Lead Nurture - The Magic Formula?

We all want prospects that convert quickly from Suspect to Prospect, Prospect to Lead and Lead to Closed Sale with the minimum of fuss, expense or effort – it’s the nirvana that Department Heads all over the world dream of achieving and moreover what they expect from all B2B Sales and B2B Marketing professionals like you.

So without further ado here’s the magic formula to achieving clear, beautiful conversions with next to no effort…seriously? Of course not, there is no magic formula to perfection in the nurture cycle but there are some real insights and best practice tools that can be applied help guide your prospects through the journey.

Contemporary wisdom suggests that it takes somewhere between 7 and 13 touches to deliver a qualified lead (note, not a sale!) so the way you engage with Suspects at the very start of the road is fundamental to success in the Lead Nurture spectrum. The best way to achieve this to carry out a full profiling campaign of your top prospects.

Lead Nurture is the process of building and deepening a relationship with a prospect over time, as they are not yet sales-ready due to things such as budget, authority or timing. You need to engage with prospects in a variety of settings, learning more about each other's needs and capabilities while progressing seamlessly from one interaction to the next. Take care not to crowd the prospect, however be ready to strike while the iron is hot!

Often companies lose touch with prospects so they miss key buying stages in the sales cycle or the interest is lost and the prospect is no longer willing to consider or review the company offering and you lose out on the business.

With lead nurturing during the Prospect stage, you should aim to:

1. Maintain permission to stay in contact with the prospect – without this, you will not be able to achieve the other goals. If a prospect loses interest in your messages, they’ll disengage and you will then be unable to further develop this opportunity – back to square one! Quality content and valuable insight is a fundamental tool to making sure that you’re giving value to your prospects.

2. Establish key ideas, thoughts, or comparison points for consideration through key questioning and profiling that keep the prospect coming back for insight. A potential prospect may not be sales ready for quite some time (e.g. 12-18 months) during the lead nurturing phase. But you can educate prospects and guide their thinking to incorporate specific requirements and ways of thinking about the market so that your company will be positioned as the market leaders for their needs when they do become buyers. Knowing their stage, requirements and key attributes will ensure that you’re giving them what they need – and they’ll thank you for that in the long term.

3. Watch for signs of progress through the buying cycle – whilst nurturing the leads, look out for key buying signals to help understand where they are in the review cycle. They may reach out for further information, request a call back, download PDF’s or white papers from the website. Act on these signals if something does raise a flag – using a marketing automation tool properly and tracking behaviors will enable both Sales and Marketing to engage appropriately with the prospect

Each nurture campaign needs to be tailored and bespoke to your audience, remember that we all consume professional content and inform ourselves more than ever before and your prospects are no different!

Remember to gather marketing permissions, ensuring you tailor your content based on buying stage and finally monitor prospects behaviors for buying signals and have your outbound telemarketing team on hand to start that personal relationship.

For more infomration on Lead Nurture read our full article that includes top tips on how your nurture your leads.