[Karen37a]

There’s so much confusion around prospect vs lead, lead vs opportunity, prospect vs opportunity. Are they one in the same? The answer is no.

What is a Lead, qualified lead, prospect, or a suspect?They are just Industry jargon and the terms have been interchanged between crms systems and internal companies proprietary procedures and understanding of the sales lead generation process.I will explain briefly so people can stop fighting and arguing.I will also explain so willing participants can take free advice from some of the people who have been in the trenches in sales 35 plus years, Financial Sales 30 plus and if you count girl scout cookies door to door or trick or treating for UNICEF "sales" add some more time on.

Data = raw phone numbers or"email address" that are either purchased from a verifiable source or collected on your own thru various marketing or "lead" collection" ...data methods

Lead= ( this is where the confusion comes in) Salespeople will use the term "leads" for the raw data phone numbers because they have been trained to classify all as "leads" and to have a new category called qualified leads

Qualified Leads= The results of the process.This is where you take the raw data and turn it into real tangible merchant/ customer verified information e.g. Gross monthly volume, Cash advance dollar amounts etc., etc. There are 7 Qualification points on leads. 3 that are Key. Once you gauge interest from the qualified lead you can turn them into a prospect, then hopefully a client.

Prospect. following up to gauge further interest as you move them thru the sales process until they are "won" or "closed" and then turned into a client

Client...follow up for renewals

**each person will have different results with the same data based upon their
sales ability