Let’s talk about lead nurturing: Many sales professionals know what it is, know they should be doing it, but just don’t know where to start.
What is lead nurturing?Forbes has been talking about lead nurturing for years. Take this excerpt from The Twelve Step Program for Lead Nurturing in 2012:
“Lead conversion is a critical success factor for all businesses, but it holds true in spades for small businesses. If you spend scarce marketing dollars on lead acquisition or generation, you must reap the reward of that investment by converting a high percentage of those leads into revenue. And as a small business, you can more easily stay on top of the lead development process if you keep its success as your top priority.”
Consider this: You send out a large e-mail blast to your current list of subscribers as well as any other contacts you’ve obtained over the years. The e-mail has a decent open rate, but you get just a few responses. Do you simply write off all of those contacts that didn’t reply to your e-mail? Do you plan never to contact them again, figuring they will eventually reply if they’re interested? If you do, you could be discarding hundreds of prospects. Instead, you can nurture these contacts for an extended period of time and, with continuing effort, turn a greater percentage of these prospects into sales for your business.
According to Marketo, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower costs. In simple terms, you’re getting more from the leads you already have.
The simplest answer is to retain leads that would otherwise be lost to your competitors.
We already know that a small percentage of our leads are sales-ready. We reference Chet Holmes “The Buyers Pyramid” often, but it’s worth mentioning again here: At any time, only 3% of the prospects you talk to are ready to buy now. 6-7% are open to it. 30% are not thinking about now. 30% don’t think they’re interested. And the final 30% know they’re not interested.
That means when you send an email blast, you know the bleak reality that only 3% of those receiving the e-mail are ready to buy. And what if that 3% doesn’t even open the message? Lead nurturing helps you continue to engage with the additional 6-7% who are open to buying and the 30% who aren’t thinking about it now–but could be thinking about it in the future.
The process of lead nurturing is nothing new — but the technology that we now have available to us is. Lead management takes daily time and energy, and fortunately we now have access to software that helps us automate the process and manage leads.
If you are ready to begin lead nurturing, you need:
Lead nurturing is intended to manage a prospect through the life of the decision making cycle. This can be done through any combination of e-mail messaging, phone calls, or display advertising.
First, think of how a user enters your sales process. Perhaps you called them but they never followed up, or they signed up for email updates but have yet to reply to a message. You can drop these users into a lead nurturing email campaign. Over a period that you define, whether it is several weeks or several months, you can send personalized email messages to this prospect. The messages may link the prospect back to resource information on your site, share a current promotion, or simply let the prospect know you are there to answer any questions. If a prospect responds to you, either to set up a conversation or to tell you he doesn’t want to receive any further correspondence, you remove them from the campaign.
However, you don’t always have to wait for a response. Using the intelligence available to you through an email marketing program, you will be able to track your prospect’s online behaviors. While he may not respond to your e-mail, he might visit your website. You can set a trigger or an alert to let you know when this is happening so that you can actively reach out to the prospect, either by email or by phone, at the moment he is researching your business.
We hope this helps you begin some lead nurturing activities at your organization. In 2017, challenge yourself to reclaim lost leads and convert more prospects into clients using these lead nurturing strategies.
