Lead / Prospect

The lead-prospect distinction separates raw discovery from active sales engagement. A lead is any business that has surfaced as potentially advertising-ready: a local retailer running campaigns on a competitor, a company with a new product launch, a firm that has increased its marketing hiring. A prospect is a lead that has been qualified, engaged by a sales rep, and entered into the CRM as an opportunity with a plausible path to close.

The highest-leverage broadcast-sales organisations are obsessed with lead quality, because time spent pursuing unqualified leads is time not spent closing qualified prospects. Modern broadcast-intelligence platforms score leads by signal strength: Does this advertiser currently spend on competing stations? What categories? At what estimated weight?: so sales teams can focus on the 20 percent of leads likely to generate 80 percent of closed revenue.