Lead nurturing: the path From Introduction to Sale

Nowadays, companies have to invest a lot of capital in their marketing in order to maintain contact with customers and to address new customers. The success of marketing is measured in visitor numbers and new contacts.

Once in contact with the customers, the sales staff must take all measures to provide the prospects with the relevant information at the right time. In order to guarantee effective sales advice, the stages of development must be managed. This is the only way to guarantee that the right information and purchasing aids are made available to every interested party at the right time.

Lead nurturing (prospect care) aims to control the further development of the prospect until a deal is achieved.

The phases of lead nurturing

In order to achieve effective follow-up, customers' sales pitches and buying interest need to be broken down into distinct stages. The lead nurturing process aims to control the further development of leads in the following phases:

1. First contact or customer inquiry

The first contact can be made in many different ways. They include telephone inquiries, trade fair appointments, through websites and on social platforms. It is important for the first contacts to record the customer data so that later contact and follow-up can take place. A successful website can attract a lot of visitors, but if they don't connect with your business, all the effort isn't worth it. Success can be measured in clicks on the website, or the number of visitors, in relation to the number of deals.

2. MQL – Marketing Qualified Lead – the qualified contact

In this phase, the qualified lead is passed from the marketing team to the sales team. Sales processes can vary from industry to industry. Depending on the product, the sales information can become very complex. The qualified contact with the customers refers to the specific conditions of the products or services that are provided to the customer. This includes, among other things, the condition, delivery status, material and discount systems. The conditions can often only be clarified in a personal conversation with the customer. In this phase of the sales process, qualified advice is important, which can be provided by telephone, visits, e-mail or in writing, among other things.

3. SAL – Sales Accepted Lead – the contact ready to sell

In this phase, the conditions of the products and services were determined and checked by the sales department. The customer now has all the information that has been defined based on his personal requirements at his disposal. The actual properties of the products shouldn't really change anymore.

4. SQL – Sales Qualified Lead Lead – the sales opportunity

In this phase of the sales process, it really only revolves around the terms and conditions. All departments have agreed to the conditions and the buyer only has to confirm the actual order.

5. Closed Won

The final step in the lead nurturing process is actually closing the deal. Depending on the industry or product, the customer must sign the contract or electronically confirm the purchase. The purchase is completed with the mutual confirmation of the transaction. The customer often only needs a small nudge to take the last step to confirm the purchase. The seller can encourage this in the form of a discount or additional services at the right moment.

The sequence of the individual processes of the lead nurturing process can be different in every industry. The process is simplified for online transactions, but some intermediate steps may be required for the sale of industrial equipment.

The goal of lead nurturing is to have a clear definition of each step in the sale. This gives the salespeople the opportunity to offer the customer the best support at every stage and to achieve the best possible sales results.

Tips for a successful lead nurturing campaign

In order to achieve the best success with a lead nurturing campaign, a few prerequisites must be guaranteed:

1. All customers must be registered with their data.
2. Every customer contact must be registered and evaluated.
3. Conditions must be set for each phase of the process.
4. Customers need to be prioritized based on their sales intent.

Depending on the number of customers and projects, it may be necessary to use CRM software that supports sales.

CRM system to support lead nurturing campaigns

From a certain number of inquiries or customer contacts, it is necessary to use professional software in order to be able to serve every customer optimally. The software helps the sales department to organize customer contacts so that none of the customer inquiries are overlooked or not processed optimally. However, modern CRM software can bring other benefits to the company that go far beyond the normal lead nurturing process.

CRM tools offer a collection of powerful sales and marketing tools that can give even small and medium-sized businesses great competitive advantages. Zoho! Is a modern software that can be precisely adapted to the needs of every company through innovative services.

The marketing automation of the software is particularly interesting, which promotes business growth and is available at any time on any device and anywhere thanks to cloud hosting. This gives you the opportunity to track the success of each individual campaign or upcoming sales at any time.

Lead nurturing is a part of lead management

The lead nurturing process needs to be viewed as a part of lead management that aims to:

However, one of the most important tasks of lead management is to provide metrics that provide a basis for optimizing your own processes. Especially in small and medium-sized companies, it is important to work on optimizing processes every day and to achieve better results every day. New measures can only be evaluated if their success can also be measured.

You should think about using a professional CRM software with marketing automation in your company if one of the following statements applies to your company: