For many B2B organizations, the middle of the funnel is where leads go to die…

Assume that marketing does an excellent job and obtains 500 leads. These “raw” leads are then moved through the prospect journey and whittled down to 50 SQL (sales qualified leads) who are ready to talk to sales.

Sales closes their usual 10% out of the fifty leads…but what happens to the remaining 45 SQL(s)? In many companies those forty-five hard won, qualified leads, lack adequate documentation or a process for recycling back to marketing and thus are forgotten and thrown away.

These are your opportunities in 2, 4, 6, 12, months and can be your fastest and cheapest sales channel. But how do you efficiently take advantage of these qualified targets that understand your value proposition and have expressed a need?

People, Process and Technology Alignment

A Sales Lead Nurturing strategy tackles the two key issues impacting lead loss—failures in communication and technology. At many companies, the Sales and Marketing teams are siloed. Poor communication between the groups, weak processes, or disparate goals makes for a failure to take advantage of these qualified leads.

With built-in automations and clear reporting, Salesforce and Zoho CRM tech platforms enable the kind of scalable nurture campaigns that keep companies top-of-mind without a heavy lift of marketing support, staff, and other resources. The automated technology frees up sales reps to invest their time and energy into other business development priorities, while efficiently tracking a lead’s level of engagement. So when the time is right to turn on more transactional messaging, we know.

Most leading companies are as focused on lead nurturing as they are on filling the top of the marketing funnel. By mapping the customer journey and integrating technology and automations at pivotal points, a higher number of leads move through the marketing funnel in significantly less time. Those two strategic steps have an enormous impact on both top- and bottom-line income.

About Growthline Partners

Growthline Partners specializes in assisting B2B companies implement the automated process and technology that frees up sales reps to invest their time and energy into other business development priorities, while efficiently tracking a lead’s level of engagement. For over 10 years Growthline Partners has assisted companies design, customize and implement their technology platforms and stacks based on Zoho or Salesforce software to turn them into high performance platforms that support their revenue acceleration and customer service strategies and initiatives.

About the Author

William Pickett is the Managing Director at Growthline Partners. He is a veteran of the technology and consulting industry and has held senior technology and management positions including Group Manager at AT&T Government Solutions and Senior Manager at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. William has extensive knowledge of Salesforce & Zoho software and experience working with the financial, manufacturing and non-profit sectors.