Lead Nurturing, Winning Lost Deals

Most sales pipelines are a disappointingly narrow funnel of opportunities marked by a lot of fall-out potential. Are these really lost opportunities? Or, maybe they need a different sales process. Lead nurturing is that alternate path. A lead nurturing process allows you to remove languishing deals from the active sales pipeline, yet keep the opportunity alive. Leads will be diverse in their buying intent let your lead management system work for you.

There is Diversity in Your Sales Pipeline

Sales leads are generated from a variety of marketing channels. This naturally creates different buying profiles and purchase time lines. Each opportunity in your sales pipeline potentially needs a unique sales experience to convert. Lead nurturing is that experience creator and key to lead conversion.

A big mistake most sales organizations make is in creating linear one way sales processes. Customers are diverse and unpredictable. Some are fast, some slow, some prefer high touch, other appreciate no hassles. If you don't have multiple paths you will increase fall-out.

Understanding the reality of sales pipeline diversity and meeting it with appropriate lead nurturing campaigns can pay dividends.

All Fall-out is Not Lost

Our sales training has long given us the picture of a narrowing sales funnel. This perspective has shaped our attitudes. We believe aging leads, withdrawn, or non-responsive leads as having no value. Quite to the contrary, an aged database of leads, if managed properly, can consistently yield 3% or better.

The secret to performance from your fall-out is lead nurturing. However, profitably operating a fall-out production channel requires some automation. The idea is to percolate deals out of this database with minimal distraction to your core sales. A top lead management software will be able to help this process.

Email is Not Lead Nurturing

Auto-responders are great tools, but they are not lead nurturing. A good lead nurturing plan is a dynamic communications strategy. Typically this includes a blending of telephone calls, email, and maybe even direct mail.

Technology is an imperative in lead nurturing, but be careful not to have it rule the process. General, time-based email does not encourage trust and commitment in your customer--two important goals of lead nurturing. Customers must feel like they are getting specific attention, according to their needs. These custom experiences can be simply created with a blending of tags, triggers, lead routing, alerts, and emails. This is where sales force automation and marketing automation within your lead of management software are critical.

Lead nurturing is the killer app within lead management. These simple techniques are certain to grow your sales production.