Before someone purchases your product or service and becomes a client, they go through several stages. This article outlines those steps to help you understand what a lead is — and how to generate leads effectively.
Defining a Lead: B2B vs. B2C
In B2B, a lead is a business contact whose interest in your offering is more or less confirmed. This contact may come from a salesperson (e.g., at a trade show or in-store) or through channels like your website, phone, or quote requests. It represents the entry point into the customer relationship management (CRM) process.
In B2C, the French digital marketing collective CPA defines a lead as “a prospect who has expressed a clear purchase intent for a product or service and has explicitly agreed to be contacted.”
Lead Qualification: A Business Priority
Not all leads are created equal. The more qualified a lead is, the higher the chance of turning them into a customer. A lead is considered qualified when you’ve collected enough information to understand who they are, what they need, their budget, and their purchase potential.
Benefits of Working with Qualified Leads
- You avoid targeting irrelevant contacts;
- Your salespeople save time by focusing only on relevant leads;
- Motivation increases when dealing with people whose needs align with your offer;
- Revenue growth is easier — segmentation boosts chances of appointments and conversions.
Generating leads is good. Generating qualified leads is better.
Sales vs. Marketing Leads
A sales lead is usually generated through outbound prospecting. Some companies have teams dedicated to contact qualification. When a lead shows real interest, they’re handed over to the sales team, which then nurtures them until purchase.
A marketing lead is a contact generated through online or offline marketing actions: downloading a white paper, filling out a contact form, attending a trade show, etc. These leads show initial interest but still need to be qualified.
Lead vs. Prospect: What’s the Difference?
A lead is not yet a prospect. A prospect is a qualified contact who has shown a clear, specific need for your product or service. They are close to making a purchase — they just need convincing.
A lead, on the other hand, is still in the discovery stage. Your goal is to uncover and create awareness of their problem. Information is still limited, and qualification must take place before they become a potential buyer.
- Leads are handled by the marketing team.
- Prospects are handled by marketing and/or sales.
MQL vs. SQL: Lead Types
Before becoming a client, a lead goes through the lead cycle, with 5 stages:
- Unqualified lead
- MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
- SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
- Opportunity
- Client
What Is an MQL?
An MQL is a Marketing Qualified Lead — a lead who has shown real interest in your content (e.g., reading articles, downloading a white paper, engaging with newsletters). As marketing actions continue, you collect more insights and can push them toward becoming an SQL.
What Is an SQL?
An SQL is a Sales Qualified Lead. These are MQLs passed to the sales team because they meet specific targeting criteria — you know their company, job title, precise needs, and they’ve shown high engagement. An SQL is a legitimate sales opportunity.
How to Generate Leads?
Lead generation is the first step in acquiring clients. Here's a look at key lead generation tools:
- Landing pages: Short and impactful pages designed to spark curiosity.
- Content marketing: Helps transform a lead into a prospect.
- Social media & social selling
- Paid advertising (SEA): Google Ads, Microsoft Ads
- SEO: Brings long-term visibility through on-page optimization, netlinking, and topic clustering.
- Events and trade shows
- Email marketing: Personalized sequences via marketing automation.
- Co-registration
- SMS marketing: Low-cost and high-efficiency
- Display ads
- Affiliate marketing
For more lead generation tips, see:
- The Different Types of Prospecting: How to Choose?
- Tips for Effective Multichannel Prospecting
How to Qualify Your Leads
7 out of 10 conversions are lost due to poor follow-up. A major challenge for marketers is knowing where leads are in the buyer’s journey. This is where lead scoring comes in.
Lead scoring assigns each lead a score (typically between 0 and 100) based on their potential to convert and level of engagement.
Common Scoring Criteria
- Contact data (age, gender, demographics)
- Entry point to your site
- Behavioral data: email engagement, social media interaction, request types, etc.
Example scoring model:
- +10 points for opening a welcome email and clicking a link
- +5 points for visiting your pricing page
- +20 points for requesting a quote
...and so on.
What Is Negative Lead Scoring?
Negative scoring assigns penalty points to leads. Done automatically via marketing automation tools, this lowers their score — delaying perceived readiness or disqualifying the lead entirely.
Why Use Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring benefits include:
- Time and cost savings in campaign execution
- Better understanding of leads
- Clear contact prioritization
- Personalized marketing actions
- Automated maturity evaluation
- Identification of the hottest leads
- Better alignment between marketing and sales
Steps to Build a Lead Scoring Strategy
Each business is unique. Don’t just copy an online model — tailor your lead scoring strategy to fit your sales cycle. Use templates only as a starting point.
Steps:
- Define your personas and segments
- Establish point allocation criteria
- Set a qualification threshold
- Choose the right marketing automation tool
- Analyze and refine based on results
Understanding the Conversion Funnel
The conversion funnel is the marketing journey a lead takes to become a client. It has three main phases:
- TOFU (Top of Funnel) – Discovery stage: attract and educate
- MOFU (Middle of Funnel) – Interest stage: lead engagement and qualification
- BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) – Decision stage: qualified leads ready for conversion
The bottom of the funnel ends in a purchase, turning a lead into a customer.
Want to collect qualified leads with a 100% performance-driven model?
Contact Dataventure, the lead generation specialists.
