The leads glossary

45 clear definitions to understand the vocabulary of a Swiss leads marketplace — from exclusive leads to scoring, from opt-in to the FADP.

This glossary brings together the terms you'll come across on leads-qualifie.ch and, more broadly, in any lead buying or selling in Switzerland. Each definition is a few sentences long; some link to an in-depth dossier or a practical page to go further.

The basics

Lead essentials

Lead: A business contact: a person or company that has expressed a specific need and agreed to be contacted about it. On a marketplace, a lead is always dated, qualified, and tied to a category and a geographic area.
Qualified lead: A lead whose intent, contact details and consent have been verified before it goes live — as opposed to a raw contact collected without any checks. This is the foundation of any serious marketplace.
Fresh lead: A lead published recently, before its buying intent has had time to cool off. The fresher a lead, the higher the chance of a quick reply and an appointment.
Lead generation: All the actions — forms, campaigns, simulators, a network of referral sources — that turn a visit or a search into an identified request, with contact details and a stated need.
Buying intent: The signal that sets a lead apart from a plain contact: the person has expressed a concrete, dated need (get a quote, be called back, compare an offer), not idle curiosity.
First-party data: Data collected directly from the person concerned, with their consent, at the moment they express their request — as opposed to data bought or gathered by a third party unrelated to the stated need. A qualified lead always rests on first-party data.
Capture form: The form (or simulator, or phone call) through which a referral source collects an end customer's details, their need, and their consent to be contacted — the starting point of every lead.
Callback time: The time between a lead being published and the receiving company's first actual contact attempt. The shorter this window, the higher the contact rate and conversion rate stay.

Exclusivity & guarantee

Lead types, exclusivity & guarantee

Exclusive lead: A lead sent to a single receiving company, never redistributed to competitors. Exclusivity is stated before the match is made, never after the fact.; See also · Arbitrated exclusivity: how the marketplace protects buyers and sellers
Shared lead: A lead sent simultaneously to several receiving companies, in a limited number announced in advance. It usually costs less than an exclusive lead, in exchange for direct competition.; See also · Arbitrated exclusivity: how the marketplace protects buyers and sellers
Arbitrated exclusivity: The mechanism by which a marketplace decides, lead by lead, whether it will be sent exclusively or shared — following explicit rules rather than chance or the highest bidder.; See also · Arbitrated exclusivity: how the marketplace protects buyers and sellers
Inbound / outbound lead: An inbound lead comes from someone who initiated the contact (form, search, simulator); an outbound lead results from active prospecting reaching out to them. A qualified-leads marketplace deals almost exclusively in inbound.
Duplicate: A lead that matches, in whole or in part, a request already sent (same person, same need, same period). Duplicates are caught before distribution and are one of the cases covered by a replacement guarantee.; See also · Guarantee
Fake lead / lead fraud: A lead generated by a form filled in with false information, a bot, or a deliberately misleading intent — as opposed to a valid lead that simply doesn't convert. Serious marketplaces filter these cases upstream.; See also · Guarantee
Lead replacement: The mechanism by which a lead found defective (invalid number, out of scope, duplicate, fake) is replaced free of charge with an equivalent new lead, once reported within a set window.; See also · Guarantee
Replacement guarantee: A marketplace's written commitment to replace any defective lead that meets criteria set in advance — distinct from a refund guarantee, which few serious marketplaces offer.; See also · Guarantee

Quality & sales funnel

Quality, scoring & sales funnel

Lead scoring: A rating assigned to a lead (or to its source) based on objective criteria — freshness, consistency of contact details, completeness of the stated need, source track record — to tell the most reliable leads from the weaker ones.; See also · Lead quality & scoring on a marketplace
Lead qualification: The verification process that happens before a lead goes live: checking contact details, confirming the coherence of the stated need, tracing consent. An unqualified lead is just a raw contact.; See also · Lead quality & scoring on a marketplace
Conversion rate: The share of received leads that lead to a concrete business outcome (accepted quote, appointment kept, contract signed) for the receiving company. It depends as much on lead quality as on how fast and well the sales follow-up is handled.
Contact rate: The share of received leads that the receiving company actually manages to reach — the first step before any conversion rate, highly sensitive to callback time.
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead): A contact considered engaged enough through their interactions (download, simulation, repeat visits) to justify a sales action, without having made an explicit request yet — the stage that precedes a lead in the full sense.
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): A lead confirmed as ready for a sales team to handle: need stated, contact details verified, consent obtained. This is the qualification level expected of a lead published on a serious marketplace.
Lead nurturing: Keeping the relationship going with a contact who isn't ready to convert yet, through exchanges spaced out over time, until their need becomes precise enough to form a workable lead.
Funnel: The staged journey that takes a person from first contact through to closing a deal. A qualified lead usually enters this funnel at an already advanced stage, with a stated need and consent already secured.

