Lead
The term “lead” originally comes from the English verb “to lead.” In marketing, a lead refers to a potential customer interested in a product or service. A lead is a stage in the sales funnel. In online marketing, the stage preceding a lead is the visitor. In online marketing, a lead can be, for example, a completed contact form, a newsletter subscription, or an entry into a contest. The website visitor is interested enough to provide their information, ask a specific question, or continue receiving our updates. It is now the company’s task to convert this lead into a customer. In this context, a distinction is made between unqualified and qualified leads. A qualified lead can also be referred to as a sales opportunity or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).
Unqualified Lead
An unqualified lead is the raw customer data record that has not yet been processed or verified. It could be a “genuine” inquiry or spam. At this stage, we only know what the visitor has told us.
Qualified Lead
A qualified lead has already been manually or automatically screened against certain criteria and supplemented. The contact is thoroughly validated, and address and contact information are added as needed. Spam is filtered out during this step. Next, the inquiry is reviewed: Does this contact have potential as a customer—in other words, does their inquiry align with our portfolio? It may already be possible to estimate the customer’s potential at this stage.
Who is responsible?
Depending on the company’s structure, lead qualification and sorting are handled by either the marketing or sales department. Close collaboration and a shared understanding of terminology between the two departments are essential for a smooth process, since there is always a handoff at some point in any company’s organizational structure.
