30 April 2009 6 Comments

Sales Excellence Podcast – Episode 4 : Lead Nurturing

In most businesses, between 70-80% of your leads are long term. They’re potential clients who pass all your qualifying criteria – but they’re just not ready to buy right now.

Ideally, you want to begin to build a relationship with these potential clients so that when the time is right to buy, you’re in the front of their mind.

Unfortunately, most firms tend to drop leads the moment they find out they’re not going to close in the short term. This is a huge mistake. Almost all these potential clients will buy from someone in the next 24 months. The role of Lead Nurturing is to make sure that someone is you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Comments

Skip Anderson | Selling to Consumers Sales Training says:

1 May 2009 at 3:24 pm

Ian, I enjoyed your podcast. What’s interesting to me is that you work in a very different field than I do. I do B2C sales training, but many of the principles you talk about in your podcast are relevant also to the B2C prospector.

Thanks for the podcast Ian. Love the music, too.
Sales techniques says:

7 May 2009 at 12:29 pm

Yes, that’s absolutely true… Most firms drop their contacts once they close a task… Building relationships is what matters. And as you said, when the client gets a task to do, we’ll become their 1st choice. Remember, relationship matters.
Thanks for the podcast, great music…
Maria Pergolino says:

2 July 2009 at 4:44 am

Here is a list of other great lead nurturing tools, including a handbook to show you the return you are achieving from doing lead nurturing. http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-resources/… It's a great list of resources.

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Who I Work With

I work with independent professionals and professional service firms to help them achieve their business growth goals.

My clients are consultants, coaches, lawyers, accountants, architects, surveyors and other professionals. I help them improve their marketing and sales capabilities to get more clients and win more new business.

Although I'm based in the North West of England and do a lot of work in Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside, I have many clients across the UK and a number of overseas coaching clients who I work with by phone/Skype.

My Services

I deliver two primary services: coaching and training.

With coaching, I work personally with the individual to identify their major challenges and opportunities and create a strategy or plan to address them. We then work through that plan over time and I support them in its implementation.

Coaching usually takes place via structured 60-90 minute meetings or calls where we review progress and learnings since the last session, discuss priorities and options, and plan for the next time period

For larger businesses, I also deliver tailored training courses in areas such as:

Generating high quality leads (e.g. through networking, seminars, online, etc.)
Selling skills for professionals
Executive Relationship Building and Client Relationship Management
Pitching and Sales Presentation Skills
Generating referrals and extension work from existing clients and partners
Using the web and social media (Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) to win clients

Sales Excellence Podcast – Episode 4 : Lead Nurturing