In B2B, the term "lead" is part of everyday vocabulary. But depending on the company and the team, the definition can vary greatly! It's time to revisit this anglicism and define it well to better understand it.
Discover in this article the definition of a lead, and the differences between a lead, a contact and a prospect.
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- What is a lead?
A lead is a business contact (literally, a sales lead) with a potential customer who has expressed interest in a company's offering.
It usually takes the form of a contact sheet with minimum mobile numbers contact details to identify it. In B2B, this often involves:
First Name & Last Name
Company name
E-mail
Phone
In B2B, a lead can come from sales prospecting or can be generated by the company's marketing efforts.
- The different types of lead
02.1 Sales leads
Sales leads typically come from your sales team's prospecting activities. Some companies have a team dedicated to prospecting and qualifying contacts. If these contacts show interest in the offer, they then become sales leads and are passed on to the sales teams who take care of the rest of the sales process.
These prospecting teams generally aim to qualify prospects by following the BANT method: Budget, Authority, Need and Timing.
02.2 Marketing leads
In B2B, marketing generally has the primary objective of generating leads for sales teams. Downloading content, requesting a quote online or meeting at a trade fair: there are many ways to generate leads!
The lead, strictly speaking, is not exclusively digital. You discuss the problem of a contact during a trade show. He completes a form on your stand. It is also a lead, which must be treated as such. But the web, by radically changing the purchasing journey, has also multiplied the points of contact with potential leads, making lead generation a major issue for companies, particularly in B2B.
In B2B, 90% of buyers start their search for information on the Internet . It is no longer just about being present or visible on the web. It is about attracting visitors to your site to engage them in a lasting relationship with you. The goal, of course, is to lead them to purchase your solution by following the successive phases of the inbound marketing conversion funnel.
Depending on the maturity of the companies, we can find other types of leads, such as those generated by partners or by the product itself.
- What is the difference between a lead and a contact?
You have purchased a database with the contact details of professionals who match your target customers. Great, you say to yourself, here is a bunch of leads that we can now work on… WRONG!
What you bought are not leads, they are contacts. A contact only becomes a lead from the moment he shows an interest, even vague, in your solution and/or its field of action. In other words, there is only a lead when you start a conversation with an interlocutor. I would even add that there is only a lead when your interlocutor expresses the wish to continue the conversation with you.
Let’s go back to real life for a moment: you meet several people during a party. These are contacts. One of them is interested in what you do and gives you their mobile number. This is a lead! Now, imagine that you get the number of one of the people you met and want to invite them for a drink. They may no longer know who you are. They will wonder why you are contacting them and what you want from them. This is the difference between a contact and a lead. If you are trying to convert contacts who are not yet leads, you are wasting your time, energy and money.