Leads and CRM

Lead

A person who has shown interest in what you sell and left a way to reach them: a form, a call, a booked meeting, a message. Not yet a customer.

Why it matters for your business

Everything upstream (SEO, ads, the website) exists to make leads, and everything downstream (follow up, quoting, closing) exists to turn them into revenue. Counting leads by source and by outcome is how you learn what is worth paying for.

In practice

A homeowner fills out the quote form on a painting company's site. That is a lead. It gets a record in the CRM with the source "website form" and a timestamp.

Related terms

Customer relationship managementPipelineLead scoring and qualificationSpeed to leadLead source
PreviousCustomer relationship managementNextPipeline

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