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Align Sales & Marketing with Lead Nurturing
| Guest post by: Jesse Hopps |
Article Overview: Lead nurturing is all about having consistent and meaningful communication with viable prospects regardless of their timing to buy. It's not calling up every few months to find out if a prospect is 'ready to buy yet?' Lead nurturing is about building solid relationships with the right people. Read our Lead Nurturing Guide to learn how to qualify, score, and nurture leads that aren't quite ready to be handed off to sales.
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Free Download - Opening a New Office Location By Jesse Hopps |
Align Sales & Marketing with Lead Nurturing
Align Sales &
Marketing with Lead Nurturing
Sales complains that the tradeshow, web, or other leads they get
are junk. Marketing says that Sales doesn’t call the quality leads they
produce. Sound familiar? The basis for this common rift is a poor lead
generation, qualification, scoring, and nurturing program. Read this Executive
Summary to learn how to qualify, score, and nurture leads that aren’t quite
ready to be handed off to sales for closing.
What is Lead
Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is all about having consistent and meaningful
communication with viable prospects regardless of their timing to buy. It’s not
calling up every few months to find out if a prospect is ‘ready to buy yet?’
Lead nurturing about building solid relationships with the right people.
Source: B2B Lead Generation Blog
What are the
Benefits of Nurturing Leads?
·
Reduction of Missed Opportunities– although
many sales reps give up on an opportunity after one unsuccessful sales attempt,
the stats show that people who take a vendor demo usually end up buying inside
of 18 months.
· Better Allocation of Resources– by plugging your longer-term opportunities into a lead nurturing program, you can automate a ‘drip-style’ marketing campaign']);"> email marketing campaign that provides useful information, webcasts, or other valuable material that will help your prospect make a decision. This is more cost effective than having a sales rep call every 2 months to ‘check-in’.
· Sales & Marketing Alignment– working together to establish a lead scoring & nurturing system will better qualify opportunities, set proper expectations, and avoid the syndrome of fighting about how ineffective the other side is being. Ensure both Sales and Marketing are equally engaged.
· Better Allocation of Resources– by plugging your longer-term opportunities into a lead nurturing program, you can automate a ‘drip-style’ marketing campaign']);"> email marketing campaign that provides useful information, webcasts, or other valuable material that will help your prospect make a decision. This is more cost effective than having a sales rep call every 2 months to ‘check-in’.
· Sales & Marketing Alignment– working together to establish a lead scoring & nurturing system will better qualify opportunities, set proper expectations, and avoid the syndrome of fighting about how ineffective the other side is being. Ensure both Sales and Marketing are equally engaged.
Action Plan:
1. Start Scoring
Leads– use Demand Metric’s Lead Scoring Index to classify and score each
incoming lead out of a possible 100 on our index. Be sure to engage a leader in
the sales department for this alignment-building project.
2. Evaluate Nurturing Tools– demand generation platform provider, Eloqua, provides comprehensive lead scoring and nurturing functionality in their tool.
3. Create a Drip Campaign– write 6 emails that will be sent to prospects monthly, over a 6 month period, to keep your solution top of mind. When a prospect takes action and clicks-through or visits your site, have a sales person follow up on the lead.
2. Evaluate Nurturing Tools– demand generation platform provider, Eloqua, provides comprehensive lead scoring and nurturing functionality in their tool.
3. Create a Drip Campaign– write 6 emails that will be sent to prospects monthly, over a 6 month period, to keep your solution top of mind. When a prospect takes action and clicks-through or visits your site, have a sales person follow up on the lead.
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Article Tags: meaningful communication, nurture, relationships, score, viable prospects
|
About the Author: Jesse Hopps RSS for Jesse's articles - Visit Jesse's website Click here to visit Jesse's website   Market Research Guide Website Effectiveness Guide Podcasting Best Practices Cold Calling Guide Marketing Automation Guide |
Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional
- [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan,
I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz]
I second the request...
Re: Google Places Review | How to Get a Review on Google Places?
- Hi Evan,
Yes, I am planning more. I have multiple videos coming out this year on:
Social media marketing
Email marketing
Lead Generation
Organic search marketing
Conversion rate optimization
Analytics
Content marketing
Paid search marketing
I am looking for SEO / Internet Marketing questions people have. I enjoy producing videos answer tuff SEO questions. Let me know if you are any of your members have any they want answered.
Jeff
niche forum categories
- I think Kevin just touched on the point that I was going make... and that is developing 'categories' that stick. Sales and Marketing may be too broad for example. However I can almost guarantee you that you would see many more sign-ups if you tailored a category to 'internet marketing' for newbies. I've seen this work on other forums, however, [i:1i903wkn]it can get a little frantic[/i:1i903wkn]...
Fine tuning the categories, or expanding the scope should be effective. I think a lot of IM folks are surfing right on by because they're not finding what they're looking for here...
Just a few thoughts:
Better Blogging
Developing Info Products
Internet Marketing
Presentation Skills
More How to's
Another point is... a lot of people don't know that they can benefit from participating in forums. The signature links to their site - if they have one - can / should be motivation enough to get more involved. The more internet savvy members that have signatures seem to stick around more... Don't you think?
Different Hats
- CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company
Strategic Vision 10
Alliances & Growth Strategies 10
Hiring & Managing People 8
Mentoring 8-9
Strategic Planning for Clients 10
Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty)
Financial Management 9
Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0
Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff)
Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!)
Speaking 10 (so I have been told)
Self Promotion 9-10
Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+)
Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have)
Great topic Kevin!!
Jude
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