3.1 Leads
A lead is a potential customer whose interest in the products or services offered by your company is to be investigated. To aid understanding of the concept of lead, imagine a business card you picked up during a marketing campaign. The lead in question will then attract a series of sales activities that will likely culminate in the opening of commercial negotiations.
What kind of data can you save for each lead?
Just like a conventional business card, you can write the data of the physical reference person and the company for which they work or that they represent.
Where do leads come from?
You can collect leads from marketing activities such as exhibitions, sales campaigns, fairs, advertising, presentations, from your own website via webforms (see specific chapter), acquired lists, etc.
It’s important to know where each lead comes from in order to perform continual assessments and answer questions.
Example:
- which channel generates the most leads?
- which channels produce profitable leads (meaning leads that graduate to become sales opportunities)?
- what is the ROI of a given trade event?
- how many leads have you collected and how many of them are sufficiently interesting to open an opportunity?
- on which channels is it worth making investments to boost your business?
