Defining motivated seller leads: What is the difference between a lead, prospect, and a chosen marketing target?

[Max M.]

By the way guys feel free to call me on my phone number or Skype if you want to shoot the breeze about this wonderful topic.

So in the past day or so I've started defining what lists I want to keep track of in my database, but before I can decide on all the fields and such, I realized that I'm not too clear on exactly what separates my marketing list from my leads list and prospects list. The idea is that the marketing list is the biggest list, followed by the lead list which would be a fraction of the size of the marketing list, followed by the prospects list which would be a fraction of the size of the leads list, etc.

My database for my motivated seller funnel will have 5 lists.

1. Marketing list (all the people/properties that get marketed to)

2. Leads list (my current definition: people who are in the market for a solution that I might be able to provide, but I don't know yet what their exact situation is or whether they'll deal with me)

3. Prospect list (people who seem to be in the market for what I have to offer, show interest in finding out more about what I have to offer, and dealing with me)

4. Pre-contract list (qualified prospects who seem to be looking to move forward to having me get their house under contract)

5. Under Contract list

Seems rather straightforward right? Here's the problem:

One of my primary marketing methods due to having zero money, will be contacting online FSBO/rental ads. Would a FSBO ad already be considered a lead, or just a marketing target? Let's say I call them up and they turn out to be a legit FSBO who isn't messing around and would like to get their house under contract (whether what I have to offer interests them, let's just skip for the sake of this example). Does that make them a lead? If they turn out to be a prospect do they automatically jump from marketing target to prospect, without really having to be a "lead"?

This may seem like a trivial, or academic nitpick, but I can assure you this is of prime importance to how I structure my database. The form must follow function, and the function must follow the discrete points of transition in the process of getting houses, from marketing to getting them under contract. Since my marketing/leads/prospects lists (assuming I still end up using all 3 as discrete lists, instead of combining it into 2 lists) will be the largest lists, they will require the most fine tuning of systematization.