Lead Management Software
Lead Management Software – Capture, Distribute and Track leads within your sales teams.
Lead Nurturing – 7 tips
Posted on 01. Sep, 2011 by Duncan Macdonald in Lead Management, Lead Management Blog, Marketing
In B2B sales, and especially in complex and long sales processes, lead nurturing plays an important role, and in many cases actually happening without the sales person. Generating leads is one thing but the ability to nurture and then follow-up can be deciding factors.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing a positive long-term relationship with leads/prospects, then tracking their development into sales opportunities. It helps prospects find the answers to the questions and doubts that arise when evaluating your offerings, and reminds them of the benefits of working with you.
No longer is it acceptable for marketing to just pass the leads, irrespective of their readiness, to sales team who followed-up hot leads leaving the rest to gather dust. Neither the sales team nor the marketing team was making any constructive effort to turn the leads into sales.
The sales and marketing teams are the lifeblood of any organization, and working together as a team is essential for business growth. Helping bridge the gap caused by the lack of interaction, between lead generation and sales follow-up stages is the Lead Nurturing process.
Here are 7 Lead Nurturing Tips:
1. Understand your Prospects buying stages
When developing nurturing campaigns, ensure that you are aware of your prospects’ likes and dislikes. More importantly map out the buying stages, their level of interest and knowledge at each of these stages.
2. Make all communication meaningful.
Ensure that your interaction with prospects is not only useful to them, but works to advance them to the next stage. All communication must understand the prospects status and guide them to the next stage of the buying cycle.
3. Use specific Lead Nurturing content
Sending out the same content used to generate leads shows you don’t understand their needs and can have a detrimental effect. Furthermore each prospect is unique, never send generic content to all prospects. Develop content that matches the prospects role or industry.
4. Timing
Timing is a crucial factor in the lead nurturing process. Strike a balance between the frequency of communication and the amount of information. In the early stages, little and often will keep you front of mind, and later on when the critical buying decisions are being made more comprehensive information will be needed.
5. Use Different types of content
Vary your content not only in message but in format. Mix emails, and blog posts with whitepapers, webinars and how to guides. Don’t be afraid to offer the prospect the chance to talk direct with you if they want.
6. Include calls to action
Ensure that the content as well as being relevant and to the point always includes a call-to-action. Allow prospects to identify their interest and progress to the next steps and make this step clear with the one call-to-action.
7. Don’t forget your other channels
Online Marketing doesn’t mean you to stop your offline marketing, and this equally applies to lead nurturing. Consider the use of seminars, telephone calls and then like
The secret of effectively carrying out the lead nurturing process is to put yourself in the mindset of the prospect. Think not what you want to tell them but what they want to know from you.
B12Leads is an online lead management tool to capture, distribute and convert leads. Everything you would expect from a CRM tool but with a focus on keeping track of leads and your sales teams. An affordable solution that has everything you need to take control of your sales pipeline.
