What is a Sales Lead? A clear answer you’re looking for!

A sales lead is a prospective customer or information about a prospective customer.

The definition of sales lead can be different for every business.

Even marketing and sales teams can have different opinions on a sales lead.

So, let’s start from basic. What is a lead?

Basically, any prospect, visitor, or partner that can turn into a paid customer is a lead.

The timeline is irrelevant here.

This prospect or visitor can take five years to become a customer. That’s still a lead.

The definition is simple. If there’s even the slightest possibility of you selling your products or services – That’s a lead.

MQL Vs. SQL: What’s the difference?

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What’s a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)?

Marketing Qualified Leads are the prospects filtered by the marketing team based on specific indicators like demography, gender, device, age group, interests, and many more.

For example, a person interested in sales can be a lead for a CRM provider. But this person can be a student or an executive in a sales team.

This person can turn out to be a customer in the future, but surely not as of this moment.

On the other hand, a person working as a sales manager at a US-based multinational company can be a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

Because this person checks more boxes.

This person resonates with the indicators we talked about.

Marketing teams create personas based on these factors, and that’s called Ideal Customer Profiles (IDP).

This is a sample of a buyer persona:

Marketing teams judge a lead based on the IDP and send it to sales teams.

What is a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)?

A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead that has been verified by marketing teams and also approved by sales teams. Someone that a salesperson can connect with and start the selling process.

Just like marketing team, sales team also has some indicators.

Normally SQL indicators are quite straightforward. Sales teams can find answer with these questions.

Can we connect with the lead and discuss the product?

Are they willing to make a purchase in the nearest future?

Has the prospect taken our free trial?

Normally, salespeople make a discovery call to identify if the lead is ready to move forward in the sales process.

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A simple “success” recipe

Most business don’t manage MQLs and SQLs at the same place.

That’s probably one of the biggest mistakes a business can do.

If you don’t manage these leads at the same place, you can never identify the entire journey.

And how can you do that?

Choose a platform that works for marketing and sales both.

Businesses have to manage the lead data on different places because most CRM are only sales-specific.

You need to pick a CRM that’s efficient enough to provide value to sales and marketing teams, both.

Salesmate is one such option.

Salesmate is a CRM with advanced marketing automation capabilities. Our CRM can help you from lead capturing to deal closing, everything.

Take a 15-day free trial and experience what Salesmate can do for your business!