We all know that in the IT industry, managing leads is key. It’s how you generate business and get your name out there. But even with a good lead management system, it can be hard to keep up with everything when you have so many other responsibilities on your plate.
If this sounds like you, don’t worry! We’re here to help. In this blog post, we are going to outline 7 tips for nurturing and managing leads for your IT company.
First, what is lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the process of communicating with your prospects at a pace that they are comfortable with. It’s not just sending out emails and waiting for something to happen or hoping that they’ll eventually make a purchase decision.
Lead nurturing involves:
- Following up on potential customers.
- Checking in.
- Keeping them updated on your company’s services.
It also involves sending out information about new products, the latest industry trends, or even just general articles related to your business.
Why do you need a lead nurturing strategy?
A lead nurturing strategy is critical for two main reasons:
First, it helps to keep your leads warm. This is especially important in the early stages of the sales process when a potential customer may not be ready to buy just yet.
Second, it helps to qualify leads. Not all leads are created equal, and not everyone who expresses an interest in your company is actually a good prospect. Lead nurturing helps to weed out the bad leads, so you can focus your time and energy on pursuing the most likely ones to convert.
With a solid lead nurturing strategy in place, you’ll see an increase in sales and conversions since more of your leads will be closer to making a purchase decision. According to Forrester Research, companies that do well at lead nurturing produce 50% more sales-ready leads for 33% less money.
What is the difference between lead management from lead nurturing?
Lead management is the process of tracking and managing leads from the time they are first generated until they become customers. This includes tasks such as recording contact information, tracking interactions, and assigning leads to sales representatives.
Lead nurturing, on the other hand, is the process of communicating with potential customers over a period of time in order to move them closer to making a purchase decision. It’s all about building relationships and providing valuable content to help your prospects make an informed buying decision.
When you combine the two, you end up with comprehensive lead management and nurturing strategy that will help you increase sales and conversions. A 9.3% higher sales goal accomplishment rate is observed among companies with an established lead generation and lead management process.
Now that we know what lead nurturing is, let’s take a look at some of the most effective lead nurturing tactics to ensure there are no dead ends or dropped balls!
7 Lead Nurturing Strategies for Your IT Company
1. Create a sales funnel based on your buyer’s journey
Not everyone who expresses an interest in your company is a good prospect. In order to qualify leads, you need to understand your buyer’s journey and create a sales funnel that reflects it.
Your sales funnel should include all the stages that a qualified lead goes through from when they first become aware of your company until they make a purchase decision. By mapping out the buying process and understanding the sales cycle, you will be able to craft a powerful lead nurturing program, effectively manage your sales pipeline, and adapt your marketing and sales strategies to fit your customers’ needs.
2. Build an effective lead management process
This is the foundation of your lead nurturing strategy, so make sure you have a system in place for tracking and managing leads from the time they are first generated until they become customers. This will help you keep track of all interactions with potential customers so that you can provide them with the best possible experience.
It’s also important to assign leads to sales representatives to be followed upon. This will help to ensure that no leads are missed or forgotten. Use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to help with this process and ensure proper alignment between your sales and marketing teams.
3. Run an email marketing automation
Automated emails are a great way to nurture leads and keep them warm. You can set up triggers to send out automated emails based on a prospect’s specific actions, such as filling out a form or downloading a white paper.
Make sure that the content of your automated emails is valuable and relevant to your prospects. You don’t want them to feel like they’re being spammed with irrelevant information.
You can also use automated emails to send out reminders about upcoming webinars or events or even just to check in and see how your sales leads are doing.
4. Publish relevant content to nurture leads
Make sure you have a process in place for lead generation and management. This will ensure that no leads slip through the cracks. Now when it comes to nurturing leads, content is king. Publishing valuable, relevant, nurturing content is one of the best ways to move potential customers closer to making a purchase decision.
Start by creating a buyer persona. Next, produce a variety of customized content based on your personas’ traits, such as hobbies, goals, objectives, and marketing triggers. You need to use the right mix of content, blog posts, videos, infographics, social media posts to drive traffic back to your website.
Make sure the content is interesting and useful enough to get prospects to stick around long enough to consider doing business with you.
5. Utilize lead scoring strategies to identify leads with a higher potential for conversion
Lead scoring is a great way to determine which leads are worth pursuing and which ones can be ignored. You can assign points to a prospect’s actions, such as downloading a white paper or filling out a form.
Essentially, the higher the score, the more interested the lead is in your company, and the more likely they are to purchase something from you.
By using lead scoring, you can focus your efforts on the most qualified leads, which will help to speed up the sales process.
6. Use multiple touchpoints and tailor your marketing messages to specific channels
The buying process is no longer a one-size-fits-all proposition. Today’s buyers use multiple channels to gather relevant information about companies and products before making a purchase decision. That said, not only do you need to identify the right channels for your marketing outreach, you also need to tailor your messages specifically for those channels.
For example, if a potential customer is using Google AdWords to research IT solutions, then you would want to focus your marketing efforts on creating relevant ads that appear in the search results. However, if they’re using social media such as Twitter or LinkedIn, then your marketing campaign should focus on creating engaging content that can be shared across those networks.
The key to converting a successful lead is to use a variety of touchpoints to reach your target audience and customize your nurturing strategies accordingly.
7. Follow up, follow up, and follow up
Most leads will not convert on the first attempt. That’s why follow-ups are an integral part of a lead nurturing campaign. On average, it takes about 5 follow-ups to make a sale.
Make sure you have a plan in place for following up with leads and that both sales and marketing teams are aware of the process so that your lead nurturing efforts are consistent across the board.
Remember, the goal is to move potential customers closer to making a purchase decision, so keep up the pressure until they either buy from you or unsubscribe from your communications.
Conclusion
Nurturing and managing leads is essential for any IT company, especially if you want to increase sales and grow your business. By using the tips in this article, you can develop a process for lead generation and management that will help to improve your conversion rate and increase your bottom line.
BIO
Adam Bielanski is the CEO of Sierra Pacific Group, who puts the “Vision” back in Visionary – Shaping today’s business leaders for tomorrow’s technology business. If you’re ready to start becoming an effective business leader, then connect with him on LinkedIn.
