Customer v. Contact

[albertf27]

I am a new user of SugarCRM Community Edition. So far I have used Goldmine. CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management. Having looked at a few CRM systems, the focus is clearly on converting Leads into Contacts into Opportunities and into a sale. Which is great, of course!
In my business we go lead > contact > 1st sale > customer - i.e. they buy re-newals and other services several times per year over several years. 'Opportunities' is good for managing clear, defined discrete 'project' proposals.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how, using SugarCRM, I should track and manage what are basically rolling subscription renewals. What I am saying is that once an Account becomes a customer, they buy from us more than we sell to them. Obviously we encourage them to renew and to refer, but they will typically send an email to say "Here are 3 people for you to contact and set up with a training pack." or "This is to confirm a new pack for Pedro."
In Documentation, the word Customer isn't in the index. This isn't a criticism, by the way. I am just not too sure if I am missing something or if I am looking for something that isn't really necessary if I take a different look at how to use the existing categories and features. Thanks. Albert.

[roblaus]

Sugar has three basic concepts: target, lead, account (customer). Targets are used e.g. for purchased addresses (person and company in one record).
Leads are (in my understanding) people you are in contact with but haven't yet bought. Targets can be converted into leads. Here also person and company is one record.
Once somebody bought you convert him from lead to account (the company, customer) AND contact(s). A contact may exist without a company but then she/he is the customer.
In order to handle recurring sales the best approach is to set up a new module connected to accounts that simply shows order lines or headers (summaries) from your order processing system. Such you can import on a daily or weekly basis.
Just make sure that you do not mix up your settings if you deal with individuals AND companies at the same time. In such a case it's probably better to set up every individual with a dummy company. E.g. ACME Inc - Joe Sixpack // John Doe (Inc) - John Doe.