Lead Nurturing: Ripening the Right Bananas

Imagine your marketplace is a field of banana trees. Your marketing people are those who nurture and pick the bananas.

Bananas are harvested when they are green, and they turn yellow as they ripen. (Check out Chris Coleman's book, The Green Banana Papers.) In my estimation, 95% of your leads are like harvested green bananas. Here's how to ripen all those green bananas before you pick them.

Effective lead generation is the biggest issue for contemporary business-to-business marketers. But up to 80% of marketing expenditures on lead generation and collateral goes to waste for lack of commitment and discipline. Those tools end up in the scrap heap, because the sales department doesn't know what to do with them.

The secret to successful lead generation, and in turn marketing, in the business-to-business space today is process. This process converts more inquiries into qualified leads and qualified leads into sales. It is called lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing is all about having consistent and meaningful dialog with viable prospects regardless of their timing to buy. It's about building trusted relationships with the right people. In the end, it's the act of maintaining mind share and building solid relationships with economic buyers. It's not a salesperson calling up every few months to find out if a prospect is "ready to buy yet."

Selling How You Service

→ end article preview
Read the Full Article