Potential customers love hearing from you when they are in need, not when they are not. You need to catch them when the time is right. Your content must leave a deep impression on your customer’s mind so that he will be glad to hear from you and listen about your product. You can use an automated process to generate leads and score your customers.

A ten step program to lead nurturing

  • Obtain quality prospects – Your sales funnel ought to have only those customers which can become actual customers in the future. Redundant entries are of no use in your database. You must remove those and focus on quality leads
  • An email that gets responses – The email which you send to a prospective customer (be it manual or automated) must elicit response. It simply means your email should be drafted in such a way that a customer would want to answer it. Make sure you give a timeline about contacting them so that they are prepared when you do.
  • Keep your promise – Contact the prospect at the time that you have promised. Even a slight delay might hamper your chance of acquiring the lead.
  • Give them something tasty to chew – There must be something tempting for them in the offer that you give so give something of value. Here value means valuable information or content. The content that you offer must be unique so that even if they don’t immediately make up their mind to buy from you they will at least keep you in mind.
  • Get into the skin of the customer – During your conversation (via email or telephonic), try to get a feel of the customer’s interests and needs. Listen carefully to what the customer is saying. Store this information and use it for lead qualifying.
  • Arrange a special rendezvous for your customer – The customer must feel important. In order that he feels so, give him a special place to connect. A direct phone line, twitter address, website URL etc. A chat room is also a good place for interaction.
  • Keep in touch – Let the customer know you want to stay in touch by giving your email address and phone number.
  • Make a special offer – During conversation if you learn of any specific needs to the customer, store them in your database. Offer the customer something like a e-book or an whitepaper related to it.
  • Get a referral – Before winding up your conversation, ask for a referral. You might be able to do this easily if you feel the customer has shown interest in your product.
  • Improve your strategy – Your earlier experience will help you frame your sales strategy better and convert your leads into sales

    • The key to lead nurturing is developing trust

    As a marketer, you have to give good information to the buyer and develop this trust. Just sweet sales talk is not going to get you anywhere. Give the buyer solutions instead of selling.

    When developing trust is your main goal, selling becomes secondary and you tend to concentrate more on developing a good relationship with your buyer. This is exactly what lead nurturing is all about.

    Conclusion

    Thus lead nurturing is all about maintaining healthy business relationships with prospective clients and hitting right on spot (exact time).

    Author's Bio: 

    Celena Watson - Passionate writer and blogger. I have written on many different topics which include demand generation, outbound sales, inbound sales, lead management, lead nurturing, inside sales, demand generation and many more. For more info visit online reputation management