8 Lead Nurturing Stats You Should Be Aware Of

Have you ever wondered the ways that sales 2.0 processes can increase your sales, lower your cost of sales , and increase percentage of reps making quota? If you haven’t, here are some alarming trends and statistics that should get you on the lead nurturing band wagon.

• Lead Nurturing is the process of building a relationship by conducting an informative dialog that helps qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready, regardless of budget, authority, or timing – and of ensuring a clean hand-off to sales at the right time. Lead nurturing is on the rise.

• Sales lead expert, Mac McIntosh, found that six months after inquiring, 23% of the surveyed subjects had bought the product or service, from the promoter or from a competitor. An additional 67% indicated that they still intended to buy but they were not ready.

• Research firm SiriusDecisions says that during the last five years, the average sales cycle has become 22% longer, typically with three more decision makers participating in the buying process.

• According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead.

• According to CSO Insights, companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps make quota, and enjoy a 10% shorter ramp up time for new reps.

• Today’s marketers must synchronize their marketing throughout the buying process, providing potential buyers with high quality content that is contextually relevant.

• According to DemandGen Report, nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

• Is the information you are providing the prospect useful to them even if they never buy from you?

Sales Strategy for the New Sales Economy

Lead generation can make the difference between just missing, making, or blowing out your quota.  Some sales reps have great marketing departments that have ramped up solid lead nurturing campaigns, others aren’t so lucky.

In either case it is still a great idea to develop your own lead nurturing campaigns that you can use with your customers and prospects. Try thinking through some simple email campaigns you can run to stay close to your buyers — they may not be ready to buy now, but according to the data 67% eventually will buy. They might as well buy from you!

Sales tip to help you automate the process

Try investing in a simple email automation service like Constant Contact or Blue Sky Factory to help you with the automation process. And remember, simple lead nurturing can make a big difference in your results.

Future sales trend: email is becoming more social.  Some email vendors are integrating social media sharing into their services, making it very easy to help your message spread through social communities and your accounts.  Soon this will be a standard feature of email and will be widely used in our daily and business routines.

It’s your turn.

What do you all think of this sales strategy? Does your marketing department help you with lead nurturing? What kind of results are you seeing? Please share your comments.

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5. Demand Generation Gone Wrong: A Real World Example