What is a lead? A lead is a person or company that has shown interest in what you sell or clearly fits your target market, which makes them worth contacting. A lead becomes a customer only once the contact turns into a conversation, a confirmed need and finally a purchase.
In practice the word gets used loosely. Some teams call every row in a spreadsheet a lead, others only count inquiries with a budget attached. This guide separates the terms, shows where leads come from, how to qualify them and how to get from a LinkedIn search result to a booked meeting, step by step. Last updated: 28 September 2026.
What is a lead? The definition
A lead is a potential customer you can reach and have a reason to reach. You need both. A company with no named contact is not a lead yet, and neither is a name with no link to your offer.
In B2B sales that means a lead has a name, a role at a company, a channel you can use (LinkedIn, email, phone) and at least one attribute that makes your offer relevant to them. Whether they are ready to buy is a separate question. Qualification answers it.
Lead vs. prospect vs. contact vs. customer
These four terms describe stages. They are not synonyms. Every team draws the lines slightly differently, and that is fine as long as everyone on the team draws them the same way. Otherwise one rep reports 500 leads where another sees 20.
Term | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
Contact | Anyone whose name and contact route you know, with no judgement on fit or interest | Someone in your LinkedIn network |
Lead | A contact who fits your target market or has shown interest | Head of sales at an 80-person software company who accepts your connection request |
Prospect | A lead with a confirmed need and willingness to talk | The same head of sales, who tells you in the chat she is rebuilding her outbound process |
Customer | Has bought or signed a contract | The software company now uses your product |
So the difference between a lead and a prospect is qualification. A lead might fit. A prospect has been shown to fit and wants to talk.
Types of leads: inbound and outbound
Inbound leads
Inbound leads come to you. They download a guide, fill in a contact form, subscribe to your newsletter or message you after reading one of your posts. The upside is that interest already exists. The downside is that you do not choose who shows up. Students, competitors and companies far outside your price range all land in the same inbox.
Outbound leads
Outbound leads are the ones you pick. You decide which industry, which role and which company size to target, then reach out yourself, for example through direct outreach on LinkedIn. Fit is there from the start. Interest is something you have to earn in the conversation.
Most teams need both. Inbound brings warm inquiries. Outbound fills the pipeline predictably with the exact companies you want to work with.
MQL and SQL
Two abbreviations come up in almost every sales meeting. An MQL (marketing qualified lead) is a lead that marketing rates as promising by its own criteria, for instance because they downloaded several pieces of content. An SQL (sales qualified lead) is a lead that sales has checked and is actively working, because need and decision maker are confirmed. Each company sets its own criteria. Write yours down so marketing and sales mean the same thing.
Where do leads come from? The main channels
Channel | Lead type | What you control | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
Website and content | Inbound | Topics, offers, forms | Takes time before content gets found |
Referrals | Inbound | Little, beyond asking for them | Often an excellent fit, rarely predictable |
Events and trade shows | Inbound and outbound | Which events, how you follow up | Many contacts at once, mixed quality |
Ads | Inbound | Audience, budget, message | Leads arrive for as long as budget flows |
LinkedIn direct outreach | Outbound | Who you contact, the message, the pace | Interest has to develop in the conversation |
Cold calling is missing from the table on purpose. We think it is one of the weaker levers in B2B today, because the person on the other end did not ask for the call.
Lead qualification: from contact to qualified lead
Qualification answers one question: is this conversation worth it for both sides? It starts before the first message, with the choice of who you contact at all.
Step 1: Define your ideal customer profile
Your ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the companies and people who get the most out of what you sell. Four attributes are enough to start:
- Industry: which industries are your best customers in?
- Role: who decides, who uses, who influences the purchase?
- Company size: from what headcount does your offer pay off, and where does it stop making sense?
- Trigger: what happens just before someone buys? A new job, a funding round, an open position on the team, a new location.
Our free ICP generator speeds this up: enter your product, target market and a description of your best customers, and you get a draft with company type, roles, buying triggers and exclusion criteria. Then check that draft against your real customer data.
Step 2: Ask qualification questions
Whether a lead becomes a prospect is settled in conversation. Well-known frameworks include BANT (budget, authority, need, timing) and MEDDIC. You do not have to copy either one word for word. These four questions cover what matters:
- Is there a concrete problem your offer solves?
- Is your contact the decision maker, or do they know who is?
- Is there a budget, or a point in time when the topic will be tackled?
- What happens if nothing changes?
Do not ask all of them in your first message. Qualification happens across the conversation.
Step 3: Set lead statuses and pipeline stages
Give every lead a status so you keep track. A lean pipeline looks like this:
- New: fits the ICP, not contacted yet
- Contacted: connection request or first message sent
- In conversation: has replied
- Qualified: need and decision maker confirmed
- Meeting: call or demo booked
- Won or lost: with the reason noted
To see how many leads you need at the top to get enough meetings at the bottom, use the campaign calculator. Enter contacts per week plus your assumed acceptance, reply and meeting rates, and it estimates how many conversations and how much pipeline potential a month could produce. The numbers rest on your own assumptions and are not a promise.