Marketplace

Marketplace & parties involved

Leads marketplace: A marketplace that connects companies looking for customers with referral sources that generate qualified requests, sector by sector and area by area — as opposed to a plain reseller of contact lists.; See also · How a leads marketplace works in Switzerland
Two-sided marketplace: A model where two categories of users — those looking for leads and those generating them — meet on the same platform, each side bringing value to the other.; See also · How a leads marketplace works in Switzerland
Referral source: The site, comparison platform or local network that captures a customer request the moment it's expressed and passes it on to the marketplace — the first link in the chain, responsible for the consent obtained.; See also · Selling or buying leads: the two-sided model
Lead buyer: The company that receives a lead to follow up on the end customer's request — drawing up a quote, booking an appointment, putting together a proposal. Also called the receiving company.; See also · Configure my request
Lead seller: The referral source that offers its qualified requests on the marketplace in exchange for compensation, once its collection and consent practices have been validated by the platform operator.; See also · Selling or buying leads: the two-sided model
End customer: The data subject under data protection law: the person whose need gave rise to the lead. Their details and their request belong to them; they hold the rights the law attaches to that status.; See also · FADP & leads: the three-party framework
Receiving company: The company that receives a lead's contact details to follow up on it. It in turn becomes responsible for the personal data it holds from the moment it receives it.; See also · FADP & leads: the three-party framework

Compliance (FADP)

Compliance & data protection

Opt-in: The explicit consent given by a person to be contacted about the request they've just made — a prerequisite for any lead being distributed on a serious marketplace.
Double opt-in: Consent confirmed in two steps: an initial validation at the form stage, followed by a second confirmation (for example by email or SMS) before the lead is considered definitively consented.
Consent (traceability): The proof, kept with a timestamp, that the data subject agreed to be contacted for a specific purpose. Asserted but undocumented consent doesn't carry the same weight as traceable consent if it's ever challenged.
FADP (nLPD): Switzerland's Federal Act on Data Protection (revised in 2023), which governs any processing of personal data in Switzerland — including the collection, transmission and use of a lead between three distinct parties.; See also · FADP & leads: the three-party framework
GDPR: The European data protection regulation. It doesn't automatically apply to a Swiss marketplace processing Swiss residents' data, but its principles (consent, minimisation, data subject rights) largely overlap with those of the FADP.; See also · FADP & leads: the three-party framework
Right to object: The data subject's right to stop any further contact linked to their request at any time, without having to justify the decision — a right the receiving company must honour as soon as it's exercised.
Data minimisation: The principle that only the information strictly necessary to handle a request should be collected and passed on — contact details, need, area — with no superfluous fields widening the data in circulation.

Geography & sectors

Geography, sectors & cost

Canton: The most common Swiss administrative level used to define a lead coverage area — 26 cantons in total, each of which can be targeted on its own or broken down to the municipality level.; See also · Canton map
Postcode (NPA): The Swiss postal code, often used to narrow a coverage area more precisely than a whole canton, particularly in regions straddling the border between two cantons.
Sector / vertical: The field of activity a lead belongs to (insurance, real estate, renovation, healthcare...) — each sector having its own qualification criteria and its own catalogue on the marketplace.; See also · Household insurance
Category: The precise subdivision of a sector on a marketplace catalogue (for example "household insurance" within the insurance sector) — the level at which a buyer actually chooses where to receive their leads.; See also · Categories
Coverage area: The geographic area (canton, region, postcode or municipality) a company agrees to receive leads for. A well-defined area avoids receiving requests too far away to act on.; See also · Canton map
Catchment area: The geographic area within which a company can realistically operate and convert a customer — often narrower than its theoretical coverage area, particularly for trades that require travelling to the customer.
Cost per lead (CPL): The way the expense incurred to obtain a lead is assessed, expressed per unit — a useful benchmark for comparing suppliers with each other, independent of the actual price level each one charges.; See also · Comparing lead providers: the key criteria

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