What is a Lead? By Proclientia

Definition

Let's start with our definition, or rather, how we explain it: In business terms, a lead is a company or individual—depending on whether we sell to businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C)—whose potential purchaser we want to know is likely to buy our products or services within a reasonable timeframe, but for whom we don't yet have that information. In other words, we're not yet sure whether it's worth investing sales effort in that company or individual.
And we usually accompany the theory with some example:

• Any company or individual that includes a database or list acquired through a marketing company or any other means.
• People who leave their business cards in a box at our booth at a trade show to participate in the traditional iPad raffle.
• A person with whom we exchanged cards at a seminar.
• Data we receive from a person who has downloaded a report, product sheet, or anything else from our website.
• The data of those who directly request a demo from us through the website.
  What they all have in common is that they have shown some interest in our company, or we have shown some interest in theirs, and we are not certain that they are interested and can purchase our products or services within a reasonable timeframe.

And now let's also see what the manufacturers tell us:
According to Salesforce – copy-paste from help – a “lead” (this is what Salesforce calls leads in Spanish) is a potential or probable opportunity: someone you met at a conference who expressed interest, or someone who filled out a form on your company’s website.
According to Zoho CRM – copy-paste from the help and translation into Spanish – “Leads” (Zoho CRM translation into Spanish) are the details collected from an individual or from a company’s representatives. They play a very important role in the Marketing and Sales function in a company and are useful for identifying potential customers. Generating and managing leads is key in the initial stages of the sales process. Leads can be obtained at trade shows, seminars, advertisements, campaigns, etc. Once leads have been captured, it is key to manage and follow up on them until they qualify as potential customers. The terminology related to lead management varies from industry to industry, but the process of managing them is essentially the same.

To complete the definitions, let's give some examples of what a lead isn't. It will help:

• One of your main clients, to whom you've been invoicing for months, isn't a lead. They're a client.
• The company you've already met with, exchanged emails with, and prepared a proposal for is no longer a lead. It's more than a lead; it's a potential customer (ugh, we're messing things up). What's happening is you already know they can buy what you're selling within a reasonable timeframe. You've qualified them positively. We'll discuss the qualification process in another post.

And if we go a little further:

• The individual who left their card at your booth to participate in the iPad raffle will still be a lead if you've spoken to them and, although they're likely to purchase your products or services, they're not interested in doing so.
• The same person—the one from the iPad giveaway—will also be a lead if you've spoken with them and they don't even seem likely to buy your products (e.g., you sell cars and the person doesn't have a driver's license or money). They'll be a lead, but not a qualified one.

In short, a lead is the set of basic data we have about an individual and/or their company, but it doesn't allow us to know if that person or company is likely to hire our services within a reasonable timeframe. For me, it's a state of ignorance, indicating that we don't know enough to invest the time and effort of the sales team to have a high probability of making a sale.

Terminology or what each person calls it at home

There are several terms used to describe leads. These are the ones we most frequently encounter: lead, prospect, potential, potential client, possible client, candidate, and surely some more that we've left out.

What does the Leads feature in a CRM offer us? Now let's talk about technology.
Well, typically, using the tab to reflect leads – read "Candidates" in Salesforce or "Potential Clients" in Zoho CRM – provides the following functionalities:

• Capture new lead data directly into your CRM through forms posted on our website.
• Automatic email responses to leads who have submitted their information via a web form.
• Differentiated management of those companies/individuals where we do not know if it is feasible to obtain a return on the commercial effort made, from those companies that we already know are likely to contract our products or services and that also have a certain degree of interest or meet certain criteria established by the company itself.
• Ability to measure the results of generating "valid" or "qualified" leads. That is, those leads that will cease to be leads and become accounts. We already know they are likely to buy what we sell.
• And more features, but we'll leave them for another post, as this one is getting too long.

Yeah, but do I use the Leads tab or not?
Well, if your company does marketing and you're interested in capturing data from interested companies/individuals through your website, use it. If you want to measure the return on your marketing campaigns to attract new companies/individuals, you can do the same. If your sales process is complex and you're interested in clearly differentiating which companies/individuals to focus your sales efforts on, too.
If your sales process is simple and marketing and the website aren't key to generating new contacts/companies to work with, you don't need to use it.
If, after reading this post, you're hesitant because you think you'll be complicating your salespeople's lives, it's almost certainly because it won't provide enough value. Simplify it, then. There's no need to use it.
In another post, we'll discuss the qualification process, which allows us to assign a lead a definitive status after overcoming the initial lack of awareness. That is, we can identify them as someone worthy of a sales effort because they're likely to hire our products or services, or we can also mark them in some way to reflect that they're unlikely to hire us (e.g., we sell concrete, but the company isn't dedicated to construction).