What are the types of leads and how to approach them? - test

Leads will not instantly become your customers just after they hear your brand or service.

They will go through multiple stages in the sales funnel to become your customer; this is called as buyer journey.

At every stage of the funnel, a significant amount of marketing and sales effort is required to convert leads to customers.

Leads are categorized into several types as they travel through the multiple stages of the funnel to identify their level of readiness, engagement, and fit for conversion.

Not knowing these types of leads will lead to marketing inefficiencies and sales misalignment, as it represents a lack of understanding of the funnel stages.

Table of Contents

• Why is it important to know the types of leads?
• The stages of the sales funnel
• Types of Leads in SaaS
  • Lead types based on funnel stage
  • Lead types based on source
  • Lead types based on qualification
  • Lead types based on intent
• How to approach the different types of leads?
  • Tips to approach and convert cold leads
  • Tips to approach and convert Warm leads
  • Tips to approach and convert Hot leads
  • Tips to approach and convert existing customers/ service-qualified leads
• Close more deals by targeting your warm leads

TL;DR

• Cold, warm, and hot leads are further classified into 6 additional categories, along with referral and service-qualified leads.
• It is essential to get a deeper understanding of the types of leads for every marketing, sales, and customer support team to improve lead scoring, optimize lead nurturing with the right personalization, shorten the sales cycle, and optimize lifetime value (LTV) support.
• In ABM marketing, cold leads and warm leads are called low-intent leads, and hot leads are called high-intent leads.
• Lead types can be segmented based on funnel stages, sources, qualification, and intent.
• To convert your cold leads, build your cold outreach infrastructure with a combination of Google Workspace emails and your own domain email accounts. Also, stay below the daily email sending limit imposed by Google.
• To convert your warm leads, first identify them with a website identification tool like GoZen HyperReach and personalize based on context.
• Speed is essential to convert your hot leads.
• Use a product analytics tool to analyze your existing customers before your sales pitch to them.

Why is it important to know the types of leads?

It’s indispensable to understand the different types of leads to gain deeper insight into where they are in the buyer’s journey.

This clarity allows marketing and sales teams to tailor their communication, timing, and strategy for maximum conversion impact.

Here’s a technical breakdown of why marketing and sales teams must classify leads beyond just “cold, warm, and hot”:

To improve lead scoring accuracy

The general categorization of leads will result in a surface-level understanding of their requirements, which eventually will take a longer sales cycle, or leads will slip through cracks.

But, using specific classifications like MQL, SQL, and PQL allows effective lead scoring based on engagement, behavior, and fit. So, this will help prioritize high-quality leads.

It also helps in setting the right threshold scores in your CRM for seamless handoff between marketing, sales, and customer support teams.

Enables marketing and sales teams’ alignment

When lead closures are low, marketing and sales teams often end up blaming each other instead of identifying root causes.

Let me share an example of what happened in our company a year back.

For one of our products, our marketing team sent 100 leads to the sales team. But only 5 conversions happened.

The sales team says the leads aren’t qualified, but the marketing team, which includes a few interns, insists they’ve done their job right.

Then, our head of marketing figured out the root cause: leads were marked as MQLs, but never qualified as SQLs.

The lack of understanding of the type of leads will lead to wasted time, misaligned expectations, and friction between teams.

This is why clearly defined lead types and their stages help both teams agree on what qualifies as an MQL vs SQL, reducing friction and blame.

The clarity on lead types will also support creating a clear internal service level agreement (SLA) for lead follow-up during the marketing, sales process, and post-purchase.

Enhances the quality of marketing and sales reports

The granular level of lead classification gives a clear funnel visibility, like the number of leads at each stage, conversion rates, and pipeline velocity.

This level of funnel visibility will result in accurate revenue forecasting and pipeline attribution in CRM dashboards.

Optimizes lead nurturing workflows

The success of lead nurturing campaigns relies on sending the right message at the right time.

By tagging leads by stage, you can automate more personalized nurturing sequences that deliver stage-specific content at the right time.

For example, you can send nurture email series for marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and product upsell drips for product qualified leads (PQLs).

