes manual data entry and speeds up response to interested visitors.

A record describing something your business sells, including its name and standard price. Products can be added to opportunities or orders to build a quote.

A list that assigns prices to products for a particular market, currency, or customer segment. Multiple price books let one catalog serve different selling situations.

A saved view that filters, groups, and summarizes your records to answer a specific question. Reports can be run on demand or scheduled for regular delivery.

A page of charts and metrics built from report data, giving an at-a-glance view of performance. Dashboards are often refreshed on a schedule and shared with teams.

A template that defines which objects a report can use and how they relate, such as accounts with their opportunities. Choosing the right type determines available fields and rows.

A database table in Salesforce that stores a particular kind of record, like accounts or cases. Objects define the fields and relationships available for that data.

A single data attribute on an object, such as a phone number or close date. Fields have a data type that controls what values can be entered.

A setting that offers different field layouts and picklist values to different users on the same object. It lets one object serve several business processes cleanly.

A configuration controlling which fields, buttons, and related lists appear on a record page. Layouts can be assigned by profile or record type to match each team's needs.

A condition that blocks a record from saving unless the data meets your criteria. It enforces data quality, such as requiring a reason before a case closes.

A no-code automation tool that runs a sequence of steps to create, update, or guide users through records. Flows can be triggered by a record change, a schedule, or a button.

A legacy automation feature that triggers field updates, emails, or tasks when a record meets a condition. Newer builds generally use Flow instead, but the concept still appears on exams.

A settings container that controls what a user can do, such as which objects they can edit. Every user has exactly one profile, which sets baseline permissions.

An add-on collection of permissions granted to a user beyond their profile. It lets administrators give extra access to specific people without creating new profiles.

A tree of roles that determines whose records a user can see, where managers typically see records owned by people below them. It controls record visibility, not feature permissions.

A setting that opens up record access to users or groups who would not otherwise see those records. Sharing rules extend visibility beyond the role hierarchy for specific records.

A separate copy of your Salesforce environment used to build and test changes safely. Teams develop in a sandbox, then deploy approved changes to production.

Salesforce's platform for building AI agents that can reason over your data and take actions, such as answering customer questions or updating records. Agents are configured with topics and instructions rather than hand-written code.

Salesforce's built-in artificial intelligence layer that adds predictions and suggestions, such as lead scoring or case classification, to standard features. It uses your org's data to surface recommendations to users.

A reusable, parameterized instruction that feeds context into a generative AI model. Templates keep AI output consistent and let teams reuse the same prompt across records or agents.

A guided tool for loading records from a spreadsheet into Salesforce, with mapping and duplicate checking. It suits smaller imports and simple objects for non-technical administrators.