The Next-Gen Brand Lab
Lead quality and qualification
What is the difference between a lead and an enquiry?
Last updated 2026-09-09
In practice the two are used interchangeably and neither means anything on its own. Both describe a person who submitted their details, which tells you nothing about whether they can be reached, can afford the unit, are in your catchment, or already exist in your CRM. This is precisely why the useful term is "qualified lead" with a written definition attached, and why an agency quoting a price per lead without that definition is quoting a price for an undefined unit.
The distinction worth making instead
Not lead versus enquiry, but raw versus qualified.
A raw lead is any submitted set of contact details. A qualified lead has been tested against criteria agreed in advance — in our case contactability within 48 hours across three attempts, budget inside the price band, intent within six months, valid catchment, and no CRM duplicate within 90 days.
The gap between those two numbers is where every dispute in this category lives, and it is worth measuring in your own CRM regardless of who does your marketing.
A note on vocabulary as a warning sign
If a proposal uses "leads", "enquiries", "prospects" and "opportunities" apparently interchangeably, it usually means no definition sits behind any of them. Ask which one is being sold and how it is tested. The quality of the answer tells you most of what you need to know.
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