Lead
A lead is a person who has shown interest in an offer, by applying, writing or calling, but has not yet become a client.
In plain words
A lead is neither a client nor a sale. It is a signal: someone left a number, filled in a form, wrote in a messenger. That signal then has to be turned into a conversation, and the conversation into a deal.
A lead usually carries minimal data: a name, a number such as +1234567890, sometimes the interest and the source.
What a lead’s path looks like
An application comes in, a sales rep gets in touch, finds out the need, makes an offer, the client pays. At every step some leads drop off. Some do not answer, others gave a wrong number, others were just comparing options.
It is useful to count not only the number of leads but also the share that reached each next step.
Why it matters to an owner
Leads go cold quickly. In the first minutes a person who applied still remembers why. A few hours later they have already talked to others or forgotten. The time to first reply often decides more than the wording of the offer.
If leads are bought, every unanswered one is money paid for nothing.
Common mistake
Treating the number of leads as success. A hundred applications where nobody got in touch are worse than twenty where five bought. The second frequent failure is leads without an owner: the application came in, but nobody is specifically responsible for it, and the chat is quietly abandoned.
More in Signals
- Following up with clients in chat: when to return and when to stopA follow-up in a chat helps when the rep has something to say on substance, and hurts when it is written blind. The head of sales decides who owns the conversation, how many follow-ups are acceptable and when to stop, and works out the cost of forgotten ones on the team's own conversations. Irritation shows early: curt replies, requests to stop writing, complaints.
- Which broadcast brought in money: measure results, not messages sentTo tell which broadcast brought money, look at people rather than messages sent: who replied, who bought, how much they paid. The company needs an honest answer: what to credit to the broadcast and what would have happened anyway, how one run differed from another, and what it cost once complaints and lost numbers are counted.