What are “leads”?
Leads are individuals or organisations who have shown some interest in a product or service — making them potential customers worth engaging with. Leads are the input to the sales pipeline: they get qualified, progress through stages, and either close as customers or get disqualified. The quality of leads determines sales-team productivity more than any other input.
Lead types
- Inbound leads: contacted you first — typically warmer; higher conversion.
- Outbound leads: contacted by your team; lower initial intent; require more nurturing.
- Referral leads: introduced by existing customers, partners or advisors; highest conversion.
- Event leads: met at conferences, webinars or industry events.
- Cold leads: identified via list-buying or scraping; lowest quality; high effort per close.
Lead qualification
Common qualification frameworks:
- BANT: Budget, Authority, Need, Timing.
- MEDDIC: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion. Used for complex B2B sales.
- CHAMP: Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritisation. Modernised BANT.
Lead vs. lead generation vs. leads
- Lead generation: the activity of producing leads.
- Lead: a single interested party.
- Leads: the plural — the pool of prospects in the system.
Türk B2B’de lead yönetimi
Türk B2B pazarında lead kalitesi LinkedIn outbound ve referans kanallarında en yüksektir; salt form-doldurma inbound’un dönüşüm oranı genelde düşüktür. KVKK gereği toplanan tüm leadlerin aydınlatma metni alıştırılması ve veri saklama süresinin belgelenmesi gerekir. CRM tarafında HubSpot, Salesforce yaygın; yerel alternatifler (Bitrix24, ETA) KOBİ pazarında daha yaygındır.
Do: qualify leads ruthlessly — bad leads burn sales time without producing revenue.
Don’t: chase raw lead count — converted revenue is the only output that matters.