Define Leads and Contacts

Priya appears as an open Lead after the guide download. A Sales rep also finds a Contact with her name at Acme. Someone converts the Lead, marks the conversion as qualified, and closes the old record. A month later, Marketing and Sales disagree about whether Priya was a new inquiry. The CRM did exactly what it was told. Nobody ever told the business what Lead-to-Contact movement is supposed to mean.

Conversion is a record rule, not a milestone

Conversion is a record-handling event: it can create or connect records, move work into a different operating model, and preserve history a report needs. What it doesn't do is prove the person is ready for Sales.

GTM Lab uses a lead-then-contact model: an inbound person begins as a Lead while identity and matching are checked; a Contact is used once the person has an ongoing relationship. That's a worked choice, not the only right answer. A Contact-first model or a separate sales-work model can fit other businesses. Any model needs to answer four questions: how do we recognize the same person, what event allows conversion, what history survives, and which reports count the person before/during/after.

Watching a conversion that doesn't lie

Priya downloads the guide; the lab creates an early Lead. Her walkthrough request supplies evidence for Engaged. The match check finds she can be associated with Acme, converts the Lead into the ongoing Contact model, and writes a conversion event. Nothing else changes: lifecycle stays Engaged, work status stays Awaiting acceptance. The conversion event stays in her history, and it never becomes a shortcut for qualification reporting.

Carry this into your business

Write the record-movement rule before you touch a conversion workflow. The output that matters is short: what must be matched, what happens when the match is unclear, what history survives, and what conversion is not evidence of.