What is a lead in CRM?

The lead generation process has the following steps:

• The business may be discovered by a customer via one of your digital marketing instruments(lead generators),

• On those channels, they activate a call-to-action (CTA) button,

• They access to the landing page,

• The promotion on your website's main page catches the visitor's eye.

• The visitor completes the form on your landing page.

• A new lead just secured!

Types of Leads

Throughout a customer's route, the marketing team screens and evaluates the potential customers. This evaluation is often done using points or a temperature scale, referred to as cold or hot leads. Lead qualification can also be used as an expression for lead scoring.

The next terms are used to characterize various sections of potential leads:

Suspects: known popularly as suspects, these are potential buyers who are just starting to think about buying something and might be hooked on a vendor's website to get basic information about products or services. Lead nurturing aims to guide individuals who are interested in buying towards making an actual purchase. In lead nurturing, a marketer stays in touch with the buyer and shares information when necessary.

Cold, warm and hot leads: Marketers and sales reps determine if a potential customer is not interested (cold), somewhat interested (warm), or very interested (hot) in buying something. For instance, if someone specifies that they need a service right away, have a budget for it, and a specific time to get it done, they would be considered a hot lead. On the other hand, a warm lead might mean that someone wants to buy something but hasn't set funds and time. The BANT system, which encompasses budget, needs, and concrete period of time, is utilized by some marketers and sales representatives to classify leads as described above.

Market-qualified lead: A person who is expressing interest in the product, but isn't willing to acquire something in the near future is known as a marketing-qualified lead (MQL). In contrast to sales-qualified leads (SQLs), who have demonstrated a high intention of purchase intent, MQLs may need more information about the product or service provided from the marketing team.

Sales-qualified lead: An SQL refers to a potential customer who demonstrates buying intent and is open to engaging with the sales team. At that particular moment, the SQL is transferred to the marketing team. In the IT channel, sometimes a company involved in customer acquisition might share those customers with a partner company, like a value-added reseller(VAR).

Companies have the option to utilize customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems for the purpose of automating the management, scoring, and nurturing of sales leads.