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Sales & Retail vocabulary · Prospecting & Leads

Lead

Meaning in sales & retail, with examples

/liːd/nounCore term

In sales & retail, lead means: A person or company that may become a customer, for example someone who downloaded a brochure, called for information or was found through research.

In Turkish: potansiyel müşteri, müşteri adayı, aday

How it is used

One of the most common words in sales and marketing. You generate, capture, qualify, follow up or convert leads. Leads are often described as hot, warm or cold depending on how interested they are.

Example sentences

  1. The trade fair gave us over 300 leads, so let's split them by region.

  2. This lead looks hot: they asked for pricing twice this week.

Common collocations

  • generate leads
  • qualify a lead
  • hot lead
  • inbound lead
  • convert a lead
  • prospectA possible customer who has been checked and seems a good fit, with a real need for the product and the ability to buy it.
  • lead generationThe work of finding and attracting new potential customers, through activities such as events, ads, content, cold outreach and referrals.
  • qualifyTo check whether a lead is worth pursuing by finding out if they have a real need, a budget, the authority to buy and a realistic timeline.
  • cold callA phone call to a person or business that has had no earlier contact with you, made to introduce a product and start a sales conversation.
  • conversion rateThe percentage of people who take a desired next step, such as store visitors who buy something or leads who become customers.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Prospecting & Leads

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