Lead Nurturing

In the early 1900s Henry Ford pioneered mass production of automobiles. He divided the roles of workers so that they each specialized in one aspect of production, thus increasing productivity and lowering costs.

Similarly, companies now seek to bring efficiencies to their lead management and sales processes. The purpose is to close more deals faster and more cost-effectively. Just as Ford used specialization on the manufacturing floor, sales and marketing leaders are learning the value divvying up sales roles to achieve higher revenues.

There are two reasons why narrowly defining your sales roles can increase your success. First, each sales associate is empowered to become an expert in their more focused position. Second, different sales functions require unique skills and personality characteristics. If you split up the responsibilities, you can hire people who are most likely to succeed in each specialty. 

"When your timing is off, so is your stride. When your cadence is off, you’re in deep trouble as a hurdler.” – Rod Millburn

In all likelihood, you’re not a hurdler. However, if you’re in sales and marketing, you know you have to overcome a lot of obstacles to land a deal. And cadence is as important for conquering sales hurdles as it is for leaping over a series of high jumps. Get it wrong, and you could fall flat on your face with little to show for your efforts.

So what is a sales cadence?

A sales cadence is a well-defined process that business development reps use when following up on leads. It’s not simply the number of times a sales person should reach out; it also includes the timing of the outreach and the format — usually a mix of phone calls, emails and interactions via social media. Because what reps do naturally and what they should do to be successful are usually two different animals, a delineated sales cadence is necessary.

So how do you know if your sales cadence is off kilter? According to The Sales Cadence Report 2017, there are several signs that it’s out of whack. 

When your marketing efforts start to pay off, delivering a boatload of quality leads, it’s exciting. You want to celebrate. But the game’s not over. Your sale is not won yet. You’re just at the starting gate of your demand generation process.

The bare bone fact is: Leads do nothing for your organization’s bottom line unless you can convert them to sales. And the quality of the lead alone does not predict how likely it is to convert. The magic is in the lead nurturing: how you treat a lead after you receive it.

This brings us to the study conducted by Velocify. They looked at data from 3.5 million leads from 400 companies and discovered the formula to maximize conversions. While they note there are differences between businesses and what works for each of them, the overall findings are

B2B sales acceleration is all about closing more deals faster. When people think about speed, technology often comes to mind. There are, of course, many technologies that accelerate sales, but there’s one that you may not have considered.

According to an article in Forbes by Ken Krogue, one of the keys to sales acceleration is to pick up the phone. While new, shiny tools are exciting to marketing leaders, in the end, what’s most important is increased sales.

It turns out that to help buyers buy, which is what you have to do to sell faster, you actually have to talk to them. What’s interesting, however, is that you don’t need to have a face-to-face conversation. This isn’t just speculation. Research proves it.

The Data Tells the Story

InsideSales.com showed that on average inside sales teams close deals in 69 days while outside sales take 144 days.

A little math is in order. Inside sales programs slash the sales cycle by more than 50 percent!

Why is inside sales so much more efficient?

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for marketing automation technology will expand from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in 2015. It’s not surprising given that this technology can automate all the routine aspects of sales lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, customer retention, testing, measuring, and optimizing marketing campaigns.

As amazing as it is, there’s one critical element that’s missing—human beings. That’s right—technology just can’t do everything. Marketing automation is best used for repeat tasks that require no judgment; steps in a process that need to happen like clockwork.

People, of course, have qualities that technology cannot duplicate. They can develop one-on-one relationships with your prospects and customers, ferret out the information you need to qualify leads, and add the judgment required to go beyond lead scoring, which is based only on a sales lead’s actions, and determine whether a lead meets your qualification criteria.

So how do you decide which marketing processes to automate and where you should be using people? Simply follow these two rules. 

To make sure you don’t lose your best B2B lead generation efforts when you hand them over to sales, you need to start by clearly defining what a good lead is. Both sales and marketing should agree on this definition. Then you’ll need to set up processes and standards for lead nurturing, communication between sales and marketing and lead scoring.

Define a Good Lead

Leads become lost because sales and marketing people have not defined what a good lead is or clearly identified who is responsible for lead nurturing. 

According to a Forrester Research study, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost-per-lead. Also, Marketing Sherpa’s research shows that marketing departments with lead nurturing in place generate a 45% higher return on investment than those that lack such a program. Despite this, they report that 65% of B2B marketers have not established a lead nurturing program.

How to Develop an Awesome Lead Nurturing Campaign

What are the building blocks of a lead-nurturing campaign that gets results? 

Whether you received a lead because someone signed up for a webinar, demo, or other offer, you need to institute a lead nurturing process to transform it into a qualified lead. What’s the best way to do this? If you want to maximize your sales conversion rates, start by picking up the phone.

Help Your Prospect Solve Their Problem

The key to lead nurturing and conversion is to focus on the prospect, their problem, and helping them to find a solution. You cannot do that without a true understanding of the issues and opportunities the person is facing. The closer you can come to interacting directly with someone, the deeper your mutual understanding will be.

The Rational B2B Buyer

Business buyers are different from consumers in several ways. We tend to think of them as being more rational. While it’s true that no one buys a complex computer solution on impulse, that doesn’t mean that emotions don’t enter into the equation.

When a business buyer decides on a product or vendor, they’re putting their reputation and, potentially, their job on the line. On the other hand, if the solution results in significant cost savings, they could end up with a boost up the corporate ladder. That means that there’s a lot on the line, and since we’re dealing with human beings, not businesses, emotions factor in. 

Do you struggle to generate qualified leads? Most companies do. While we all would love to have 100% of our leads red hot and ready to turn into sales immediately, most need a little thawing out. Thus, we often find that spending more time lead nurturing is the key to lead qualification.

In fact, if your company is like most, 50% of your leads will need additional nurture. That doesn’t mean that they are bad leads—just a little cold. Research has shown that on average, 70% of these not-ready-yet leads will eventually buy from you…or your competitor.

That brings me to the “Leads Left on the Table Equation”:

Who would you prefer them to buy from…your company or your competition? The truth is that most companies cannot afford to risk losing this much sales potential.