What is a lead
A lead is a contact with sales potential: a person or company that has shown interest in a product or service, for example through an enquiry, a registration or downloading a resource, and left their contact details. A lead is not a customer or a finished opportunity - it is an entry into the sales process that is qualified further.
What a lead is and is not
A lead is shown interest with a contact. Someone filled in an enquiry form, registered for a webinar, downloaded a price list, wrote on LinkedIn. They took a step that says "I might buy", and left a trail you can follow.
What a lead is not: it is not a customer, it is not a sure deal and it is not every email in the database. A lead is raw material at the start of the sales process - and, like any raw material, it comes in varying quality. It is quality, not quantity, that decides whether marketing helps sales or overwhelms it.
Types of leads by qualification
In practice, leads are sorted by how far along the decision they are:
- Cold lead. A contact matching the target audience that has not yet shown active interest. Material for long-term work, not for a sales call.
- [MQL, Marketing Qualified Lead](/en/glossary/mql-a-sql). A lead that, by behaviour and profile, meets marketing's criteria: matches the ICP, interacted with content, belongs to a decision-making role.
- [SQL, Sales Qualified Lead](/en/glossary/mql-a-sql). A lead that has passed sales qualification: has a need, budget and timeframe. An SQL becomes a sales opportunity.
Why marketing and sales argue over leads
The most expensive sentence in a B2B company is: "Those leads are useless." Marketing reports numbers, sales does not see quality, and both sides are right in their own way - because each measures something different.
The root is almost always the same: there is no shared, written definition of a qualified lead. According to Forrester (2024), 82 % of company leaders believe their marketing and sales cooperate effectively, while 65 % of the people in those teams report the opposite. The gap between those two numbers lives, to a large extent, precisely in the lead handover.
The solution is not another meeting about cooperation, but one table: what exactly a lead must meet for sales to take it over, who takes it over, by when, and what happens if the criteria are not met. It sounds trivial. In companies where this table exists and is enforced, the most common conflict between marketing and sales ends.
Updated: July 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a lead and a contact?
A contact is anyone in the database. A lead is a contact with shown interest and sales potential: they did something that suggests they might buy. Every lead is a contact, but not every contact is a lead.
What is the difference between a lead and an opportunity?
A lead is shown interest, an opportunity is a qualified sales case: we know what they want, when, for how much and who we are dealing with. Between a lead and an opportunity lies qualification, usually through the MQL and SQL stages.
Who in the company is responsible for leads?
Generating leads is usually marketing's job, qualifying and closing is sales' job. But responsibility for the result is shared, which is why both sides must share one definition of a qualified lead. Where they do not share it, they toss the blame around.
One topic, one funnel
We treat marketing and sales as one system. To see what that looks like in practice, read the blog.