Accounts, contacts, leads, deals
Which object holds what, and why putting things in the right one matters.
Foreman ships its own CRM. You do not need an external one — though you can sync from one if you have it.
The objects
| Object | Holds | Think of it as |
|---|---|---|
| Account | A company | The organisation you sell to |
| Contact | A person, attached to an account | Who you actually talk to |
| Lead | An unqualified person or company | Not yet known to be a fit |
| Deal | A specific opportunity with a value and a stage | The thing that closes |
| Activity | Something that happened | The history |
The rule worth following
A contact belongs to an account. Contacts floating without one are how CRMs decay: you lose the ability to see everyone at a company, and every report about companies becomes wrong. Foreman keeps that link.
A lead becomes a contact when it qualifies — see Leads, conversion and pipelines. Leaving qualified people as leads means your pipeline understates itself.
Steps
- Open Accounts and create one, or import.
- Add contacts under it.
- Create a deal against the account when there is something real to win.
- Let activities accumulate — agents log what they do.
You're done when you can open an account and see its people, its deals and its history.
Gotchas
- Do not use leads as a to-do list. A lead is a person you have not qualified, not a task.
- Thin records produce thin outreach. Everything drafted about a contact is built from what is on the record.