Definition
A lead is someone who has shown interest in a treatment and either shared their contact details or messaged you. They aren't a patient yet: they may have asked for a price, sent photos or filled in an ad form. In medical tourism, leads arrive through many channels at once: WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, website forms, ad lead forms and phone calls.
Not every lead is worth the same. Treatment type, budget, travel dates and decision stage all affect how warm a lead is. That's why a lead should be recorded with its source, the treatment they're interested in and the conversation history, not just as a name and a phone number.
Why it matters for clinics
Ad spend buys leads; leads become patients. When leads are scattered across different phones and personal WhatsApp accounts, nobody can see who was answered and who was forgotten. Bringing every lead into one CRM is the starting point for measuring which channels and which agents actually bring patients.
Example
Someone in Germany fills in the form on your Instagram ad, writing "implant price". The lead lands in the panel with its source (Instagram lead form, campaign name), is assigned to your German-speaking agent and starts moving through the "New enquiry" stage of the pipeline.