Lead

A lead is a person or organisation whose contact details you lawfully hold and who has shown some level of interest in your expertise—however slight. That interest might be downloading a white paper, requesting a pricing sheet, or handing over a business card at a trade-show. What matters is that the individual performed an intentional action and left a trace you can follow up. Simply scraping addresses from the internet, buying a list, or counting anonymous page views does not create leads; those records lack consent, context and genuine engagement. In my own practice I define a lead as “a known name, firm, and at least one direct channel—email or phone—acquired through an opt-in or legitimate interest event.”

HubSpot creates a contact record the moment an email is captured and tags it Lead by default.

Pipedrive inserts new people or organisations as Leads in the Lead Inbox before they graduate to Deals.

Creates a lawful starting point for dialogue

Modern privacy laws demand evidence of consent or legitimate interest before you can email prospects. By capturing the original interaction—be it a downloadable guide or an event scan—you hold proof that the person invited contact. Without that legal footing, outreach risks fines and brand damage.

Establishes the top of every revenue forecast

Pipeline mathematics begins with the number of leads created each month. If leads dip by 30 per cent, no amount of middle-funnel wizardry will rescue quarterly targets. A clear lead definition gives finance, marketing and sales a common “first domino” they can track and improve together.

Fuels personalisation and remarketing

Because a lead record stores firmographic and behavioural data, you can segment follow-ups with precision—CFOs receive ROI calculators, IT managers get integration blueprints. Uploading hashed lead emails to LinkedIn or Google also enables remarketing campaigns that feel timely rather than random.

Improves hand-offs between teams

When everyone agrees what counts as a lead, marketing can hand over lists with confidence that sales will act on them. Sales, in turn, trusts the quality enough to prioritise rapid follow-up. Ambiguous definitions breed finger-pointing; precise lead criteria foster collaboration.

Provides an audit trail for continual optimisation

Because each lead enters the CRM with source, date and engagement notes, you can trace closed-won deals back to the exact article, webinar or exhibition that sparked them. Content and channel budgets then shift from guesswork to evidence-based investment.

Capture only intentional signals

Install clear opt-in forms, gated assets and event scanners that require deliberate action from the prospect. Resist the lure of purchased databases; they inflate list size while eroding engagement and deliverability.

Enrich promptly for context

Within minutes of capture, append company size, industry and role through an enrichment service like Cognism. Fast enrichment allows instant routing rules—enterprise prospects may flow to senior account directors, while start-ups enter an automated nurture track.

Tag the true source, not the last click

Record the first meaningful touch—not simply “website”—so you know whether the original magnet was a podcast mention, a referral webinar, or a paid-search ad. Source clarity proves which magnets genuinely attract your ICP.

Score for fit and engagement

Apply a lightweight points system: industry match, seniority, company size and recent actions such as webinar attendance. Leads above a threshold escalate to Marketing-Qualified Lead status; those below enter a longer nurture programme.

Hand over with an SLA

Create a service-level agreement: sales commits to contact new leads within, say, 24 business hours. Marketing, for its part, promises that each record meets baseline qualification fields. The SLA closes the loop and converts “leads generated” into “leads worked.”

A robust lead process—intentional capture, immediate enrichment, accurate tagging, sensible scoring and timely hand-off—turns raw interest into an orderly queue for nurturing and qualification, setting the stage for the deeper stages of MQL and SQL that follow in the revenue engine.