How to find and qualify leads on LinkedIn, step by step
1. Narrow down your audience in search
Even the standard LinkedIn people search lets you filter by degree of connection, locations, current company, past company, school, industry, profile language and keywords. Source: LinkedIn Help: Search for people on LinkedIn, accessed 28 September 2026.
Sales Navigator goes further. For your ICP the most useful lead filters are industry, company headcount, function, seniority level and current job title. For triggers there are filters such as "Changed jobs in the last 90 days" and "Posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days". Source: Sales Navigator Help: Lead and account search filter definitions, accessed 28 September 2026. If you save a search, LinkedIn says "You'll receive weekly emails and alerts on your Sales Navigator homepage when new people or companies match your search criteria." Source: Sales Navigator Help: Save lead and account searches, accessed 28 September 2026.
2. Check the profile
Before you reach out, take a short look at the profile. Is the role really a match? Is the person active, have they posted or commented recently? Is there something you can refer to in your first message? Filtering here saves you from conversations that go nowhere.
3. Connect
Send a connection request, with or without a short note. Which works better depends on your audience. Test both on a small batch before you scale.
4. Open the conversation
Once the request is accepted, send a first message with a question that is easy to answer. No pitch, no link.
Hi Jana, thanks for connecting! I saw you have two sales roles open right now. Are you building a new team or growing an existing one?
5. Qualify in the chat
If your contact replies, work in the qualification questions from above one at a time. Not as an interrogation, but as a follow-up to what they tell you.
Sounds like a lot is moving. How do you currently get your first conversations with new customers, and is that the team's job or yours?
If the first message goes unanswered, follow up once or twice. Then let it go.
Hi Jana, just a quick nudge on my question from last week. If the timing is off, no problem at all.
6. Hand over: meeting or email
Once the need is clear, suggest the next step: a call, or material by email if your contact prefers that.
Thanks for the context! Would a 20-minute call next week work for you? Or should I send you a short overview by email first, and if so, to which address?
How CompLeadly helps
CompLeadly takes over the repetitive steps of LinkedIn outreach. The desktop app runs on your own computer through your own IP. Qualifying in the conversation stays with you.
- Audience from your search: build the list from a LinkedIn people search, a Sales Navigator search or, with Recruiter access, from Recruiter searches. You can also import your own lists.
- Connect, opener, follow-ups: connection requests with an optional note, the first message after acceptance and follow-ups run as one workflow. A follow-up only goes out once your previous message has gone unanswered for as many days as you set. If the contact has replied, no further follow-up is sent. CompLeadly skips the opener if the contact has already replied or there are already two messages from you in the chat.
- Smart Chat: replies land in one inbox inside CompLeadly, where you carry on the qualifying conversation.
- InMail reply collector: when you reach leads by InMail, CompLeadly sorts replies, declines and unanswered InMails into separate audiences. You see at a glance who is interested and who you should not message again.
- Statistics: per feature and per week you see how many connection requests, messages and follow-ups went out. Those are the numbers your pipeline math needs.
You set the pace yourself, with a daily limit per feature. We recommend around 50 connection requests a day; LinkedIn's weekly invitation limit is roughly 200, and CompLeadly's statistics show your exact limit. Setup guides are in the CompLeadly guide, and the sales teams page shows how the features fit together.
After the 10-day trial with all features, you can keep using CompLeadly for free with the basic features and daily limits, for example 2 connection requests, 1 opener and 1 follow-up per day, each step started individually; full workflows start with Basic. All plans are on the pricing page.
Leads in recruiting and job hunting
The same logic applies when you are looking for people rather than buyers. In recruiting, the lead is a candidate. The ICP becomes a candidate profile: role, experience, location, maybe a trigger such as a certain number of years in the current position. You qualify in the chat by asking about openness to a move, salary range and timing. In CompLeadly you build the audience from a people search, a Sales Navigator search or, with Recruiter access, from Recruiter searches, connect, open with an opener and follow up; replies arrive in Smart Chat. More on the recruiters page.
As a job seeker you flip the perspective. Your leads are recruiters, hiring managers and people at the companies you want to work for. Your ICP is the list of those companies plus the roles that make hiring decisions there. The qualifying questions stay the same: is there a need, who decides, when? Audience from people search, a connection request, a short first message, one follow-up. The free plan's daily limits apply here too. Before you start, read 10 common LinkedIn mistakes when job hunting and our post on Open to Work.
FAQ
What is a lead in simple terms?
A lead is a possible customer you can reach who fits your offer or has shown interest. They have not bought anything yet.
What is the difference between a lead and a prospect?
A lead might fit. A prospect is a lead whose need and willingness to talk you have confirmed, usually in a first conversation.
What are inbound leads?
Inbound leads contact you on their own, for example through a form on your website, a download or a message after one of your posts. Outbound leads are people you approach yourself.
How do you qualify a lead?
First check whether they match your ideal customer profile (industry, role, company size, trigger). Then clarify need, decision path and timing in conversation. Frameworks like BANT help keep the questions complete.
What is a qualified lead?
A lead that matches your ICP and whose need, decision maker and a possible timeframe are confirmed. Sales teams often call this an SQL, a sales qualified lead.
