Lead is an opportunity for a sale or transaction or a potential customer. Lead generation is the process of creating those opportunities.
For example, in the classic term, you are a sales person and you need to sell 100 vacuum cleaners. You will need to identify the people who are likely to be willing to buy those vacuum cleaners. To be able to sell off 100 of those units, you will need to generate at least a 500 leads with a conversion ratio of minimum 20%.
Ways to Generate Leads
There are many ways to acquire leads. You can acquire by networking as often as possible with the right set of people, searching on the internet for the relevant information, going through the yellow pages directory, or via your website, blog or social media page.
One can also generate leads by advertising on newspapers, TV, radio and social media, or any other medium which reaches out the to ideal target segment.