Sales Leads

A sales lead is the idividual or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product or service, and represents the first stage of a sales process.

Sales leads come from several marketing lead generation processes:

Trade shows

Direct marketing

Advertising

Internet marketing

Cold calling

For a sales lead to qualify as a sales prospect, or equivalently to move a lead from the process step sales lead to the process sales prospect, qualification must be performed and evaluated.

Typically this involves identifying by direct interrogation the lead's product applicability, availability of funding, and time frame for purchase. This is also the entry point of a sales tunnel, sales funnel or sales pipeline.

Through companies such as InfoUSA, and SalesGenie a qualified lead can exist, additional operations may be performed such as background research on the lead's employer, general market of the lead, contact information beyond that provided initially or other information useful for contacting and evaluating a lead for elevation to prospect, the next sales step.

If a sales lead eventually makes a purchase, this is called conversion and a closed sale. The ratio of sales leads that convert is often referred to as the conversion rate, a way to measure the effectiveness of a sales process, sales team, or sales person.

Brand marketers also use online lead generation such as InfoUSA., and SalesGenie, to generate marketing leads. Marketing leads were introduced to the online lead generation market in 2007. Till then, a large portion of the online lead generation market was focused on generating sales leads.

Sales leads are generic leads that are generated on the basis of demographic criteria such as:

FICO score,

income,

age,

HHI, etc.

These leads are often resold to multiple advertisers. Sales leads are typically followed up through phone calls by the sales force. They are commonly found in the mortgage, insurance and finance industries.

Marketing leads are brand-specific leads generated for a unique advertiser offer. In contrast to sales leads, marketing leads can only be sold to a unique advertiser. Marketing leads are generated for a unique brand – Wells Fargo, Coca Cola, etc. Marketing leads are typically generated for e-newsletter lists, email databases, member loyalty programs, community sites or for vendor-specific sales efforts. Sales leads are generated for a particular industry – e.g. Finance, Mortgage, etc.

Lead Sources

Leads can be generated by many different marketing campaigns or can have many different sources. You can generate leads by:

mailings (fax, paper, email),

fairs and trade markets,

phone (call centers),

database marketing

websites or web leads