Leads beta - what even is a Lead?

[Coopr]

I'm struggling a little to understand the beta Leads feature https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/set-up-leads

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/manage-leads-in-the-prospecting-workspace

What even is a Lead? How does it differ from a Contact and Company? (Isn't a Lead just a Contact or Company that isn't yet a Customer?)

[markusarvidsson]

I see that the Leads object could benefit companies, but in my use case it hard to make use of it. It is still a Beta and we might see new functionally soon.

An important improvement I would like to see is that a lead has a name (ex. Lead on product A) and additioaanl custom properties (ex. signed up for trial on DATE). It would give valuable context and make the Lead object much more useful.

As it is now we just know that the contact/compamy is a lead but not why or on what, or have I misunderstood it?

[Coopr · Accepted solution]

Well I'll answer my own question, for the benefit of others that might be looking - read this: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Community-Blog/7-Reasons-Why-HubSpot-s-New-Leads-Object-is-... 🙂 

[auto-mate]

But it has a REALLY BAD NAME
It should be called "Prospect" instead.
Calling it "Lead" is just daft.

Q. What's a Lead?
A. Well, it's a Lead. No, it's a Marketing Qualified Lead. Actually, we've set it up so a Lead is actually already a Sales Qualified Lead. 

That absolutely **bleep** for marketing-sales cooperation.
One of the hardest things to do - still - is to educate colleagues about lifecycle stage logic and clashes with terminology. Creating a monster clash in Hubspot like this is daft. IMHO of course.

[Jnix284]

@auto-mate I think the intention is that the "Lead" object will replace the "Lead Status" which is a breakout of the sales qualification process.

Let's say you have 100 new contacts enter your CRM via marketing, once they are MQL you could automate so that they become a "Lead" for Sales, and once sales finishes with the qualification they could become an SQL in the background and when the agent/rep creates a deal, the lifecycle changes to Opportunity.

Essentially sales teams want "leads" and they want them to be pre-qualified by marketing. 

The way I am presenting the "leads" object is that sales doesn't have to worry about lifecyle stage or lead status at all - it's all automated in the background based on the actions they take within the prospecting/leads tool.

For existing users, I can see and feel the frustration, but for new users, I think this will make more logical sense.

Another reason I think "Lead" works is because some teams aren't using MQL to begin with, all new leads go straight to sales - this creates flexibilty within the system by not defining it as an MQL.

As for Prospect, I think it's helpful that it's called Prospecting, because that's what you're doing, but at the end of the day, all sales people get "Leads" and make them "Prospects" (although I know many sales teams that don't even use the word Prospect at all).

A good process and clear communication between Sales and Marketing will work better than before with this new tool and functionality.

[auto-mate]

No, sorry, it's a pain. 
The object and functionality is great. Name is wrong.

A Lead is a Lead, or a Marketing Qualified Lead, or something else. Argh!
IMHO it's mistake to use the same term.

Especially when HS just launched a Prospecting window.
"Prospect" is the obvious term.

[Jnix284]

Completely understand the pain, and your point of view.

Respectively disagree, although I think it is a very subtle nuance and will correct my previous statement about Leads vs Prospects by clarifying here:

Lead - All the people at the top of your funnel.

Prospect - Someone who has been qualified to buy.

It's the Prospecting tool because you're looking for Prospects among your Leads, but the object is a Lead because they have yet to be qualified.

The goal of the Prospecting tool is to take Leads and make them Prospects.

If you call them all Prospects from the start, isn't that even more confusing?

[auto-mate]

Good point.
For me - if you are in the prospecting window with prospecting tools, then a collective name of "prospects" to gather the people who are working on - irrespective of how far they are in the funnel - makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is calling them Leads when that is already used in the same integrated-holistic-console for a more specific purpose.

I'm gonna keep arguing this because it is a real pain - especially in larger systems with integrations - there is constant confusion about the term "lead" and what it means as a concept, as an object, as a data set, objective, KPI etc... really, don't make it any more complicated and contradicatory.

Simple answer would be to allow renaming;)

[Jnix284]

Also good point - and can see the pain point here with larger systems/integrations.

Might be worth adding the idea to rename so the product managers have visibility - share the link back and I'll be happy to upvote and see if we can gain some traction (although I don't know how deeply embedded "leads" is and whether this is possible)

[Jnix284]

@Coopr Thanks for sharing your answer back - the simplest way I have been explaining the new leads object is:

Not every contact in your CRM is a lead, so rather than relying on a combination of lifecycle stage and lead status to create dashboards, filtered views, etc. sales teams now have a centralized home for managing leads in the prospecting tool.

Happy prospecting!