Best PracticesSales Enablement

How to nurture leads in the B2B sales funnel?

Rearing leads efficiently in the B2B sales funnel

Rearing leads efficiently in the B2B sales funnel is essential for fostering growth and increasing conversions. How does one lead nurture in the B2B sales funnel? This question is crucial for companies trying to refine their lead management strategies. Without a nurturing process in place, the leads that don’t go cold right away may pick up heat again in the following months. Yet, the leads we have now are unqualified, and we’re safe in assuming they’ll remain so until the top-of-funnel marketing campaign stretches its way through to them in a few months’ time. To lead nurture effectively, we must first look at the problem from the prospect’s perspective.

The sales funnel in B2B commerce

The sales funnel in B2B commerce refers to the stepwise procedure a prospect typically follows to arrive at a purchasing decision. The B2B sales funnel is often depicted in stages, with the prospect potentially moving from one to the next until arriving at the decision stage and making the purchase.

Lead nurturing

The process of building relationships with potential customers throughout the sales funnel is known as lead nurturing. The DemandGen study declares companies that are good at lead nurturing produce 50% more sales-ready leads that are 33% less expensive to produce. The study further asserts lead nurturing pays for itself by addressing many potential customer objections and by building trust along the path to purchase. Not only does lead nurturing pay dividends in the short term, but it also helps position your brand as one that authorities in your industry—thus reaping more long-term relational dividends.

Reducing the sales cycle

Furthermore, lead nurturing can considerably reduce the sales cycle. When businesses engage with leads on a consistent basis, they can identify prospects and deal with their objections before those objections have the chance to escalate. This consistently speeds up the decision-making and buying process. On that note, let’s look at some effective lead nurturing strategies in the B2B sales funnel.

Personalization

Personalization is the name of the game. Your communication needs to be relevant to the recipient. Remember that 90% of the public is not currently interested in what you have to offer. So first, make the “you” in your emails stand out from the no-interest crowd. Tracking interactions and segmenting your audience help with this, but still, much of your audience won’t truly be interested in what you have to say.

On the other hand, when it comes to what you might call “true interest,” personalized email marketing performs much better than mass email marketing. And isn’t it interesting how close “personalization” is to “personality”? That’s right. Be a person, and not a system, in your emails.

Enhancing lead nurturing tasks

Companies can dramatically enhance their lead nurturing tasks and achieve better results. The conversion rate improves when people reminded of their interest in something push them down the funnel into a sale. Of course, we must track the effectiveness of our lead nurturing tasks to know we’re actually achieving what we set out to do. The metrics to measure include conversion rates, which assess how many leads actually convert, and engagement metrics, which look at how open our leads are to the messages we’re sending them. Following these steps leads to a state of continuous improvement.

B2B lead nurturing

B2B lead nurturing isn’t just about making more sales. It’s about building better relationships and providing more value. When businesses invest effort into lead nurturing, they’re far more likely to create loyal, long-term customers. And since leads are a vital part of the sales and revenue equation, the lead nurturing strategies we employ will directly impact our bottom lines. So by all means, let’s make more sales. But in the name of more sales, let’s not neglect the virtues of leads that are loyal, long-term, and profitable.