Is every enquiry a lead?
No. An enquiry is anything that comes in through your contact channels, and a good share of what arrives is not a possible customer at all. Suppliers pitching you, people looking for a job, spam, and someone asking a question you could never be paid for are all enquiries. A lead is an enquiry from a person who might buy, and whom you can get back to.
The difference matters as soon as you put a price on leads. Divide your ad spend by every enquiry and your cost per lead looks better than it is, because the supplier pitches got counted as wins.
When does a lead become a prospect, and a prospect a customer?
A lead becomes a prospect once you know they fit: they want what you sell, they are in your area, and they can pay for it. In bigger companies this step has its own jargon, which the entry on qualified leads unpacks. For an owner, prospect simply means a lead worth your time this week.
A prospect becomes a customer when they pay, or commit to pay: a deposit, a signed quote, a booking with a card attached. That is the only rung where money changes hands, and every rung below it is a cost.
How does a Gold Coast wedding photographer's month climb the ladder? (example figures)
A wedding photographer on the Gold Coast gets messages through Instagram, a contact form on the website and a wedding directory listing. In one month in spring:
| Rung | Count | What moved them up | Share of the rung below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiries | 90 | Any message in | |
| Leads | 64 | A couple asking about a wedding, with a way to reply | 71 percent |
| Prospects | 30 | Date free, within travel range, budget near the package price | 47 percent |
| Customers | 9 | Paid the deposit | 30 percent |
Each rung tells the photographer something different. The 26 enquiries that were not leads were mostly vendors and requests for free shoots, which says nothing about the ads. The drop from 64 leads to 30 prospects was mostly couples whose date was already booked, which says the photographer is in demand on Saturdays in October and should be advertising weekday and winter dates. The 30 percent from prospect to customer is the photographer's own close rate, and that one is about the call and the proposal.
Counting only "enquiries" would have hidden all three stories in one number.
Which rung does CoraVision count?
CoraVision counts leads. When work arrives as enquiries, the CoraVision dashboard tracks leads in place of sales, and its Google Ads and Meta cards put a 7-day cost against them, updated each night from your connected accounts. The ad accounts count what you told them to count, a form or a call, so the cleaner your definition of a lead inside those accounts, the more the dashboard figure means. The rungs above, prospect and customer, live in your inbox and your bookings.
Questions
Does an Instagram follower count as a lead?
No. A follower has shown interest in your posts, and you usually cannot contact them directly or know whether they need what you sell. They become a lead when they get in touch about buying, or give you a way to reach them about it.
What is a hot lead?
An informal name for a lead who wants to buy soon and has the means to. Owners use it to sort the day's callbacks: the hot ones first. A lead who asked for a price and a start date this week is hot; one downloading a free guide is not yet.
What does lead generation mean?
The work of getting people to put their hand up: ads, search, referrals, a directory listing, a free guide in exchange for an email address. It ends when the person gets in touch. What happens next, turning leads into customers, is selling.