What Is A Sales Lead?

By: Tony Jackson

I don't know how many times I have been told... "a sales lead is nothing more than suspects, and not prospects."

And you know, this is so true. How should we define the word "lead?"

Wikipedia has an excellent definition for a sales lead:

"A sales lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product or service, and represents the first stage of a sales process. The lead may have a corporation or business associated (a B2B lead) with the person(s). Sales leads come from either marketing lead generation processes such as trade shows, direct marketing, advertising, Internet marketing or from sales person prospecting activities such as cold calling. For a sales lead to qualify as a sales prospect, or equivalently to move a lead from the process step sales lead to the process sales prospect, qualification must be performed and evaluated. Typically this involves identifying by direct interrogation the lead's product applicability, availability of funding, and time frame for purchase. This is also the entry point of a sales tunnel, sales funnel or sales pipeline."

Perhaps the most important thing said in that definition is that before a lead can become a prospect, "qualification must be performed."

The problem with many salespeople (including Medicare Agents) is that they often skip this very important element in the marketing process... prequalification.

Medicare Supplement leads and Medicare Advantage leads are not exempt from this critical step. Methods must change with the times. If you haven't read our Medicare Adavantage introduction, you should.

You can save yourself a tremendous amount of time and effort, and increase your closing ratio, simply by learning proper methods of prequalification. In our marketing system, Medicare Marketing Gold, I show you step by step how to properly turn leads into qualified prospects, and qualified prospects into relationships and sales.