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when you work in the profession of selling you're going to hear the words leads prospects and opportunities quite a lot so in this short lesson I want to give you a clear and simple explanation of how to define these three things please be sure to write down all of these so you can refer back to them later in the program in order to make sense of some of the year's most specific lessons okay so first of all I want you to please write down a lead is a potential prospect a lead is a potential prospect and next a prospect is a potential opportunity a prospect is a potential opportunity and finally an opportunity is a potential client an opportunity is a potential client let's break those down and go over each one with a couple of examples so you can understand the definitions clearly so first of all a lead is a potential prospects now it could be any one such as a person who downloaded a free trial someone who gave you that business card at a trade show or maybe just the name of a company generated by the lead gen team if you have one of those now these are only leads because until we engage and qualify them until we know they have a need for our product or service there might only be as useful as a contact name and number in the yellow pages or any of the telephone directory or book they might have the right demographics as most of your other clients but that does not guarantee that they actually have a need for what you're offering and that's the most important part so in short a lead is an unqualified prospect simply put it's not much more than a piece of information or a piece of data in essence next a prospect is a potential opportunity so prospects are leads that have been qualified this means we've been in dialogue with them and confirm that they have a basic need for our products and services but there's still not what i like to call hard qualified which makes them essentially an unqualified opportunity so let's pretend you sell mobile phones to businesses for example and a contact calls in or complete a contact form and your website asking if you have any of the latest iPhones in stock yet you'll engage in a dialogue you'll confirm that hopefully you'll have the phones in stock find out a little bit more about what they have now how many new phones they need what tariffs they require etc etc at the end of that call you then have enough information to send the leader sort of detailed proposal and agree to speak with them again next week in order to follow up sounds good right this is a common scenario in which most average sales people will create an opportunity and schedule a follow-up call to try and close the deal but in reality this is nothing more than just a good prospect and let's jump on to the final definition to find out why so an opportunity is a potential client this means they're hard qualified there are hard qualified prospect so by this stage we should not only know this prospect has a basic need for what we offer but we should also know a number of other fats about them in basically in order to make sure you know we've created a solid opportunity yeah and some of these things they're not limited but but these are the following number one how much of a need do they have eg is this a nice to have or a need to have solution for them number two are they contracted to another supplier and if so we want to find out what the terms of that contract are if there are only one month into a contract then we've got a pretty solid idea that the opportunity what we create probably shouldn't be in this month's pipeline number three are they looking at other competitor solutions now you don't want to plant this seed in their head but it's important to ask some questions around you know are they looking around what's the current scenario regards to this search number four we want to know what the decision process is and who's involved in that process because you don't want to it's basically not an opportunity until you found out that information because if you're dealing with an information collector then trust me you don't want one of those people in your pipeline in your forecast yeah number five we want to know how long does that decision process actually take as well this is really important for some companies because if you're working in short sale cycles maybe selling to a big company then all of a sudden a seven days sales cycle might turn into a three-month one because it has to go through legal or via board meeting or something else so again really important information to find out before you confirm that this is a solid opportunity and then we also want to find out of course what's the required delivery date of the product or service we're offering when do they actually want to get started but most importantly most important of ever we need to know if we can demonstrate that our product or service can actually meet the clients requirements and solve a business problem for them yeah and is our value proposition strong enough for them to be able to justify the investment required now these key facts will vary depending on the product or services you're selling but these are some of the most common and important facts that will apply pretty much to most of you regardless of what you sell so just to wrap up the definitions once again a lead is a potential prospect a prospect is a potential opportunity and an opportunity is a potential client that's the end of this lesson about defining leads prospects and opportunities thanks again for listening and I'll see you again next time you