Lead Nurturing – Ripening the Right Bananas

Imagine your marketplace is like a field of banana trees.

Your marketing people are those who nurture and pick the bananas.  Bananas are harvested when they are green, and they turn yellow as they ripen. Check out Chris Coleman’s book, “The Green Banana Papers”.

Fully 95% of your leads are like harvested green bananas, and, off the top, your sales team needs only the other 5%, those that are ripe.  I’m going to show you how to ripen all those green bananas.

Good, sound, effective lead generation is more often than not acknowledged to be the biggest single issue for contemporary business-to-business marketers today.  It has also been pointed out, however, that up-to 80% of marketing expenditures on lead generation and collateral go to waste for lack of commitment and discipline, ending up in the scrap heap because the sales department doesn’t know what to do with them.

The secret to successful lead generation, and in turn marketing, in the business-to-business space today is process.  This process, that converts more inquiries into qualified leads and qualified leads into sales, is called lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing is all about having consistent and meaningful dialog with viable prospects regardless of their timing to buy.  It’s about building trusted relationships with the right people.  In the end, it’s the act of maintaining mind share and building solid relationships with economic buyers.  It’s not a sales person calling up every few months to find out if a prospect is “ready to buy yet.”

Get in touch. Let’s talk marketing solutions.