Sales Lead Nurturing: A Relationship Building Process to Develop Ready to Buy Prospects

The Focus of Sales Lead Nurturing
The entire focus of nurturing is to bring the decision makers to the point where they are "ready to buy".


Which Sales Prospects Require Nurturing?
Your marketing database, contains (or should contain) Sales leads in the form of inquiries, suspects and prospects from a variety of sources. Most of these "inquiries" would not be termed "ready to buy". In fact 80 or 90% are not yet qualified or ripe. Some may never be in a position to purchase. The only way to really ascertain the true level of interest and quantify purchase potential is to engage with the prospect in a dialog. Such a dialog provides you with an opportunity to identify needs, pain and purchasing ability, while stimulating interest and awareness in the solutions being offered.

Often after the qualification process many prospects - even though indicating true interest and need, are not yet ready to make a final decision. So what do you do? Abandon them? Of course not (although most companies do). To maximize your sales prospecting ROI, those with good $$s potential must be nurtured, so that when they're ready you're the company that has the relationship, with most credibility to deliver the solution to their need.


When is a Decision Maker Ready to Buy?
That's not always easily discernable. The best circumstance is when a sales prospect raises his hand and says he'd like to place the order. However getting a prospect company to this point may be arduous and time consuming. It can especially be costly if not undertaken in a strategic systematic and programmatic way.

Optimizing Sales Lead Nurturing
The strategy of sales lead nurturing is effective only when supported by a multi-touching programmed system of delivering meaningful, customized messages and content, to each prospect individually and personally. Such may include; Calls, emails, webinars, white papers and other. To do this in a financially effective manner a preset guide of procedures should be developed. These can be refined as feedback from the lead nurturing process is analyzed.


How Long Does The Nurturing Process Take?
The answer is, not surprisingly, "as long as it takes". Because the timing of a prospect's decision is obviously in the hands of the company's decision maker(s).

There is no one formula or technique to achieve success. Ultimately, it is the practical application of a carefully thought out, disciplined multi-touching approach to overcome a qualified decision maker's passivity or negativity.

Why It Pays To Accommodate Delays
It is essential to respect the decision maker's delay without ascribing nasty motives to him. It is necessary to accept his situation courteously. This affords one the opportunity to always pick up the phone again somewhat later, to gain a later commitment to an appointment, or to a purchase.
It may take several nurturing communications before finally obtaining that all important commitment. Nevertheless, each opportunity to communicate with the prospect could well have a positive effect on your relationship. For you will not be making a cold communication to a stranger but with -

• someone you've been building a relationship of trust


• someone who has already indicated an interest and need in your solution


• someone in whom a sense of commitment is probably already forming.

Sales Nurturing Best Practices
Nurturing as a practice requires a formal systematic infrastructure designed to deliver relevant content - based on events in the field - to each decision maker.

Nurturing Tactics:

• Phone


• Email


• Direct Mail


• Webinars


• Seminars


• 3rd Party Reports


• Conferences


• Roadshows


• Podcasts


• Content


• White Papers


• Seminars


• Case Studies


• Brochures


• Video


• Research Reports


• PR

Successful nurturing can be aided by systematic event driven triggers to deliver either content or invitations to an event. For example a targeted prospect receives a Newsletter and clicks on a link about an industry relevant webinar. This in turn triggers a series of communications to build on that interest.

Such items could include:

• A relevant white paper by email from a third party.


• A phone call.


• You might invite the prospect to a relevant webinar or trade show.


• Etc.

All of these communications need to be pre-planned and time based so that they happen automatically. The communication system should not need sales force intervention or participation so that costs are kept to a minimum.

What results can you expect?
Statistics vary but one can certainly lift sales prospecting results by as much as 20% or 30%. Not chump change and certainly worth the added investments. Additionally the relationship you have formed has more value to the client since they know you are in it for the long term and may lead to additional word of mouth lead generation.