Are You Doing Enough to Nurture Your Sales Leads?

I'm familiar with a number of B2B companies that do a terrible job managing sales leads once they get them. The focus of the marketing team is almost exclusively on generating leads that can be passed on to the sales team. Generating leads is clearly a key marketing task in B2B enterprises, but if your marketing team is spending most of its time generating leads instead of managing leads, you're in trouble.

Most sales teams are expected to convert leads into sales RIGHT NOW. This month and this quarter. The sales team is probably operating with monthly and quarterly quotas that directly impact their paychecks. It is not reasonable to expect the sales team to have a long-term focus, which is what is required to nurture and develop sales leads and eventually turn them into customers. If the marketing team hands 100 leads to the sales team and only 20 of those leads are ready to buy RIGHT NOW, what happens to the other 80?

If I'm a sales guy, I want more of those "RIGHT NOW" leads. The heck with those 80 that need nurturing and time to develop. I've got my monthly quota and that mortgage payment I need to make.

It's the job of your marketing team to "own" those 80 leads that need to be nurtured. If your marketing team is not actively managing those 80 leads, you're missing a huge opportunity AND you're wasting a lot of time and money. Do you have marketing campaigns designed to nurture these 80 leads and develop them to the point where they are ready to buy RIGHT NOW? If your marketing team is not developing, testing, measuring and implementing programs designed to nurture existing leads, shame on you! If they are spending all their time generating those 100 leads, just so 80 of them can be ignored, shame on you! That's marketing insanity.  You're effectively wasting 80 cents of every dollar you're investing in lead generation activities.

In today's economic climate, when many purchase decisions are being postponed or scrutinized more carefully than ever, it is especially important to have an active and effective Nurturing Effort in place. If I've told you I'm a potential customer and you then ignore me to chase after only RIGHT NOW prospects, the odds are that you will NEVER get my business.  

Pay attention to those 80 leads now, when they're not quite ready to buy, but when they still need and want help in making their purchase decision.  Nurture them.  You'll benefit later.

Two Books All Marketing People Need to Read

Here are two books that I think every marketer should not only read but have on their desks as every day references.

The first is "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin.  

The premise of Seth's great little book is that in today's world, you're either remarkable or you're invisible.  It's not enough to take some product or service, slap some marketing lipstick on it and consider the job done.  Marketing people must be engaged deeply in the product, packaging and service development process to insure that something about the product, packaging or service is TRULY and REALLY remarkable.  If marketing is brought in after these things are already finalized, your product development process is broken and needs to be fixed. 

We all know that most new products fail.  The reason is not usually poor marketing.  The real reason is that the new product is simply not remarkable enough to make it.  How high is the new product bar at your company?  Are you shooting for "remarkable'?  Are your new products buzzworthy?  REALLY buzzworthy?  If not, you've got a real uphill battle on your hands to achieve new product success.  

Are you also developing remarkable marketing programs for these hopefully remarkable products and services?  Or are you doing the same old tired things and hoping for the best? Unless you have a track record of remarkable new products launched with remarkable marketing, you need to get way outside your usual comfort zone and challenge everyone involved to adopt "Purple Cow" thinking as an integral part of your product development and marketing process.  

The second book is "Jeffrey Gitomer's Sales Bible."

Marketing people work with sales people for their entire career.  In many companies, there's a friction between the two functions.  Typically, this is because the leaders of the functions aren't working well as teammates and, as a result, the people in each area don't fully understand the mutual dependency that exists.  Each group blames the other for any lack of success and each group thinks they are more important or superior to the other.

Jeffrey Gitomer's fun book is a must read for all marketing people.  You will come away from his book with not only a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the sales function but also a much improved understanding about how to improve your own personal selling skills.  You'll also learn a tremendous amount about what makes great sales people great.  You'll learn how to recognize the great ones that work with you and, hopefully, you'll also learn how to help the not-so-great ones get better.

Google Seth Godin and Jeffrey Gitomer.  Sign up for their newsletters.  Read their books.   You'll be delighted by the fresh insight each provides.   And...you'll become a better marketer in the process.