Nurturing Sales Leads

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>> Phil: Hello. I'm Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marchetto assumed spelling. And I'd like to talk today about the topic of nurturing sales leads. Drawn here for context on the board is what most business executives would draw today if you asked them to describe how revenue happens in their company. They would draw a funnel, something like this, and describe that it had several stages of their sales process, like establishing needs, determining if the buyer has a budget, negotiating a contract, and ultimately producing revenue through a deal. This is the sales funnel, or the sales cycle. But if you really look at how the world works in today's world driven by web marketing and other modern online interactive technologies, it's really a different picture we need to draw. We need to extend this funnel back from the sales organization into the marketing department. And in this world the funnel actually gets quite wide on its front end. At the front end of this funnel, companies meet their perspective buyers in a variety of ways. For example, traditional means like trade shows and direct mail, but of increasing importance every day things like the website and Google ad words search advertising. The trouble is this can be a very inefficient process in today's business. According to the consultancy inaudible Today, fully 80% of the leads generated in the marketing organization are completely wasted. They go down the drain, and nobody ever calls them. At the same time, according to the consultancy CSO Insights, fully 50% of sales time is unproductive and wasted with sales people talking to buyers that don't really want to talk to them, during things like cold calling. But the fortunate story is that companies that get this right can radically improve this process. If we drew in to the front end of this funnel, statistics show that about 25% of the people you meet in a business ultimately are lousy leads, they really need to just go into the wastebasket and never be contacted. And at the same time, about 25% of the leads you generate through your online and offline activities are really hot. They rock, they need to get right into the sales organization right away. But that leaves this middle ground of 50% of leads that are interesting, they're people that want to talk to you and buy from you, but they're not ready to talk to a sales person today. There's something we can do about this process. Soft look for example, at a buyer who comes to your website through a Google ad words click. You obviously respond to them right away when they click on ad words. But let's say now that one day later you send that customer an email that contains an attachment with a White Paper that reinforces the topic of the advertisement from the day before. That simple step, or that follow up one day later can literally double the effectiveness of your Google spend right there. But companies can do even better. For example, we send an attachment with information to that buyer one day later, let's monitor that, and ask a week later did that buyer actually open and read that White Paper? If so, then I might want to send a follow up email, and invite that customer to come to a webinar where they learn more about the product that we're selling. If not, we don't want to just abandon that customer though. Maybe what we want to do is cue a call so that a telemarketing representative can make contact with that perspective buyer, and ask them some questions and nurture them along in the buying process. If it's a good interaction, you might then invite that same customer to the webinar, or if not, you will continue to stay in touch with that customer over time, always with the goal of ultimately nurturing that customer until they're ready to talk to a sales representative. The amazing thing, is if this is done right, statistics show that fully 70% of this middle set of leads that you meet ultimately will be ready to talk to a sales representative, and ultimate be ready to buy. Powerful ROI.

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If you do this right, you take this lost 50%, turn 70% of those into people that you can sell to, and that ultimately you can make revenue from. That's the key of nurturing sales leads through an automated lead nurturing process.

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