Without going beyond the general classification of leads, a marketing team cannot implement the right personalization.

Strengthens attribution and ROI tracking

Tracking leads by classification enables multi-touch attribution, which leads to linking revenue back to the exact source and campaign.

For example, for SaaS teams leveraging free trials or freemium, it is essential to identify the usage-based conversion triggers, such as frequent use of a particular feature. They can even track if the existing user brings any new users via the team invite feature of the product.

Without a granular-level classification of leads, SaaS marketing and sales teams may fail to notice the PQLs’ activity and k-factor.

So, the clear source identification improves the customer acquisition cost (CAC) and marketing ROI analysis.

The stages of the sales funnel

Many marketers and salespeople think there are only 3 kinds of leads, such as cold leads, warm leads, and hot leads, based on the funnel stages.

But, in reality, these three categories can be classified into many lead types.

Before we get into these different types of leads, let’s understand how a lead will go through every stage of the funnel.

The sales funnel has five stages:

• Awareness 
• Consideration
• Decision
• Conversion
• Post-sale

Awarness

Awareness is the first stage in the funnel. At this stage, leads just become aware of their problem and are actively looking for the solution.

These are the leads who match your ICP and will get to know your brand or service via your blog, LinkedIn post, advertisement, or cold email. However, these leads haven’t engaged much yet.

Leads at this stage are generally called top of the funnel (ToFU) leads.

Example actions of the leads in the Awareness stage of the funnel include:

• Visited your website either by reading your blog in SERPs or any one of the generative AI models.
• Visited your landing page by clicking your advertisement on Google, Meta, or LinkedIn.
• Landed on your website from the cold email you sent.
• Came to know about your brand/ service via one of your LinkedIn posts.

Types of leads that fall into the Awareness category of the funnel include cold leads, which encompass both inbound and outbound leads.

Consideration

Consideration is the second stage of the buyer journey.

If the leads in the Awareness stage are convinced by the quality of your article or understand that you can solve their pain points from your advertisement or cold email copy, they will start to explore your products or offerings.

Leads at this stage are generally known as middle of the funnel (MoFU) leads.

Example actions of the leads in the Consideration stage of the funnel:

• Signed up for a free trial if you leverage a freemium pricing model.
• Downloaded one of your lead magnets, such as ebooks, webinars, or calculators. 
• Interacted with the demo video. 
• Replied to one of your outreach emails.

Types of leads that fall into the Consideration category include warm leads, which encompass information qualified leads (IQLs), marketing qualified leads (MQLs), and product qualified leads (PQLs).

Decision

Decision is the third stage of the sales funnel and buyer journey. This is where the transition of MQL becomes SQL happens.

The leads at the Consideration stage are impressed by your product or service, and they will show clear buying signals and are ready for a sales conversation. Probably, this will happen when they go through an aha moment.

Leads at this stage are generally known as bottom of the funnel (BoFU) leads.

Examples of actions of leads in the Decision stage of the funnel are:

• Requested a demo or asked for the quote.
• Visited the pricing page multiple times.
• Added their team members to the free trial.

Types of lead that fall into the Decision stage include hot leads, also called sales qualified leads (SQLs).

Conversion

This is where all the marketing and sales efforts get rewarded. This is the stage of the funnel in which hot leads convert into paying customers.

Examples of actions of leads in the Conversion stage of the funnel are:

• Signed up for a paid plan or enterprise contract 

Post-sale 

Most marketing and sales teams overlook this stage, as they close the deal and get rewarded.

Following up with existing users and addressing their needs can boost the k-factor, as delighted customers are more likely to refer new ones. Also, they can be targeted for cross-sell and up-sell as well.

Leads, technically customers, in this stage are called service-qualified leads.

Example actions of leads in the post-sale stage of the funnel are:

• Asked about an add-on
• Asked about whether you’re giving solutions to their other pain points

Types of Leads in SaaS

There are 11 types of leads:

• Cold leads: Inbound leads and Outbound leads
• Warm leads: Information qualified leads (IQL), Marketing qualified leads (MQL), Product qualified leads (PQL)
• Hot leads: Sales qualified leads (SQL) 
• Referral lead
• Service qualified lead

Let’s understand them easily by categorizing lead types based on their stage in the buyer journey, source, and readiness.

