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tags: A2, Prospecting
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# Introduction to inbound leads

Chances are, at some point in your career, you will have to start dealing with inbound leads. These leads are further down the sales funnel, and therefore are usually "easier" to deal with.

Inbound leads will come one of two ways:

1. **Generated by your company/ marketing team:** These are leads generated through marketing activities and assigned to you. For example, leads that submit a request for information or download a whitepaper on your website.
2. **Generated by you.** In time, the social selling process youve just learnt to practice will begin attracting people to organically connect with you and ask for more information. The process takes time, but is 100% worth it, so we recommend you continue to post content and engage with other people's profiles regularly!

In this section, we will learn exactly what inbound leads are and how to handle them effectively.

Let's go!
 

## Inbound vs. Outbound Lead Generation: a refresher
Essentially, inbound lead generation is a strategy that utilizes many forms of pull marketing—content marketing, blogs, events, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and more—to create brand awareness and attract new leads **that proactively interact with your business.**

- **Inbound leads** are leads that initiate contact with you directly or through referral channels. It might be that someone found out about you through social media, read or downloaded your content, or got a direct referral from a friend or colleague.
- **Outbound leads** are developed through proactive, direct contact initiated by you through a call, email or social media.


Both sales and marketing can take an inbound approach to lead generation:

- **A salesperson** that becomes an expert in a subject matter on social media by regularly posting content is employing an inbound strategy.
- **A marketing team** that regularly posts blog posts and has forms on their website to collect lead information is employing an inbound strategy.

Inbound lead generation is all the rage these days. When done right, it can be a great strategy to follow. When done wrong, it can leave you with very little traction and revenue.

This is why it's important to employ, or be ready to employ, both outbound and inbound sales tactics in an organisation. Outbound lead generation is usually most effective and yields immediate results. Inbound lead generation is a more sustainable growth strategy and yields leads that are easier to convert to opportunities.
 
## With inbound leads, the context changes to your advantage

In sales & marketing, we usually denominate leads as:

- 🥶 Cold leads - Unlikely to convert
- ☀️ Warm leads - Somewhere in the middle
- 🔥 Hot leads - Most likely to convert

**Inbound leads are always warm or hot.** This is because they have recently interacted with you in some way and therefore have a higher chance of being interested in what you offer.

As salesperson, receiving inbound leads is an ideal position to be in. It's much more efficient talking to a lead that has reached out to you with a problem than fishing in a pool of unknown cold leads.

**These leads need to be prioritized.**

In the next lesson, we will have a look at exactly what to do when dealing with an inbound lead.

Let's go!

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