You are standing at a party or at a trade show display and someone comes up to you and enquires about your school. You give them a business card and you take their details asking if they would like to go on the mailing list. 

You get back to school and enter their details in the database.  It gets entered with all the others you have met over time. The time from when a school member of staff first meets a potential parent to when they request a prospectus, come to information night or a tour of the school could be 5 years or more. It could be some time again before they enrol and pay the fees. 

You send out your newsletters and continue to engage in other promotional activities.  You go to trade shows, put up signage, advertise in magazines and newspapers and encourage referrals from past students and parents. All of these activities aim to increase awareness and interest in your school.  It is moving from interest to enquiry that is the trigger for a "qualified" lead.   

Now there may be several steps within and enquiry stage and it is important to define what these are. For a school, these might be a request for a prospectus, attendance at an information night, a tour of the school, a meeting with the Head of School or a combination of these or any of these.  You would have a good idea, which one of these activities by customers would lead onto a sale. How long this may take will depend on staff sales skills and processes supporting the process.

For those that have a CRM (customer relationship manager for leads) you will convert your leads into Accounts/Potentials when these activities have occurred. This means those leads have become "qualified".  At this stage a more personal relationship can start to develop. 

As a result the lead data is likely to be much closer to an actual enrolment (purchase).  This proximity allows for more accurate indication on how well your sales & development team has been able to convert. Being able to link the expenses associated with producing a prospectus, an information night or a school tour with enrolments provides what we call a "lead cost of acquisition". 

It is important to have a clear policy around when a lead is a qualified lead.  All staff then has a common understanding of terminology and what they need to do to reach targets.