# Lead

A **lead** is somebody who has shown interest, captured from a conversation rather than from research: an enquiry, a reply, a caller. In Connect it is a contact row carrying a name, the ways of reaching them, a pipeline stage, a score and a do-not-contact flag, and it is what the Leads sheet and the Assistant's lead tools read.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/data, #/pipeline
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/lead/

## Interest that arrived, rather than interest you went looking for

The distinction between a lead and a [prospect](/docs/glossary/prospect/) is direction, not quality. A prospect is an organisation research surfaced; nobody there has spoken to you. A lead is a person who has — they filled in a form, replied to something, rang the number, asked what a thing costs. That difference decides almost everything downstream: what you are permitted to send them, what tone is appropriate, and how much of the qualifying work is already done.

It also decides the compliance question. Contacting somebody who contacted you rests on an existing exchange; contacting an organisation nobody has heard from rests on the jurisdiction's rules about unsolicited commercial messages. The [prospect compliance check](/docs/prospects/compliance-check/) is the wider version of that question and runs before an outreach list is built at all.

## Where a lead is visible

- The **Leads** sheet in [Data](/docs/files-data/) — name, email, company, phone, city, pipeline stage, score, do-not-contact and notes, editable in place, with import from a file.
- The Assistant's lead tools, described in the tool catalogue as contacts captured from conversations — the same records, reachable by asking.
- The pipeline, where a lead with an [opportunity](/docs/glossary/opportunity/) against it stops being a name and becomes a deal with a value.

> **Note** Every edit made in the grid goes through the service that owns the record. The grid is a view, not a second database, which is why a stage changed there behaves exactly as one changed on the relationship screen.

## Lead, person, contact: two tables and three words

Connect has both a contacts table and a people table, and this is the single most common source of confusion in the record model. Contacts is the older, flatter row — one email, one phone, a stage, a score. People is the canonical human record that [identities](/docs/glossary/identity/) attach to, that [memory](/docs/glossary/memory/) hangs from and that [Customer 360](/docs/glossary/customer-360/) assembles.

| Question | Record |
|---|---|
| Who enquired, and how warm are they? | The lead |
| Which human is this, across every channel they use? | The [person](/docs/glossary/person/) |
| Which organisation do they belong to? | The [company](/docs/glossary/company/) |
| What are we actually selling them, for how much? | The [opportunity](/docs/glossary/opportunity/) |

In prose, *contact* is used loosely for both and is best avoided where precision matters. If you mean the row with the score on it, say lead; if you mean the human, say person. Where a page needs to be exact about which table it means, it names the table.

## Questions

### Does a lead become a person automatically?

Not by renaming. The records coexist, and a lead becomes visible as a person through the identity that reached you — the address or number they used. Two views of one human are normal; two person records for one human is the [duplicate](/docs/relationships/duplicates/) case, which is merged.

### What does the score on a lead mean?

How well the evidence collected about them matches what the workspace sells. It is a stored number you can change, not a hidden ranking, and a lead whose score you disagree with is a lead to edit rather than one to argue with.

### Can I import leads from a file?

Yes. Leads, companies and knowledge are the importable sheets, and imported rows arrive through the same service that any other write goes through.

## Related

- [Prospect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/prospect/)
- [Opportunity](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/opportunity/)
- [Person](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/person/)
- [Sales in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/sales/)
- [Files and data in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/files-data/)

## What this page is based on

- `backend/app/data_workspace.py` — the Leads sheet over the contact model
- `backend/app/manager_tools.py` — the read-only lead tools
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §9 — every grid change goes through the owning service