Lead

Also called Enquiry, MQL, SQL, Prospect

Somebody who might buy. The word does a lot of work and means different things to different people in the same business.

What it means

A lead is a person or organisation that has shown some sign of possible interest — filled in a form, called, downloaded something, been recommended.

Marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads are attempts to add precision: an MQL has done something suggesting interest; an SQL has been spoken to and found to have a genuine need, a budget and a timeframe.

Why it matters

"We got forty leads last month" is meaningless without a definition, and it is the number most often used to justify marketing spend.

The gap between marketing and sales in most businesses is exactly this: marketing counts leads, sales counts the ones worth calling, and the two numbers are never the same.

What it looks like in practice

Define the stages in writing, agree them between whoever generates enquiries and whoever follows them up, and put them in the CRM.

Then measure conversion between stages rather than the totals. A drop from 200 enquiries to 12 qualified ones tells you where to work; "200 leads" tells you nothing.

Speed matters more than almost anything else. Response time to a new enquiry is consistently among the strongest predictors of whether it converts.

What to watch out for

Buying lead lists. Cold contact data is usually stale, often unlawful to email under PECR, and rarely converts.

Counting the same person several times because they came through two channels.

Where to get proper advice

The ICO's direct marketing guidance sets out what you may lawfully do with contact data — worth reading before buying any list.