Lead types based on funnel stage

This is the most common way marketers and sales teams classify leads.

Lead Type	Funnel Stages	Description	Actions
Cold leads	Top of Funnel (ToFU)	Leads that fit your ICP but haven’t interacted with your brand yet	–
Warm leads	Middle of the Funnel (MoFU)	Leads who have interacted with your brand and are considering a solution.	Downloaded an ebook, visited the pricing page, etc.
Hot leads	Bottom of the Funnel (BoFU)	Leads that are ready to buy.	Requested a demo, pricing, or trial

Lead types based on source

A professional marketing team will classify leads beyond the general classification to identify the exact sources. So that they can double down on which channel works best.

Lead Type	Description
Inbound lead	Comes to you through your marketing, such as blogs, ads, or social media posts
Outbound lead	You reach out to them through cold emails, LinkedIn, or cold calls
Referral lead	Comes through existing customers or partners

Lead types based on qualification

To avoid lead fatigue and identify buying intent early, every sales team classifies leads based on qualification.

Lead Types	Description
Marketing qualified lead (MQL), also known as information qualified lead (IQL)	Leads engaged with marketing (e.g., downloaded a guide, opened multiple emails). Needs nurturing before sales.
Sales qualified lead (SQL)	Leads evaluated by sales and confirmed to be a good fit and interested in buying soon.
Product qualified lead (PQL)	Leads used your product (e.g., free trial users) and have shown intent to upgrade or buy.
Service qualified lead	Existing customer showing interest in additional services or upsells.

Lead types based on intent

Enterprise marketing teams categorize leads based on intent to perform an ABM marketing campaign. Because ABM isn’t about chasing volume.

In ABM, you’re targeting a few high-value accounts, not thousands of random leads.

So you must know which accounts are actively showing buying intent.

Lead Types	Description
High-intent lead	Leads that show strong buying signals, such as visiting pricing pages, requesting a quote
Low-intent lead	Leads in early stages. Just exploring options or learning

How to approach the different types of leads?

Tips to approach and convert cold leads

As mentioned earlier, cold leads don’t know you. They are not waiting for your email.

So the goal isn’t to sell right away. Instead, you need to warm them up.

1. Start with the right targeting:
   1. Define your ICP: Define industry, company size, tech stack, and role.
   2. Implement account scoring: Targeting your entire ICP often leads to high churn and sales burnout. Instead of letting reps choose accounts based on gut feeling, implement a data-driven ICP scoring system. By prioritizing accounts with strong intent and fit, you’ll focus on leads that are truly ready to engage. Account scoring reduces churn and saves time on closing deals.
2. Personalize your cold outreach beyond name and company: 

You must go beyond first name and company name personalization. As an alternative to surface-level personalization, you can use pain indicators, social signals (such as recent posts, engagement, or achievement found on LinkedIn), and company triggers to personalize your outreach.

You can use a tool like HyperReach to automate your outreach based on social signals and company triggers.

3. Lead with value, not product: 

Your first point of contact should either educate your leads or address their pain points. Focus on what’s in it for them, not what your product does.

We utilize lead magnets, including checklists, audit reports, and educational webinars. As a result, we have seen a 20% increase in the reply rate and 12% increase in demo bookings.

4. Use multi-touch points and a multi-channel approach: 

Cold leads rarely respond on the first attempt. So, use 3-5 touchpoints across different platforms.

5. Build your infrastructure: 

Cold outreach has changed a lot. What used to work is not working anymore.

Since Google and Microsoft are stringent about the daily sending volume of cold emails, you need to set up your own SMTP server or buy a dedicated server.

You must also buy a lot of domains and create a set of inboxes to bypass the daily email sending limit.

Based on our setup, the best practice would be:

• 4 to 5 inboxes per domain
• 10-15 emails per inbox
• 14 – 20 days warm-up needed for new inboxes
• Diversify your email accounts with your own domain and Google Workspace email accounts

Tips to approach and convert Warm leads

Warm leads are your golden middle ground between cold and hot leads.

