I couldn't agree with you more. I hate that the word "lead" has become generic meaning everything from a name on a list to a fully-qualified, sales-ready opportunity.

And now others, including industry analysts and marketing automation vendors, are complicating things further by adding new lead levels such as "marketing qualified lead" and "sales accepted lead" (those two should be the same thing if sales and marketing are aligned!).

Mac McIntosh
mcintosh at sales-lead-experts dot com

Great post as always. Since there are a million ways to do this, let me share my mine.

In my forecasting and funnels, I use the term "raw lead" to refer to an unscored lead (aka "prospect") and then specify business rules for scoring those leads.

The next step in my funnel is to score these raw leads and those that meet my criteria is then deemed a "lead."

Therefore, in a hypothetical campaign, an "A" lead would be one that is sales accepted, a "B" lead is one that sales would agree meets basic criteria of being a lead but is not far enough in the buy cycle to call on, a "C" lead should be nurtured and sales will be happy to take their order one day but will never call on because they are too small an opportunity and a "D" lead should be dropped.

Now, in terms of the forecast model and funnel, every client of mine is different, depending on complexity of buy cycle, complexity of purchase, etc.

But in most cases, I prefer to use the term "raw leads" as to me, it fits better in the funnel vernacular.

So in my funnel, clicks become raw leads which become leads which become sales, with an assumed drop off at each phase.

To me, one of the most important data points enabling me to optimize a campaign is to know what percentage of raw leads become actual leads because this lets me adjust the front of the funnel (is the offer too rich, is the media buy too narrow, etc.).

Regards,

Marc

What IS important is that the communication is taking place. It is the dialogue that is what makes things work between Marketing and Sales. The definition will evolve and morph to reflect the economy, industry and competitive activity, and your company goals for the period at hand.

Gather everyone at the table and you will see good things happen!

Thanks for sharing.
Wholesale Buyers