In our Lead Nurturing 101, we delved deep into what lead nurturing is and provided an overview of how its conducted.
In this article, we will look at why this practice is so important and why your business should already have a lead nurturing plan in place.
Generation Doesn’t Equal Conversion - The Numbers Don’t Lie
A recent study by FranConnect found that three out of every four franchisors don’t contact their leads within the first four hours of the lead expressing an interest.
The same research found almost seven out of every ten leads never received a call back. Almost half of all leads received by the businesses in this study fell out of the sales funnel due to a “no response” status.
Unfortunately, these findings indicate that many businesses focusing their efforts into lead generation while neglecting the very important task of what should be done after those leads appear in their inbox.
It also portrays a setting where businesses are failing to realise the importance of lead nurturing. And as a consequence, bottom lines are suffering greatly due to this neglect.
Is Lead Nurturing Worth the Time?
In short, the answer is ‘yes’.
However, to delve deeper; if you’re asking this question, your business is likely the recipient of a high volume of leads. You may be worried that your sales staff will not be able to cope, becoming overwhelmed if they are required to nurture every one of them.
Knowing how essential it is to YOU closing deals, it begs the question, can you afford not to devote adequate time to lead nurturing. And please remember, it doesn’t take as much time as you would think.
Automation Can Be Your Friend
Onboarding a new franchisee always requires time and energy and that is how it should be.
However, when it comes to initial leads though, some of the more repetitive, tedious tasks involved in nurturing can be automated. In fact, you really should already be doing it this way.
This is because at this point, automation will help you weed out the ‘timewasters’ and ensures that there is a prompt, almost instant, response to genuinely interested leads. Therefore, less leads fall out of the funnel due to “no response” and you keep more potential deals.
Be careful not to flood your new contacts with worthless information. The initial contacts with a lead should include useful info, such as timelines, FAQS and other resources.
As the Salesforce’s eBook, The Complete Guide to Lead Nurturing, puts it: “There are only so many hours in the day, so the answer is to automate — very purposefully. A well-thought-out lead nurturing strategy is one way that you can connect more effectively across all phases of the customer life-cycle. At its core, lead nurturing is the process of automatically “dripping” relevant messages to your leads over time.”
Lead Nurturing in New Zealand
Here are five reasons why lead nurturing is important
1. Less Leads Needed for A Sale
As previously outlined, failure to embrace lead nurturing will see you and your business requiring more leads to make a sale. You are most likely paying a price per individual lead to a portal such as Franchise Direct. Ignoring the challenge of guiding these leads through the process, is essentially electing to pay for more leads to make the sales you would have done if you engaged in lead nurturing.
2. Improved Business Relationships
If you are in contact with your leads, you will hear what they are seeking. In many cases, you can discuss queries relating to your business thus ensuring they have all the knowledge they need regards the business relationship they hope to engage in. The results is a more informed franchisee and an improved business relationship.
3. Lead Nurturing Produces Quality PR
Word of mouth is still one of the most effective forms of marketing and quality lead nurturing builds a client base that can back-up your reputation as a business, one that is contactable and willing to engage with potential partners.
4. Upselling
With quality lead nurturing, your business upholds engagement with the potential investor from the moment they request contact for your side. Thus, you gain an insight into their wants and needs and can potentially upsell to match their ambition. It is also useful to discover the key questions that potential partners have about your business.
5. More Informed Data
Quality automated systems will collect data on click through rates, openings rates etc. and this should inform your sales and content marketing teams of what works best in terms of initial contact and follow through with leads.
Of course, these are just a few reasons why lead nurturing is important, and we could add many more.
However, you are conducting a business, so we will finish with the Marketing Sherpa statistic; companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales at a third less of the cost. Therefore, an informed and intelligent lead nurturing strategy should be a key component of your business, today and into the future.