CRM Foundations
Build a clean account, contact and activity model for your team.
Open interactive lesson and quizWhat you will learn
- Model companies and people correctly
- Apply practical data-quality rules
- Create an accountable customer timeline
You have inherited a spreadsheet of prospects and need to turn it into a reliable shared customer system before the next sales meeting.
Lesson 1
The customer record
Companies represent organizations and contacts represent people. Link contacts to companies so the complete relationship remains visible across sales, service and marketing.
Consider a business buying an annual maintenance service. Store the business once as a Company, each buyer as a Contact, and each potential sale as a Deal. Two people working at the same business should share the Company lookup, rather than creating two Company records with similar names. A person can remain a useful contact even when no deal is open.
Before creating a record, search by email or company name. Open the matching record and check its details before deciding whether it is the same customer. In your practice org, create two contacts linked to one company and confirm that both lookups point to the same record.
Lesson 2
Data quality rules
Use the required fields that matter: company name for companies, and both name and email for contacts. Owners, status and next actions turn stored data into accountable work.
A required field prevents a blank value; it does not prove that the value is accurate. For example, an email can have a valid format but belong to the wrong buyer. Agree which team owns each field, where the information comes from, and when it should be refreshed. Use picklists for controlled categories and free text for explanations that need detail.
Try saving a contact without an email and observe the validation. Then save a complete record and check its owner and status. Avoid filling unknown values with invented names or the literal word null. Missing information should remain visibly incomplete until someone can verify it.
Lesson 3
Every interaction belongs on the timeline
Log calls, emails and messages against the customer. A complete timeline lets every authorized teammate continue the conversation with context.
A useful activity note explains what happened, what the customer needs and what should happen next. After a call, record the date, participants and agreed action. Assign a separate task with an owner and due date when follow-up is required; a sentence in a note alone is easy to miss. Record only information needed for the business relationship.
Imagine another colleague taking over tomorrow. Could they identify the latest commitment without reading every note? Practise writing a short call summary and creating its follow-up task. Email or messaging activity from an external provider appears automatically only when that provider has an actual configured connection.
Practice · Build your first customer relationship
- Create a company in a Trial practice org
- Create a contact with name and email
- Link the contact to the company using the lookup