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Lead Glossary Habefast

Lead definition

In marketing, especially in BtoB, a lead is a commercial lead to explore. It is in fact an anglicism used to designate a commercial contact established by or with a person potentially interested in a service or a product offered by a company.  

They can be obtained through the intervention of a sales person thanks to their presence at trade shows, in a store, etc. Today there are also leads obtained through interactions on other media such as phone calls or CTA on the website. 

Once the interest is shown, the goal is to convert the person or the company into a customer. To do this, a lot of argumentation and targeting is necessary and must lead to a conversion. The processing of leads is often done automatically thanks to CRM (Customer relationship management) capable of gathering the interactions developed with the leads. 

The different types of leads

  • Marketing Qualified Leads

    This type of lead is the consequence of a marketing action and therefore represents a type of qualified lead. The person knows the company, is interested in a product offered thanks to operations put in place. Sometimes it is the person himself who comes to you. It is therefore easier to reach them and convert them into customers.  

  • Sales Qualified Leads

    Here, you have to go and get the lead, these are potential targets, identified by the company and the sales team. For this type of lead, it is necessary to carry out an in-depth study of the target to convince them of the usefulness of your service or product for their business. 

Leads and inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing technique that consists of bringing prospects to the proposed product rather than going to look for them. The contact with the leads is therefore different. The goal here is to transform visitors to your site or more generally to your digital content into leads. To do this, there are two techniques:

  1. Lead scoring

    It allows you to measure the level of qualification and maturity of your leads in order to carry out personalized marketing actions.

  2. Lead nurturing

    It allows you to answer in advance the questions that your leads may have in order to qualify for a purchase proposal.