Where do leads come from?
The five major lead sources every Indian SMB sales team should track. Outbound, inbound, referrals, events, and paid — plus how to set up sources in TatvaCRM and use them to optimise your funnel.
Every lead in your CRM should have a source — where they came from. Track this well and you’ll know exactly which channels deserve more investment and which are noise. This page covers the five major lead sources for Indian SMB sales teams.
Why tracking source matters
After 200 leads close, you can answer: “Which source converts the best?” Often the answer is surprising. A team that thinks LinkedIn is their best channel discovers the highest-converting source is referrals — but they’re spending all their effort on LinkedIn. Source tracking ends that disconnect.
The five major lead sources
1. Outbound
You went out and found them. Cold call, cold email, LinkedIn DM, walk-in to a prospect’s office. The defining characteristic: they didn’t reach out to you.
Outbound is high-volume, lower conversion rate (typically 1-5%). Karan at StoreWorks runs outbound — 200 LinkedIn messages and 180 cold emails a week, producing about 18 qualified leads.
2. Inbound
They reached out to you. Website form, called your office number, searched on Justdial, found you on Google. The defining characteristic: their first action came from your side.
Inbound is lower volume, higher conversion rate (typically 15-30%). The intent is already there.
3. Referrals
Someone you know introduced you. Could be a current customer, a banker, a CA, a professional network connection. The defining characteristic: a third party vouched for you.
Referrals are typically the highest-converting source any business has — often 40-60%. Track which referrer brought which lead, so you can thank them, share commission (if applicable), and double down on relationships that produce.
4. Events
You met them at a conference, trade show, industry event, or webinar. Conversion depends on the event quality. SIAM auto components expo for Suvarna, FICCI for Pragati, or a niche industry meetup — each has very different conversion patterns.
Track which event the lead came from (sub-source field — “Event: SIAM Mumbai 2026”). After 5-6 events, you’ll know which ones are worth the booth cost.
5. Paid (ads, sponsorships, lead-gen agencies)
You paid to acquire the lead — Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, a lead-gen agency, sponsored content. Track which campaign, which ad, what you paid. After enough data, you can compute customer acquisition cost (CAC) per channel.
Setting up sources in TatvaCRM
Lead source is a picklist field on the Lead record. Configure the values via Settings → Picklists → Lead source. Typical setup:
- Cold call
- Cold email
- Website form
- Phone call (inbound)
- Justdial
- Google search
- Referral — Customer
- Referral — CA
- Referral — Banker
- Event
- Google Ads
- LinkedIn Ads
- Other
Add a Sub-source custom field (text) for specifics — Event: SIAM Mumbai 2026, Referrer: Mr Patil (CA), Campaign: Q3-2026-MidMarket.
UTM parameters for web leads
If you run ads or send tracked email links, append UTM parameters to your URLs. When a prospect clicks through and fills a webform, TatvaCRM captures the UTM values and stores them on the Lead. Standard parameters:
utm_source— channel (google, linkedin, newsletter)utm_medium— type (cpc, social, email)utm_campaign— campaign nameutm_term— keyword (for paid search)utm_content— specific ad creative
Source reporting
The Lead Sources report shows:
- Lead volume per source per period
- Conversion rate per source (Lead → Customer)
- Average deal size per source
- Time-to-conversion per source
- (For paid sources) cost per acquired customer
Look at these every quarter. Reallocate budget to the sources that produce.