subject: What Is A Sales-ready Lead? [print this page] Did you know that most of the leads generated on your website are not yet ready to talk to a sales person? In fact, most of them are searching for information and are soft leads at best. This article will provide you with information what a sales-ready lead is and how to nurture leads and turn them into qualified buyers.
Increasing the number of sales-ready leads is a top priority for nearly half of marketers in the U.S. But unfortunately, up to 95% of prospects that come through your website are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, according to research by Brian Carroll, renowned lead-gen author.
What is a sales-ready lead?
Well, it depends on who you talk to! To most sales people, a sales-ready lead is any prospect that has a business problem your company can solve at a price it can afford now or later. But to marketers, a sales-ready lead might be any prospect that has achieved sufficient lead rank over time based on pre-defined criteria and is ready to buy.
The truth of the matter is that many of your website visitors are just looking for information about your products, your services, your brand or your industry. Perhaps you have an offer of some kind tied to your lead qualification survey and the prospect is simply trying to take advantage of the offer. Either way, as a marketer or sales rep, you're stuck with a soft lead at best and it's hard to know where to go from there.
What is lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is basically about consistent and meaningful communication with viable prospects until they are ready to buy. Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship with a prospect by initiating dialog that helps to move qualified prospects that are not yet sales-ready, regardless of budget, authority or timing through the sales pipeline.
You see, in order to effectively nurture a lead, they must know who you are, what you do and why they should buy from you. They may gain that information from your website, but you have to keep in mind that they are probably visiting at least 10 other websites for the same (or better) information. By nurturing leads, you can keep your company at the top of the prospect's mind, give them more information and build a relationship based on trust. Lead nurturing is not about "following-up" every few months to find out if a prospect is "ready to buy yet."
How to nurture leads?
A typical lead nurturing strategy should include a lot of different ways to communicate with prospects - a series of letters, emails, voicemails, case studies, success stories, articles, events, white papers, webinars, videos - anything that might be meaningful and informative to your potential customers. Whatever you choose to send to your prospects should be relevant, thought-provoking and consistent. The strategy you use and the frequency with which you send it will depend on your sales process and the buying cycle of the prospect.
Why nurture leads?
Lead nurturing will help your company yield more sales-ready leads, gain higher close ratios and shorten your average sales cycles. By implementing a lead nurturing strategy, your lead generation strategy will realize more qualified leads and build a much more predictable and sustainable sales pipeline. A lost prospect is a lost opportunity. Any one of the prospects that come to your website could be your next biggest client!
