leads一般翻译作 ”潜在客户“
可以参考wikipedia上的定义：
A
sales lead is the identity of a person or entitypotentially interested in purchasing a product or service, andrepresents 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 involvesidentifying by direct interrogation the lead's product applicability,availability of funding, and time frame for purchase. This is also theentry point of a
sales tunnel, sales funnel or sales pipeline.
Once a qualified lead exists, additional operations may be performedsuch as background research on the lead's employer, general market ofthe lead, contact information beyond that provided initially or otherinformation useful for contacting and evaluating a lead for elevationto prospect, the next sales step.
If a sales lead eventually makes a purchase, this is called
conversion and a
closed sale. The ratio of sales leads that convert is often referred to as the
conversion rate, a way to measure the effectiveness of a sales process, sales team, or sales person.
