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B2B Lead Generation Articles on Pushing Prospects through the Pipeline
- Pushing Prospects through the Pipeline
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
A recent Marketing Sherpa report addresses lead nurturing best practices, and is a helpful update on how to best reach prospects once they've engaged with your content, but not independently returned to your site. By applying the practices outlined in Lead Nurturing Best Practices: New Data, Charts, Tips to Put More Punch in Your Cultivation Tactics, you can align your lead nurturing program with what's shown to be working industry-wide. In compiling this report, Marketing Sherpa partnered with Eloqua (a lead management & demand generation powerhouse) and On24 (a leader in the virtual event and webinar space), to survey over 1000 marketing professionals to learn about their lead nurturing methods. According to the report, lead generation isn't what's difficult - with the general t...
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- Pushing Prospects through the Pipeline
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 and <a href='http://www.on24.com/'>On24</a> (a leader in the virtual event and webinar space), to survey over 1000 marketing professionals to learn about their lead nurturing methods. </p>
<p><img src='http://www.acceleratingitsales.com/pipeline_revised_2.jpg' height='249' alt='pipeline_revised_2.jpg' align='right' width='165'/></p>
<p>According to the report, lead generation isn't what's difficult - with the general thinking being that most lead generating companies already have plenty of leads, they just don't have plenty of sales ready leads. In order to deliver high-quality, sales-ready prospects to your sales team, you need to put your energies into nurturing your existing leads over the long term, and expect that it will take up to 24 months for some of your leads to turn into sales. To effectively nurture leads over the long term, your lead nurturing programs need to be elevated within your organization, and given the same kind of time and energy that's put into generating leads.</p>
<p>The Marketing Sherpa report touches on a few key concepts that I've examined and explained in further detail below:<br/>
<strong><br/>
Best Practice #1. Use multi-media touches to nurture leads </strong></p>
<p>In order to effectively reach your prospects, you need to use more than email newsletters or triggered email messages to move leads through your sales pipeline. While email marketing is a tried-and-true method of nurturing leads, you need to do more. According to the report, a combination of email messages, direct mail, and telemarketing efforts works best when trying to segment your leads. </p>
<p>If you really want to reach people where it counts, you can look to telemarketing as a tool to help increase your brand awareness, determine where in the buying cycle prospects are, and offer educational materials to help further their awareness of your company, products and services. Direct mail is a great way to invite people to virtual and face-to-face events, and remind users of new content or marketing materials they might want to check out on your site. Email marketing is a good tool for drip-nurturing, and can be employed when you have a group of prospects that are actively involved in researching solutions, and want to nudged along with new content or new information related to your offerings. <br/>
<strong><br/>
Best Practice #2. Quick response to Web leads can maximize conversions </strong></p>
<p>With our always-on world, it's no longer good enough to wait 24-hours before making contact with a new prospect. With so many competitors vying for the same sets of eyes, it's crucial that you cement your relationship with new leads inside of an hour (!). And according to the Marketing Sherpa data, "calls placed within five minutes of receiving a Web lead have the highest likelihood of making contact." </p>
<p>To achieve this kind of real-time responsiveness, you need to move toward automating your lead generation and reporting processes, so that leads land in your CRM system as soon as they're generated. And while moving from weekly lead reports to automated reporting processes might require an overhaul of your entire lead management practices, doing so may also significantly improve your overall sales. </p>
<p><strong>Best Practice #3. Use a lead scoring system </strong></p>
<p>Lead scoring is a great way to segment your leads and determine how best each prospect should be nurtured through the pipeline. By rating leads based on a series of filters, such as their location, their time frame for implementing a solution, or their role in the IT decision making process, you can place your leads in separate silos, and nurture each group according to their specific needs. </p>
<p>Scoring is also an effective way to separate the "wheat from the chaff," and figure out how long any given lead should require nurturing before they reach sales readiness. While some leads may enter your sales pipeline with low scores, you can develop strategies for nurturing those prospects and keep your pipeline full as each group of leads receives your messages and moves through the buying process. </p>
<p>By scoring leads, automating reporting so that leads are contacted immediately upon entering your CRM system, and nurturing your scored and segmented prospects with a variety of tools, you should be able to accelerate your sales as you continuously move leads through the pipeline. </p>
<p>You can learn more about Lead Nurturing by listening to this podcast from <a href='http://www.theinnovativemarketer.com/'>The Innovative Marketer</a>, <a href='http://media.eloqua.com/audio/TIM22.mp3'>What is lead nurturing and why should you care?</a></p><img src='http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/AcceleratingItSales/~4/sCBFB5JiLFc' height='1' width='1'/>)