Consumers

Just like partner contacts come in different flavors, so do normal contacts. There are 2 different types of contacts that can be implemented in Sales Cloud. Unlike the partner contact types that are closely related, these contacts could not be more different from each other.

• B2B Contacts are people of interest related to accounts. We document them in Sales Cloud in order to better understand the relations we have with our customers, who we are engaging or dealing with when managing leads and opportunities, etc.
• B2C Consumers are individuals we sell to directly without them being linked to an account.  They can be identified as customer or prospects like a normal account.

Understanding how consumers can be implemented in Sales Cloud is the key to a B2C Sales Cloud implementation.

B2B Contacts

Most often, the contact type field is not exposed on any of the contact layouts, but if you would show the contact field, B2B contacts are created by default as contacts of type ‘Contact’.  These are the B2B con

Check out this contact in the image below.  It is a contact we do not plan to sell directly too.  It was defined as a contact of type ‘Contact’ and was linked to an account.

We cannot create an opportunity against the contact, but we can specify the contact as a contact we engage with on opportunities defined against the account the contact is related to.

B2C Consumers

Exposing the ‘Type’ field on the contact layouts will allow for the creation of contacts of type ‘Customer’ and ‘Prospect’.  These are consumers: contacts that can target directly with opportunities and leads.

By the way, notice how by using a different type of contact, dynamically a different layout is being used for the contact layout so that I cannot specify an account or detail the contact important within the account through ‘Influence Level’ or ‘Buying Role’ like in the B2B contact example above.

This consumer now can be used as an account and we can create opportunities or leads against it directly.  The consumer can be used as an account, but it remains a contact.  If you would search for the consumers on the account list, you would not find it.  The consumer can simply be used as if it were an account.

Households

A last interesting aspect of consumers to mention is the fact that we can group them in households.  This allows us to better understand the close relationships consumers have and how they can influence each other when we are doing business with them.