Lead-steal window
A lead-steal window is the period in a sales team’s rules of engagement after which any rep may claim a lead with no recorded activity, which can erase the lead’s tie to the event that produced it.
The rule makes sense: an untouched lead goes to waste, and a rep with time should be free to work it. For your event leads, it has a cost. The rep who claims the lead works it as new, and your event drops off the lead’s record.
Why does it matter?
It works like an attribution leak: your event’s credit disappears from the record. Here, you lose it to time alone. Your team captured the lead cleanly, and then it sat past the window.
One events leader found opportunities that opened months after a show, on leads reps had claimed this way. The event had lost the credit for them.
How do you guard against it?
- Set the follow-up SLA well inside the steal window, so you see a breach while you still have time to act.
- Track time from capture to first touch for every lead, so you know which leads are nearing the window.
- Review the unworked-lead queue by owner each week until the window passes.
In FieldXM, a lead with no first touch shows up on your unworked-lead queue, by rep. Clear that list before any claim window opens. The guide on getting sales to follow up on event leads covers the other ways leads slip out of your event’s record.
Related terms
- Follow-up SLAA follow-up SLA is an agreed deadline for the first sales touch on a captured lead, with a clock that starts at capture and a breach when the deadline passes with no activity.
- Unworked-lead queueAn unworked-lead queue is a list of captured leads with no recorded first touch, by owner, that makes gaps in follow-up visible by rep while the leads are still warm.
- Attribution leakAn attribution leak is an event-sourced lead or opportunity that entered the CRM outside the standard capture path, so the CRM loses its connection to the event and understates the event's contribution.
- First touchFirst touch is the first recorded sales activity on a captured lead, such as a call, an email, or a sequence enrollment, and the moment that stops its follow-up clock.
- Lead routingLead routing is the set of rules that assigns each new lead to an owner, usually by existing account ownership, territory, or a round robin that rotates leads evenly across a pool of reps.
See it in FieldXM
- Follow-upAssign each lead to an email blast, a sequence, or direct outreach. FieldXM enrolls it and shows you what hasn’t gone out.
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