Contacts

Contacts (sometimes referred to as Relationships or People) are a core building block of your revenue funnel. They represent known individuals who have engaged with your business in a meaningful way and for whom you have captured persistent information such as name, email, company, role, and engagement history.

Contacts are created through a variety of channels, including website forms, product signups, events and webinars, outbound and inbound sales activity, email marketing, and social media interactions. In modern revenue teams, Contacts are often created automatically when a user reaches a defined qualification threshold, such as booking a demo, requesting pricing, meeting a lead scoring requirement, or completing a product-based action.

Understanding the distinction between Leads and Contacts is important. Leads generally represent early-stage or unqualified interest, while Contacts represent individuals who have been qualified based on intent, fit, or behaviour. In some CRMs, Leads and Contacts are separate objects; in others (such as HubSpot), all records may start as Contacts and are segmented using lifecycle stages. Regardless of tooling, the underlying concept remains the same: Contacts are people your business is actively working to convert, retain, or expand.

Using a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce to manage Contacts allows your sales and marketing teams to maintain a shared, up-to-date view of every relationship. Modern CRM adoption consistently shows strong ROI by improving visibility, follow-up, and coordination across teams. When Contacts data is connected to analytics and reporting tools, teams can more easily monitor pipeline health, diagnose conversion drop-offs, and adjust go-to-market strategies in near real time.