Outseta CRM includes three different record types:
- Accounts
- People
- Deals
This article explains the difference between the three record types.
Accounts
Accounts are the primary record type in Outseta CRM and are how you'll manage your customer relationships. Accounts have subscriptions or other products associated with them.
The information required to create an Account record includes:
- Account name
- Billing stage
- Primary contact email
Account records include an overview of all Account information and activity, a record of all people associated with the Account, and a complete billing history for the Account.
People
People are records for individuals; often referred to as contacts in other CRM systems. If you have an email address for someone stored in Outseta CRM, they'll have a People record.
In most instances you won't "do" much with your People records aside from potentially emailing these contacts—they largely exist behind the scenes as a place to store user specific information.
Why both People and Accounts exist in Outseta is a common point of confusion for customers coming from other membership software tools. In short, both record types are needed because Outseta supports team based memberships—where multiple people are associated with a single account.
Deals
Deals should be used to manage your sales pipeline—use "Deals" to track prospects as they move through your customer acquisition process.
Once someone signs up for your product or site, you'll stop using their "Deal" record and will track their relationship once they become a customer on their "Account" record.
The only required information to create a deal record is a Deal name (most often a company name if you sell B2B, or an individual name is you sell B2C) and a stage, which will correspond to the stages you setup in your sales pipeline. Deal records are a great place to keep notes on your recent interactions with prospects.
If you have any questions about how to best use Accounts, People, or Deals, please shoot us a note at support(at)outseta.com.