On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

Whoa—let’s slow down. Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? While salespeople race to snatch up the most promising and qualified short-term prospects that come in from any marketing-lead-generation initiative, nearly three-quarters of the leads that convert to sales are ignored.

Why? Because salespeople are paid for winning the race for short-term sales, causing them to focus on the easy sales opportunities and to ignore the longer-term prospects. And because there usually is no process in place, the job of nurturing, managing and tracking the longer-term opportunities falls by the wayside. This lack of a lead-development process may be costing your organization in lost sales.

Industry experts estimate that only one-quarter of those who are going to buy do so within the first six months. Yet, roughly another quarter buy within a seven- to 12-month period, another quarter buy in a 13- to 18-month period and the final quarter buy sometime after 18 months. When all of the organization’s
concentration is on the first quarter, for quick selling turnaround, the remainder of the leads—three out of four sales opportunities—are left for the competition.

These longer-term leads must be nurtured with a series of communications efforts designed to move prospects along in their buying cycles. The implementation of these cycles requires sales or marketing to put lead-nurturing into their job descriptions, or it may require the development of a whole new department between sales and marketing
—the lead-development department. When designing your lead-nurturing programs, these are the questions to ask:

• How do we best deliver messages to the people who will influence or make the final buying decisions?

• How do we stay with them as they move through their consideration and buying process?

• What can we offer that will cause the prospects to engage when they are ready to move forward with their buying process?

Once you’ve done that, there are a number of methods to captivate prospects and start a sales-winning relationship.

Always use a series of ongoing communications—postal mail, e-mail or phone—to keep pace with the prospects’ needs to make decisions about your products or services.

Be sure to include multiple offers that appeal to all stages of a prospect’s buying process. For example, if prospective customers are still early in their buying process, they will be more receptive to offers for free information in the form of how-to guides, white papers or e-mail newsletters. As prospects approach being ready to buy, they will be more receptive to such offers as longer, in-depth seminars, needs assessments or meetings, and getting proposals or quotations from salespeople.

Keep in touch with your prospect throughout their consideration process until the prospect is ready to engage with your salespeople. I’ve found that, as an added benefit, sales revenue per customer is usually significantly higher for those who are included in the prospect relationship marketing program versus those who are not.

If you use good relationship communication skills and not just focus your company’s efforts on the easy or short-term sales opportunities, you can pick up the three out of four sales that others are leaving on the table. And that helps you win the race.

M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is one of America’s leading business-to-business sales and marketing consultants and an expert on the subject of sales leads. Mac specializes in helping companies get more high-quality sales leads and turn them into sales. For more information, or to request a free subscription to his newsletter, Sales Lead Report, please visit www.sales-lead-experts.com.