Friday Rant – Economic Woes and Lead Nurturing

 The economic prosperity of the last few years has begun to resemble Newton’s observations of gravity: What goes up, must come down.  News of the impending recession is everywhere, and if you listen to cable news you would think the entire country is about to collapse. While that may be somewhat exaggerated, what is true is that marketing budgets are usually the first to get cut by CEO’s looking for ways to cut costs and keep the company afloat until economic growth can be measured.

Of course, marketers we know that the few companies that actually invest in marketing during a downturn are those that will come out  of the recession with a competitive advantage, having kept open the lines of communication with potential clients. Does it have to be a big investment? Not necessarily.

Lead nurturing tools are a great – and inexpensive – marketing investment that can bring considerable returns and also help your sales team pinpoint their message in a refined manner. First off, nurturing your leads means that you will no longer throw away the majority of your prospects simply because they aren’t ready to buy: you can keep them in the system and educate them about your product over time by sending them emails and white papers. When they are ready to buy (and a lead nurturing tool helps you keep tabs on everything your prospect is doing), your sales team will be there, ready to make the sale.

Another great feature of lead nurturing tools is the ability to provide you with an ROI on your marketing dollars. In tough economic times, nothing is more important for marketers than being able to show that the money spent is generating sales for the company. Finally a way to show the CEO and CFO that marketing doesn’t just produce costs, it also creates revenue flows.

When the going gets tough, lead nurturing is the way to go.

Plus, it really makes it easy on those of us in sales, who are trying to capture a seemingly shrinking market, and nurture prospects along.

Friday Rant – The Importance of Nurturing

Last week, I wrote about the importance of Marketing and Sales working together as a team. I probably used more sports metaphors and analogies then you’re used to as well.

More specifically, I emphasized the usefulness of drip marketing and nurturing leads that aren’t sales-ready. Dale Underwood over at The Confident Marketer recently wrote a piece arguing that drip marketing doesn’t do much for salespeople. I respectfully disagree, and here’s why:

Leads that aren’t ready to buy don’t want to talk to salespeople. That’s the simple truth. And that’s why drip marketing is such a powerful tool. In my view, there are plenty of sales opportunities out there that can take months to develop. Rather than having the sales team jump all over every sales opportunity, marketing should be in charge of slowly but surely nurturing leads until they are actually ready to buy. Today’s commercial software is often complex and requires the potential client to do a lot of research before being ready to buy. Drip marketing is a great way to do this: marketers can customize the information that the lead receives, and make sure that a prospect is receiving information at regular intervals. In no way am I saying that drip marketing should be doing all the work, rather it should be a tool that assists Sales along the way.

The other great advantage of drip marketing is that it requires minimum involvement. Trying to sell to leads too early in sales cycle is risky and often unproductive. No one wants to feel like they’re being pushed to buy. On the other hand, having the sales team  manually nurture leads is a waste of time. Salespeople should be able to spend their time doing what they do best: selling the product to leads that know that the product is about, and showing these leads why your product is better. Drip marketing lets the Sales team concentrate on what it needs to be doing, and ensure that Marketing is creating high-quality leads, instead of handing-off poor prospects that will be counter-productive and a waste of the sales teams’ time.

This kind of teamwork is critical to creating a seamless sales cycle that begins with carefully designed marketing campaigns (including automated drip marketing) and ends with a salesperson that closes the deal. Drip marketing doesn’t make a sale on its own, but it sure helps.