Sales lead
A sales lead is the entering process entity and name of the first stage of a sales process. A lead is a person or group of persons identified as expressing some type of interest in a product or service. The lead may have a corporation or business associated with the person(s). Sales leads come from either marketing lead generation processes such as trade shows, direct marketing, literature, etc. or come from sales person prospecting activities. For sales lead to convert to 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 involves identifying by direct interogation the lead's product applicability, availability of funding, time frame for purchase. This is also the entry point of a sales tunnel or funnel.
Once a lead exists in this stage, additional operations may be performed such as background research on the lead's employer, the generally market that the lead belongs to, contact information beyond that provided initially or other information useful for contacting and evaulating a lead for elevation to prospect, the next sales step.
Cinematic reference: the boiler-room salesmen in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross refer to wanting to get "the good leads" which will close more easily (result in closed sales, i.e. a financial transaction).
References
"The Free Compendium of Professional Selling". United Professional Sales Association. Jan. {{cite web}}: Check |URL= value (help); Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)