Turn IT Sales Prospects into Customers Via Lead Nurturing
There is simply no way around it. In an industry characterized by long sales cycles, high ticket expenditures and multi-person buying committees, lead nurturing is a necessary and critical part of IT sales. If you consider the fact that less than 5% of targeted prospects are sales ready at the time an IT solution marketing campaign is deployed, that means 95% of your prospects fall into the category of either not having a need for your solutions at all OR just not ready to make a buying decision now. How do you determine where a prospect falls? That’s where lead nurturing comes into play.
LEAD NURTURING IS A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
In today’s environment, lead nurturing is a shared responsibility between the sales department and the marketing team. Ideally, marketing is equipped to drip out a series of messages to prospects (through email, SMS, social media messages, etc.) with links to content (e.g., solution briefs, videos, data sheets, white papers, etc.) appropriate to the prospect’s assumed interest. The sales department will then touch base periodically by phone to get any updates on activity related to a potential opportunity. These follow-up calls should also be focused on building trust and rapport with the prospect.
Top 5 Tips for Successful Lead Nurturing
Here are the top 5 recommendations for creating a winning lead nurturing program.
1. Invest in a marketing automation platform.
There is no doubt that marketing automation is the most efficient and effective way to launch a lead nurturing initiative. With handy features like automated workflows, lead scoring and sales notification triggers, marketing automation can significantly streamline the nurturing process and exponentially increase the output of the marketing team. Some of the more popular automation platforms include Marketo, Hubspot, Act-on and SharpSpring. (Learn more on our blog post, “Making the Most of a Marketing Automation Platform.”)
2. Plan out a minimum of eight touches as a starting point.
Regardless of whether you are using marketing automation, you need to plan out a minimum of eight touches – both voice and digital follow-up – as a starting point for your lead nurturing effort. This will allow you to stay top-of-mind with non-sales ready leads, build trust and rapport, and continue gathering lead intelligence to assess the timing of the next sales step.
3. Gather your leads from far and wide.
There are many sources of leads at your disposal. Establish a process whereby all leads are organized in a single, centralized database where they can all be part of your lead nurturing effort. These include:
- MQLs, RFIs (requests for information) and other non-sales ready leads from prior marketing campaigns
- Website visitors
- Event/conference attendees
- Prospects from OEM reps
- Leads assigned directly by OEMs (and their agencies) and Distributors
4. Establish a mutually agreed-upon nurturing timeline between sales and marketing
As stated previously, lead nurturing should be a shared responsibility between the sales and the marketing team. Be sure there is buy-in from both camps and meet on a regular basis (at least monthly) to review activity and results. Be clear about who is responsible for what and insist on transparency and accountability. Lead nurturing is tedious work but it’s nonetheless mandatory in IT sales.
5. Consider outsourcing your lead nurturing program.
There are marketing and sales enablement agencies (like TSRM Group) that specialize in demand generation as well as lead nurturing. If you have limited internal resources (and want to keep it that way), you can outsource the entire process and have your sales team focus only on sales qualified leads (SQLs) that come out of the lead nurturing initiative. Most if not all OEMs consider lead nurturing a qualified activity for marketing development funds (MDF). Rather than starting with a fresh list for each new marketing campaign, consider using MDF to follow up on warm leads who are already familiar with your company and its solutions/services. There is a very high probability this approach will generate a higher ROI for both you and the OEM.
Convert the Remaining 95% of Leads
Remember, there is treasure-trove of residual value in the 95% of leads you have touched in your prior market efforts that were not quite sales-ready. Mine that treasure through a well planned and executed lead nurturing program and start to see it pay dividends now and in the future.
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