What is the prospect? Take the lead and make a contact.

If you are well-versed with the Marketing Funnel and Sales Pipeline, get ready to face three most confused terms (not confusing) in B2B:

Prospect and Visitor
These two are actually the same, just depending on the context. A ‘Prospect’ is basically everybody who you think you can sell to. If you are selling tractors, a housewife with four kids will not be your prospects; but if next month she is working in a Procurement Department in a major farm operations (or mining, or construction), then she is absolutely your prospect.

A ‘Visitor’ is the same, but in the context of eCommerce business, or if you are managing your company website, or in Retail operations. They are a Prospect, in a way that you can sell to them for the fact that they are already in your e/store, meaning they may have an interest in whatever you are offering.

If you have a large base of prospects, good for you, but this is the beginning of the funnel, and until you do something about it and convert them, they are pretty much useless. If you are a farmer, and you have a bunch of strangers walking in front of your farm, they are basically a bunch of pest. They are only useful to you when they buy your tomatoes.


Lead and Opportunity 
To put it simply: a ‘Lead’ is a level-up version of your prospects, it is anybody whom you can sell to, but the difference is: you know his or her personal information. So, any Procurement staff in your industry is a prospect to you, but when you get her business cards, or find her in LinkedIn, boom, she’s a Lead.

Here’s the advanced version: a Lead can also be someone whom you know, who knows someone that you can sell to, but you do not know know that prospect yet.

If you understand a Lead, ‘Opportunity’ will be easy to understand for you. An Opportunity, again, is like a level-up version of a Lead. So, a Lead, or a string or Leads that has been called, harassed, and cajoled, will go to one confirmed intention, usually a project, to make a purchase of something that your product or services can offer. This is an ‘Opportunity’. Note that an Opportunity is an intent, not a person.

An example to put everything into one perspective: you have a cousin named Clara, and you ask her if she knows someone in your industry. Subsequently Cousin Clara leads you (therefore the name ‘Lead’) to her friend, to Procurement Pamela who works in Agriculture business (also a Lead). So you begged your way through for a day or a month, and you find out that her company is opening a new plantation and they would need a new tractor, there you got an Opportunity.


Contact and Account
If you made it this far, these two will be a no-brainer. It cannot be easier than this: a ‘Contact’ is a person, and an ‘Account’ is a company.

A Contact may be working in your Account, or he may not be. Having a Contact simply means you have that person’s contact information in your database. Your contact may be a Lead, or it may not be, or not at the time being (i.e. for future selling, mind you nobody buys a tractor everyday).

An Account, on the other hand, is synonymous to your customers. If you have not converted them into a customer yet, they remained as a prospect.


That’s it. Easy breezy. While this is a simplified version, this explanation never fails anyone. If you are still confused or unsure, drop a comment below, or contact me. I am determined to get these terms straight.