Integrating lead nurturing into your sales strategies

Most companies see their sales pipeline in a purely straight-line manner. Their entire sales strategies are built around moving their prospects through the process quickly and efficiently to a sale.

The typical sales pipeline moves in a linear path from Suspect to Prospect to Lead to Opportunity.

If the buyer doesn’t fit within the organization’s criteria for Budget, Authority, Need and Timing (BANT) then the normal sales strategies are to lose early and move onto the next prospect.

What happens if the prospect has the potential to be a good opportunity, but one BANT criteria isn’t quite ready? Maybe they’re in a contract with another vendor that won’t be up for several months. It could be the new budgets won’t be released till next quarter. The buyer has need, they have authority, they understand the value that you’re offering but they can’t buy right now.

Because they’re not able to purchase today the usual sales strategies involve setting a callback set for six months out then moving on to the next conversation.

But what happens over the next 6 months? Either the competition enters the picture, or worse the buyer forgets about you and the value your company can provide them.
The end result is the same – no sale.

If this is what’s happening in your company, it’s time to start integrating lead nurturing into your sales strategies to keep buyers engaged and convert more business.

Offer value and get value in return

Lead Nurturing is a process of building a relationship with prospective buyers and working with them through their research and evaluation process. Paring this with your sales strategies will allow you to keep prospects engaged till their timing and budget situations are ready for a sales conversation.

The 3 principles for successful lead nurturing

1. Build Trust Buyers have their guard up during their research process. Show you’re worthy of their trust with useful information that makes their job easier
2. Learn From Your Prospect Gain a better understanding of their needs – pay attention to what draws their interest and how you’re positioned to help them solve this challenge.
3. Keep Your Brand Top of Mind Stay top of mind throughout the process – a buyers timing is impacted by many things, keep your brand on the consideration list with timely touch points that remind the buyer of the value you offer.

Scalability Project - marketing strategy to help brands grow

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.