Lead nurturing is the process of keeping your company’s service, product or solution in the mind of a potential customer from start to sale. Using lead nurturing tactics while pursuing customers is a rewarding process with the potential to substantially up your sales. Think about it – if during a customers search for their perfect solution you are the company that continually stays on their mind, it’s like having an advertisement for your company on a competitor’s web page. And, always a plus, the majority of sales lead tactics cost little to nothing.

The key is tracking your potential customer, or lead, on every communication venue they use: phone, email, online, social media and sometimes in person. It’s a simple process and it’s adaptable to any company.

1. Get the Lead :
   A lead typically finds you by being directed to a landing page from a search engine or outside link. Once thy hit that landing page a form for submission should be the first thing they see. All aspects of that landing page should lead the customer to look at that form and then want to submit it. Never direct someone to a home page, landing pages are strategically designed to gain customers, home pages are for looks.
   If leads aren’t finding you, go out and find them. Look for people via blogs, searches, and social media that you think may have a need for what you offer and then contact them yourself.
2. Do They Qualify for Nurturing? :
   Once they fill out and submit that form you should have all the information you need to figure out if the customer qualifies as a lead, and to track that lead. Qualifications differ depending on your company and service. Normally, information like company size and revenue are important to recognizing leads. Make sure whatever information you need to see for qualification is in that originally submitted form.
3. Give the People What They Want! :
   Once you’ve determined if they qualify you send them an email response thanking them for their submission, requesting further information if necessary, and offering them some extra information such as a white paper, e-book, link to more information, webinars, blogs, etc.
4. Keep in Contact :
   Once you’ve found your lead, research them. Get to know your lead and their company. Find out who you should talk to and what you should know before contacting them. Then start nurturing. A lead should never have to do extraneous searching to find information about your company or service. Call them, email them, twitter them, keep in contact and give them easy access to everything they need and more. But make sure you keep track of what you’re doing. There is such a thing as over nurturing. Keep an excel sheet of each time you make contact with a lead so you know how often you are contacting, on what medium and what you have discussed each time.
5. It’s All About the Tickets :
   I grew up around advertising and whenever people asked me what my Dad did I told them “It’s all about the giveaways, the tickets.” What started as one my Dads favorite jokes has grown into something of a business motto. Nurturing leads isn’t that different. Schmooze. You’re company offers what their company needs, so you must know them pretty well. Make sure they know that. Figure out what you can do for them and offer it.
6. Make the Sale :
   When the time is right, you know what to do.

You’ll know if you’re nurturing is successful based on how many leads you find accepting your nurturing and how many leads become sales. You can’t sit back and wait for life to happen as much as you can’t sit back and wait for a sale. People enjoy being wanted and like to be swooned over. So start swooning.

(Photo MCR Tickets by Just Juls)

Tags: lead nurturing, sales

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under General Info, Good Stuff, Great Business, Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.