CRM glossary

A CRM, short for Customer Relationship Management, is software that keeps every contact, company, and deal in one place, along with the next step for each, so a sales team can follow up reliably and never lose track of an opportunity.

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor connect to external tools and data through a single, consistent interface. A product that exposes an MCP server can be operated directly by an AI assistant, which can read and act on your data on your behalf.

A sales pipeline is the visual sequence of stages a deal moves through from first contact to closed won or lost. It shows, at a glance, what you are working on, where each deal stands, and what needs attention, so a team can prioritise and keep deals moving.

A follow-up-first CRM is one built around the next action: every open deal must have a single next step with a due date, and the tool surfaces what is overdue or due today so deals never go quiet. It is designed so the pipeline stays current as a by-product of normal work, rather than through separate admin.

Next-action selling is the discipline of always defining the single next step for every open deal, with a due date. It turns follow-through from something you try to remember into something the system guarantees, which is the difference between a pipeline that reflects reality and one that goes stale.

Sales commission tracking is the practice of recording, on each deal, who earns a commission and how much: the payees, the split percentages or fixed amounts, and the resulting payout. Done inside the CRM, it stays tied to the live deal value instead of drifting in a separate spreadsheet.

Role-based access control (RBAC) is a model where permissions are attached to roles, and people are granted access by being assigned a role. In a CRM it determines who can view, edit, export, or see financial data, so access scales with roles instead of being configured one person at a time.