Lead nurturing leads to more sales

Once you get a lead, what do you do with it. Some are ready to buy so don’t be afraid to ask for the order. Most of your leads start by browsing or researching for the right product or service to fit their needs. Those leads need to be nurtured into a business relationship that’s filled with trust and reliability. The best way to accomplish this in an effective manner is a lead nurturing program.

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless when they are ready to buy. The goal of a good lead nurturing plan is to earn their business and be in the buyer’s mind when they are ready purchase. According to Marketo (one of the leading powerful marketing automation software developers), 95% of the prospects visiting your website today are there to research, but as many as 70% of them will eventually buy a product from you or from your competitor.

That’s why your marketing and sales team need to collaborate throughout every stage in the revenue cycle and provide each qualified lead with high quality information and content that is timely, relevant and responsive to their requirements.

A good Lead Nurturing campaign consists of:

• Personalized emails
• Relevant Landing pages filled with third party information
• Triggered emails to individuals in response to their action
• Review information from web analysis and lead scoring

What’s the return on your lead nurturing investment?

• According to Marketo’s research, companies that excel in Lead Nurturing
• Generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead
• Reduce the percent of marketing-generated leads that are
  ignored by sales (from as high as 80% to as low as 25%)
• Raise win rates on marketing-generated leads (7% points higher)and
  reduce “no decisions” (6% points lower)
• Have more sales representatives make quota (9% higher) and a shorter
  ramp up time for new reps (10% decrease)

To help you create various lead nurturing programs you need to know what each lead wants and determine what buying stage they are in prior to making a decision. You could have a general program but not all approaches will work for each individual. So, the more you can customize your approach the more successful you will be in gaining their trust during the buying process.