They already know you, have engaged with your brand, and are considering your solutions. However, they haven’t taken that final step.

1. Segment warm leads by engagement level:
   Not all warm leads are equal. Segment them based on their engagement to find out the right leads to target.
   • High-engagement: pricing page visitors and demo watchers. These leads are ready for sales outreach.
   • Medium-engagement: newsletter readers and webinar attendees. These leads need a bit of nurturing.
   • Low-engagement: single touchpoint leads. Run a series of retargeting campaigns.

Now, you might wonder how you can identify the warm leads on your website. 

Using a user behavior analytics tool like Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics alone will not work when it comes to warm lead identification. 

While it can only record the user behavior on a heatmap, you need a powerful tool to unmask leads behind those user behaviors.

This is where you should use HyperReach to identify your website visitors. 

2. Personalize with context:

Since you identify your exact website visitor and on which page they’ve landed using GoZen HyperReach, you can skip the intro in your email and get to the point straight.

Example:

Saw that you’ve visited our pricing page. Do you need any discounts?

You downloaded our visitor ID playbook. Want to see how it works live on your site?

Tips to approach and convert Hot leads

Hot leads are the ones closest to conversion and must be handled by the sales team. 

1. Speed wins:

Hot leads have a short attention window. So, respond within minutes or hours, not days.

If they’ve:

• Requested a demo, schedule it immediately
• Started a trial, offer onboarding support right away

The faster your sales teams respond, the higher your conversion likelihood.

2. Leverage sales enablement materials:

Hot leads must have been comparing your competitor with you just before they buy.

So, it is essential to jump in and show the comparison pages created by your marketing team to secure the deal.

Remember, the comparison page prepared by your team must include credibility, benefits, and USP to convince the hot leads.

Tips to approach and convert existing customers/ service-qualified leads

Approaching and converting existing customers for upsell, renewals, or cross-sell is far more cost-effective than acquiring new customers.

1. Develop a sense of deep understanding: 

Don’t reach out to your existing customers randomly. Choose the profile based on:

• Which features did they use most
• Their engagement level (active vs dormant)

Then, use these data to tailor your outreach strategy.

An example sales pitch would be:

I noticed your team is using our visitor identification feature heavily, but hasn’t tried personalized outreach yet. Want a quick walkthrough?

Tip: Use a free product analytics tool like PostHog to identify your customer behaviors inside your product.

2. Use social proof:

Show them how other users scaled with upgrades. Because peer validation motivates adoption more than sales claims.

Example:

After switching to the Growth plan, [Company X] automated outreach and 2x conversions.

Close more deals by targeting your warm leads 

Cold email outreach is becoming increasingly challenging. With Google limiting daily sending limits and cracking down on cheap pre-warmed inboxes, scaling outbound campaigns has never been harder.

If your cold outreach relies on free GSuite accounts, .org emails, or low-cost pre-warmed inboxes, your strategy is already at risk. Even with official Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 accounts, you must carefully manage the number of emails sent per day to avoid deliverability issues.

What’s still working:

To maintain deliverability and scale, marketers rely on:

• Official Google Workspace accounts with limited daily emails
• Microsoft 365 inboxes with restricted daily sending limits
• Private SMTP setups
• Diversification across multiple providers
• Using 20+ domains for outreach

Clearly, cold email outreach has become more expensive and harder to scale than ever before.

Solution?

Instead of relying solely on cold outreach, targeting your warm leads is the most efficient way to close more deals. Warm leads are already familiar with your brand and have shown some interest, which makes them far more likely to convert.

How to Target Your Warm Leads

• Identify website visitors generated through SEO, content, and marketing campaigns.
• Use analytics tools like Google Analytics or Microsoft Clarity to understand user behavior.
• But here’s the catch: these tools cannot reveal the identity of your visitors.

This is where GoZen HyperReach comes in. HyperReach identifies up to 70% of your warm leads, turning anonymous website traffic into actionable prospects.

On top of that, it automates personalized outreach based on social signals, making your campaigns more relevant and effective.

By focusing on warm leads with tools like HyperReach, you can reduce cold outreach costs, increase engagement, and close more deals faster.