What is a lead?

By Matt Ranger, Head of Sales EMEA.

In one of my first incarnations as a sales person – indeed, probably the first incarnation – I was offered “the lead generation opportunity of a lifetime”. Even in these jejune, halcyon days, I knew that this was too good to be true.

So… what is a lead? I asked them. A lead turned out to be the e-mail address of someone who had downloaded a white paper from their website, and I could have them for £50 each. I turned my nose up at that and was offered a free trial, which garnered me 10 e-mail addresses of people who were most definitely not in the buying cycle and in many cases, not even in the ‘employed by a company’ cycle.

So… what is a lead?

Let’s move temporarily out of the sales & marketing world and visit my favourite pastime of a Saturday evening – watching Nordic detective dramas. When Kurt Wallander or Sarah Lund gets a “lead” – what does that mean to them?

Well, for a start, a lead is something that is going to make a difference. It’s going to get our Scandi-detective excited, stuffing a gun into their belt and running off to their Volvo (sorry, Danes). But even Sarah Lund and Kurt Wallander will be able to tell the difference between a good lead and a bad lead.

They’ll have their channels – witnesses, whistleblowers, snitchers – and they’ll have an instinct that tells them whether the lead is genuine or not. They’ll subsequently follow up on that lead or not, depending on how they’ve ‘graded’ that lead.

Who defines what a lead is, anyway?

There are two ways of looking at leads – emotionally and analytically.Wallander and Lund will be judging every lead emotionally. That’s why we watch them. We don’t want to see Sarah Lund sitting at a screen, crunching data and coolly selecting leads that have a certain “star-rating”.

It might not exude Scandinavian cool, but we need to be analytical about exactly what is a lead. That means defining measures in our CRM that help us grade leads and ensure that only the best, most sales-ready leads get passed through to the sales team.

Why do we do this?

– We want to increase the efficiency of the sales team – nobody wants your star sales rep wasting time on a prospect who is only researching
– We want to maintain relationships between sales & marketing – bad leads from marketing sour the relationship
– We want to develop our relationship with so-called “lesser leads” and nurture them through to sales-readiness.

Therefore, we need to step back and take the emotion out of judging whether a lead is ready or not. To do this though, we need to understand those emotional triggers that would have had us putting our metaphorical guns in our belts and running out the door to follow-up on the lead.

How engaged was the lead?
Through integrated web tracking software, you can understand just how engaged the lead is: you can see pages viewed, time on site, number of pages visited and even number of visits; give certain pages a ‘score’ that is attributed to the contact.
How many channels has the lead used?
Have they tweeted about you AND visited the website? Have you met them at an event and subsequently seen a site visit? Even Google Analytics now provides information on multi-channel leads. Your CRM can help you score the lead higher as a result.
What do you already know?
Sometimes, a little extra intelligence can boost the value of a lead. If you know a contract renewal is up and you receive what would – on the face of it – be a simple web enquiry, what extra value would you attribute?

Now, with marketing software like HubSpot integrated with your CRM, you never miss a good lead: all contacts are nurtured and their score is automatically updated. You can then concentrate on your content and let the software do the rest and notify you only when someone is at a buying stage.

So, what is really a lead? I have no idea – but I bet your CRM does!