CRM glossary: lead, opportunity, account, forecast, and Kanban

This CRM glossary fixes the vocabulary of sales management the way a team can actually use it. Tools reuse the same words with slightly different meanings. What matters is that one team has only one meaning.

Contacts and accounts

Term	Definition
Lead	A person or account that showed a signal, with no qualified deal yet
MQL	Marketing qualified lead: a lead marketing considers interesting, not yet accepted by sales
SQL	Sales qualified lead: a lead sales accepts after qualification
Contact	A person: name, role, email, phone
Account	The organization you sell to. Several contacts, sometimes several opportunities
Opportunity (deal)	A sales project you can size, with a stage and a next action
Activity	A call, email, meeting, or note attached to the deal

A lead is not an opportunity. Moving from one to the other is qualification.

Pipeline and movement

Term	Definition
Pipeline	All open opportunities, sorted by stage
Funnel	The same idea, seen as volumes that shrink
Sales cycle	Duration and stages from first useful contact to a decision
Stage	A step in the cycle: qualification, proposal, negotiation
Close	The decision moment, won or lost
Win rate	Share of closed opportunities that are won
Conversion rate	Share of deals that move from one stage to the next
Velocity	Revenue pace: volume × win rate × deal size ÷ cycle length
Next action	The dated task that moves the deal
Follow-up	A next action whose medium is often email

Indicator detail is in conversion and velocity. Typical stages are in the B2B sales cycle.

Forecast

Term	Definition
Forecast	Revenue you expect to sign in a period
Weighted amount	Amount × probability
Pipeline coverage	Open pipeline value ÷ period target
Commit	Deals you would nearly treat as signed
Upside	Possible deals, not included in the commit
Slippage	A deal that leaves the planned period without being lost

The math is in forecast and coverage.

Kanban method

Term	Definition
Kanban	A flow method: work is visible, pulled, and limited
Card	One unit of work. In a CRM, often an opportunity or a thread
WIP	Work in progress: how many items are open
WIP limit	An explicit cap per column
Exit criterion	The condition for leaving a column
Bottleneck	The stage where cards pile up

The method is in Kanban for sales. Columns are in sales Kanban board columns.

Bottom line

Keep this glossary to one page and match it to the real fields in the tool. A CRM that says “deal,” “opportunity,” and “project” for the same object produces pipelines nobody reads the same way. Inside Gmail, Colossales attaches the card to the thread and, on Pro, the account and the pipeline to that same conversation.