What are leads?
A lead is a prospect nobody has qualified yet. What that means, where they come from, and what the number beside Leads is telling you.
What are leads?#
A lead is somebody who might be worth talking to, and who nobody has checked yet.
That is the whole idea. A lead is an unverified claim: a form submission, a business card from a trade show, a name a colleague passed on. The email might be typed wrong. The company might not exist. The person might have no interest at all. None of that stops you recording them — it is exactly why leads are kept separate from contacts.
Where leads come from#
- somebody on your team adds one by hand
- a colleague assigns one to you
- you import a list
The number beside Leads#
In the sidebar you will sometimes see:
Leads (5)
That is five prospects waiting for you — not the total in the system, and not your colleagues'. It counts only leads that are assigned to you and that nobody has processed yet.
Deal with one and the number drops immediately. When nothing is waiting, no number is shown at all, because "Leads (0)" is a worse way of saying "nothing to do".
What you do with a lead#
Open it and make one of three decisions:
- Qualify — they are real and worth pursuing. They become a contact.
- Nurture — worth keeping, not now.
- Disqualify — not worth pursuing.
Every one of those takes the lead out of your queue. None of them deletes anything.
Related articles
- Leads, contacts, companies, deals and customersFive words that get used interchangeably and mean different things. Which record is which, and when one becomes another.
- Qualifying a leadWhat happens when you click Qualify, and what Nazzam does about someone who is already in your CRM.
- Understanding the CRM hierarchyCompanies, contacts and deals — what each one is for, how they connect, and which one to create first.