Account Team Member
An Account Team Member in Salesforce (AccountTeamMember in the API) is a standard junction object that adds a User to an Account Team and grants that user configurable access to the parent Account and its related Opportunities, Cases, and Contacts.
Definition
An Account Team Member in Salesforce (AccountTeamMember in the API) is a standard junction object that adds a User to an Account Team and grants that user configurable access to the parent Account and its related Opportunities, Cases, and Contacts. Each Account Team Member record holds an AccountId, a UserId, a TeamMemberRole picklist (Account Manager, Executive Sponsor, Lead Qualifier, Pre-Sales Consultant, etc.), and four access-level fields: AccountAccessLevel, OpportunityAccessLevel, CaseAccessLevel, and ContactAccessLevel — each set independently to Read, Edit, or No Access. Account Team Members are the core mechanism Salesforce provides for collaborative selling, where multiple users with different specialties (sales rep, solutions engineer, customer success manager, executive sponsor) need shared visibility and edit access to a strategic account without using broader sharing rules. Salesforce also supports Default Account Teams configured per User — a preset list that automatically adds standard team members to every new Account a user owns.
In plain English
“An Account Team Member is one user added to the team that collaborates on a customer Account — like the sales rep, the solutions engineer, and the customer success manager all working together on the same enterprise client. Each team member is given a role (like Account Manager) and access level (like Edit) for the Account and its related records.”
Worked example
An enterprise account executive named Maya owns a strategic Account, GlobalRetail Inc, and wants three colleagues to collaborate on it: a solutions engineer to handle technical questions, a customer success manager to manage post-sale renewals, and an executive sponsor for top-level relationship management. Maya opens the Account, scrolls to the Account Team related list, and adds three Account Team Members: the SE with role "Solutions Engineer" and AccountAccessLevel = Edit, the CSM with role "Customer Success Manager" and AccountAccessLevel = Edit, and the executive sponsor with role "Executive Sponsor" and AccountAccessLevel = Read. All three can now see and (where granted) update the Account, its open Opportunities, Cases, and Contacts — without Maya having to write custom sharing rules or transfer ownership.
Why Account Team Member matters
Account Team Members are an additive sharing mechanism — they grant access on top of whatever the user would otherwise have through ownership, role hierarchy, sharing rules, or manual sharing. Removing a User from an Account Team revokes only the access granted by the team membership; the User still has whatever baseline access exists through other channels. This makes team membership safe to add and remove as project staffing changes, without disrupting the underlying sharing model.
The four access-level fields (Account, Opportunity, Case, Contact) are independent. A team member can have Edit on the Account but Read-only on Opportunities — useful for a customer success manager who can update Account context but shouldn't accidentally change pipeline numbers. The org's organization-wide default sharing settings cap what a team member can be granted: if Opportunity OWD is Public Read/Write, the OpportunityAccessLevel field is essentially advisory (everyone already has edit access). Account Teams matter most when OWDs are Private or Public Read Only.
Default Account Teams (configured per User in Personal Settings) auto-populate Account Team Members on every new Account the User owns. This is convenient for territory teams where the same supporting cast follows every account, but it can balloon Account Team membership counts in orgs with high account-creation volume. Plan default team membership carefully — adding a default member retroactively to existing Accounts requires an explicit 'Add to Existing Accounts' option.
How organizations use Account Team Member
Adds Account Team Members to every named-account assignment — sales rep, solutions engineer, customer success manager, technical account manager — each with role-appropriate access. The team list on the Account becomes the source of truth for who is staffed on which account, driving capacity planning and territory reviews.
Adds C-level executives as Account Team Members on the largest Accounts in their region with role Executive Sponsor and Read access only. Executives use the team list to find their portfolio of relationships and join customer reviews without owning records or contributing to quota.
Each rep configures a Default Account Team that includes their assigned solutions engineer and CSM. Every new Account the rep creates auto-populates with those team members at the right access level — eliminating the manual step and ensuring no team member is forgotten on a new opportunity.
Trust & references
Straight from the source — Salesforce's reference material on Account Team Member.
- Account Teams in Salesforce HelpSalesforce
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