Lead Nurturing - It's Not Just for Marketing.

Lead nurturing, as a sales function, is highly underrated.  Once leads are qualified as sales ready, sales reps have a short time frame in which  to connect with leads before they move on. Because of the limited window of opportunity to engage prospects at this stage, many leads are lost just short of the final stage of the buying process. Therefore, sales reps must engage in lead nurturing activities from a preliminary stage to avoid these situations.

In this post we discuss some key strategies that sales teams should consider for lead nurturing:

1.       To tap into leads

Lead nurturing programs provide you with the opportunity to tap into leads that may otherwise be pushed back on the priority list. Usually, the onus of lead nurturing rests with the marketers. But, maybe it’s  time to get your sales teams to indulge more in the nurturing process. They can take over from the marketing team at mid-level instead of waiting until the last stage. This will help to eliminate the loss of leads that don’t get the attention they need to covert.

2.       Acts as a link between demand generation and a closed sale.

Lead nurturing drips create a process linking demand generation and the close of a sale. This process acts as a perfect bridge between your sales and marketing teams. From the marketing roles of demand generation and prospect tracking to the sales roles of prospecting and cold calling, ensure that every stage is well defined and there is less ambiguity as to who takes over when.

Lead nurturing drips also clearly set parameters for MQLs and SQLs and your marketing team is encouraged to forward the right leads to sales.

3.       Educate your prospects along the way

Sales reps know first-hand what your leads need at a given point of time. You can use this knowledge to engage prospects with useful bits of information. Build trust by educating your prospects. This will help convince prospects that your organization is most concerned about meeting their specific needs and interests.  

4.       Lead nurturing eliminate the costs associated with generating leads that fail to result in a sale

Every year your company spends a sizeable amount on demand generation efforts. You spend on email campaigns, promotions, attend tradeshows etc. yet, not all of these leads are converted to sales. Chart out an effective, personalized nurturing program and engage the failed leads with it.

A good nurturing program carefully guides your leads through the buying cycle, thus reducing the number of lost leads.

5.       Lead nurturing for channel partners

Lead nurturing need not be limited to new leads/customers alone. Of the many ways, one way to make your channel partners happy is by providing them with educational programs that guide them to sell better. Lead drips can also be used by companies to educate channel partners and independent sales reps about the company’s offerings, enabling them to sell more, faster. Get your sales teams to collaborate with your channel reps and create a drip campaign that is like a training program for your channel partners.

6.       To increase user engagement

Sales reps can use this platform to interact more frequently with your future customers. Nothing (yes, not even automating processes) beats the impact of a human to human interaction between you and your leads. Create drip campaigns where your leads are encouraged to interact with you. Enable your sales reps with a system that’s alerts them when a prospect shows interest so that they can  lead them further down the sales funnel.

7.       To get maximum ROI

Lead nurturing campaigns can help businesses generate revenue from existing customers through cross-selling and upselling. As sales reps have interacted with your customers in the past, they know very well what customers will find useful in the future. Train your reps to combine customer experience with analytics to track customer activity so you can upsell and cross sell better.

Have more questions on lead nurturing? Download our article here.