Lead Nurturing Should be Consistent, and here’s why.
Maintaining and lead nurturing takes time and money, as all investments with profitable returns do. But until leads bare fruits the only numbers you see are the ones leaving your account to go to keeping those leads alive. That can make anyone second guess the importance of several lingering leads, and cutting them loose may start looking more and more attractive. This is the moment when those with true perseverance reap the rewards, and here are four reasons why.
One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure
Did you know that by abandoning leads that don’t pan out in a year you’re potentially sending off 8/10 of that number straight into the profiting arms of your competitors? It’s true: about 80% of all leads that have been sorted into the “lead to nowhere” pile become clients and customers to other companies within two years. Think about how many leads you’ve tossed out. For every $10,000 worth of leads you’ve abandoned, $8,000 of those could have been in your pocket.
B2B is Not a Christmastime Splurge
Though it would be different in a perfect world, your shoppers and clients (especially in a B2B market) are not impulse buyers. Quality is king here and it takes a while to figure out if something is worth its salt or not, which is why B2B leads will take longer to bear fruit then leads from other markets, but these long-term leads will end up being profitable about 70% of the time.
Touch and Go
A fun little term is “touches”, which in a B2B setting means “occurrences contact with the client that brings the client closer to deciding whether they need you or not”. By some metric someone figured out somewhere through some test, the average amount of touches needed for your standard client to transfer from a lead to a prospect is about 7, though your industry, target market, and other similar factors can increase or decrease that number accordingly. 7 Touches means a lot of back and forth and a bit of time, but it also means that diligence bares fruit.
Every Loss is a Lesson
If you don’t see the silver-lining in having a lead decide to not do business with you then you’re not using your leads to their fullest potential. Would it have been better if they became a regular customer? Absolutely, but losing a lead isn’t all that bad, especially if they took the time to walk through some of the buying process with you. Think of them as beta testers for your sales strategy; by analyzing their progress through the procedure and seeing when and what turned them off you can alter your approach to avoid this from happening in the future. They are your beta testers, and as a company you are always in beta. The companies that took themselves out of beta because they “figured out their market” have long since gone out of business.
Lead nurturing is an investment, and like all investments it takes time to mature. Now it may mature into a profitable client or it may end up being a bust, but at least there’s a chance. A lead abandoned prematurely is money tossed at your competition, because the ones you let go who were interested in buying weren’t interested in just you: they were interested in your product/service and they can go to someone else for that.
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