Leads and follow-up. Reviewed October 29, 2026
Lead
Also called: Inquiry, Contact
A lead is a person who contacted the business about work by phone, form, text, chat or booking, before anyone has checked whether the job is real.
In practice
Counting leads honestly means counting all of them, including the wrong-number calls and the spam forms, and then reporting what share were real. An agency that reports only the good ones is choosing the denominator.
A lead is not a job. The steps between the two are where most revenue is lost.
Related terms
- Qualified leadA qualified lead is a lead that has been checked and fits: the right service, inside the service area, a real person with a real job and a budget in range.
- Booking rateBooking rate is the share of leads that turn into a scheduled appointment or estimate, and it is the first place to look when leads are up but revenue is not.
- Speed to leadSpeed to lead is the time between a lead arriving and the business responding, and the first contractor to respond wins a large share of the jobs.
- Cost per leadCost per lead is total marketing spend on a channel divided by the number of calls, forms or chats it produced, and it is the number to judge a campaign on rather than cost per click.
More leads and follow-up terms
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