[GTM glossary](/glossary.md) Salesforce

RevOps & Pipeline

# Salesforce

In short

Salesforce is a company that sells cloud-based business software, and the name usually refers to its CRM platform. The platform stores customer and deal data and is widely used to manage leads, accounts, opportunities, forecasts, and reporting.

Salesforce is a customizable platform. Companies configure objects, fields, automations, and dashboards, so two Salesforce setups can look very different. It is commonly abbreviated as SFDC.

## Core concepts

* **Leads:** Unqualified prospects before they are tied to an account.
* **Accounts and contacts:** Companies and the people who work at them.
* **Opportunities:** Potential deals with an amount, stage, and close date.
* **Campaigns:** Marketing efforts that connect leads and contacts to activity.
* **Reports and dashboards:** Views of pipeline, activity, and performance.

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## What teams use it for

### Sales

Reps log activity, manage opportunities, and update stages. Managers review pipeline and forecast from the same records.

### Marketing and RevOps

Marketing syncs leads and campaign data from other tools. RevOps designs routing, scoring, and reporting on top of it.

### Customer success

Service and renewal teams track cases, renewals, and expansion opportunities against the same accounts.

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## Getting value from it

A CRM only helps if the data is accurate and the team uses it. Define required fields, keep a clear data model, and limit custom fields to those that feed a report or a workflow.

* **Data quality:** Deduplicate records and enrich missing fields regularly.
* **Integrations:** Connect email, calendar, marketing automation, and data tools so reps do not retype information.
* **Ownership:** Assign an administrator or RevOps owner for changes.

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## Common mistakes

* **Over-customizing:** Hundreds of unused fields make the system slow to use and hard to maintain.
* **No governance:** Anyone changing fields or automations without review breaks reports.
* **Treating it as a record-keeping chore:** If reps see no benefit, they update it late or not at all.

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## Salesforce FAQs

**What is Salesforce used for?**

Salesforce is mainly used as a CRM to store customer data and manage leads, accounts, opportunities, forecasts, and reports. Sales, marketing, and customer success teams use it to coordinate work around the same customer records.

**Is Salesforce a CRM?**

Salesforce is a company, and its best-known product is a CRM platform. In everyday conversation, people say Salesforce when they mean that CRM, including its sales, service, and marketing products.

**What are the main objects in Salesforce?**

The core objects are leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, and campaigns, plus cases for service teams. Admins can add custom objects and fields to model their own business process.

**What is the difference between Salesforce and SFDC?**

There is no difference in meaning. SFDC is a common abbreviation for Salesforce.com, used in job titles, integration names, and technical conversations as shorthand for the Salesforce CRM.

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## More related phrases

* [Customer relationship management systems](/glossary/customer-relationship-management-systems.md)
* [HubSpot](/glossary/hubspot.md)
* [Pipeline hygiene](/glossary/pipeline-hygiene.md)

## Similar phrases

* [CRM (CRM)](/glossary/crm.md)  
A CRM is software that stores customer and prospect data, tracks interactions and deals, and gives sales, marketing, and success teams a shared record of every account relationship.
* [Salesforce administrator](/glossary/salesforce-administrator.md)  
A Salesforce administrator configures and maintains a company's Salesforce instance, managing users, fields, automations, reports, and data quality so sales and marketing teams can work reliably.
* [CRM hygiene](/glossary/crm-hygiene.md)  
CRM hygiene is the ongoing practice of keeping CRM records accurate, complete, deduplicated, and consistent so that reports, routing, and forecasts can be trusted.
* [CRM integration](/glossary/crm-integration.md)  
CRM integration connects your customer relationship management system with other tools, such as marketing automation, data providers, and sales engagement, so records and activity sync automatically between them.
* [Sales operations](/glossary/sales-operations.md)  
Sales operations is the function that supports a sales team through process design, data, tools, forecasting, and planning, so reps can spend more of their time selling.