Lead Nurturing

How Lead Nurturing Works

After prospects are qualified, salespeople create a lead nurturing campaign to get leads ready to receive a sales pitch. To map your own process, examine the required actions and activities necessary to get leads in the buying mindset so you can deliver your pitch and overcome objections in an effort to close. Then, translate these activities into specific stages in your sales pipeline, including benchmarks leads must hit and actions necessary to move them from stage to stage. 

Common stages within a lead nurturing process, including required salesperson activities and lead benchmarks, are below:

• Sales Email: Research the lead and send an introductory email to schedule a call. Leads who respond favorably can move to the next stage of the lead nurturing process.
• Sales Call: Further research the lead, write a script, and hold an initial sales call. Leads interested in a more in-depth call move to the next lead nurturing stage.
• Live Product Demo: Personalize the demo flow, set up the tech aspects, and deliver the demo. Those responding favorably move to the next stage.
• Sales Presentation: Write a script, personalize your slides, and give the presentation. Prospects who are interested in a full proposal move to the next nurturing stage.
• Business Proposal: Choose a template, personalize the proposal, send the proposal, and hold a proposal review meeting. From here, overcome objections and ask for the sale.
• Deal Close: Draft a contract, work to get the agreement signed, and either record the deal as closed/won and onboard the customer or mark it as closed/lost and move on to the next lead.

As you complete the activities in each stage, the benchmarks your lead hits will help you know when to move them to the next stage. Typically, these benchmarks are actions your lead must take, like accepting a presentation. Once they take the action or reach the threshold, you can move them into the next stage and start executing the activities involved in the new stage. The marketing team can also nurture the lead via email nurturing, content delivery, and other efforts.

CRMs play a significant role in lead nurturing. With a CRM, you can create tangible pipelines that reflect your nurturing phase’s stages. You can also manually move leads through the pipeline stages to track progress on deals and use CRM metrics to analyze your nurturing process, easily spotting weak points to improve on. Now, let's take a closer look at the common stages and associated activities of lead nuturing:

Common Lead Nurturing Stages

It’s important to divide your lead nurturing process into sequential stages, each with specific benchmarks for entry and actions a sales rep should take to push the lead to the next stage. Typically, salespeople send a sales email, make a sales call, conduct a live product demo, give a sales presentation, draft a business proposal, and then mark the lead as closed/won or closed/lost. However, feel free to switch the order or add your own stages to represent your unique process. 

Sales Email

After a salesperson has received or generated a sales qualified lead, they’ll reach out through emails to make an introduction and convince the lead to take a phone call to learn more about the offer. Typically, the benchmark required for entry into this stage is an expression of interest in the product or service and their level of fit. A seller will likely send 2–4 emails in an attempt to get a response. The emails usually focus on how they can help resolve the lead’s pain points.

Here are some nurturing activities a seller might use to get leads through this email stage: 

• Research the Lead: Learn about the lead and try to find a pain point they likely have and that your product or service solves.
• Send the First Introductory Email: Send an email introducing you and your company and explaining how you can help them solve the pain point and the benefits of fixing it. Also, include a call-to-action.
• Send a Follow-up Email: Email the lead a short reminder about your last email and mention another value proposition they might find intriguing.
• Send an Email With a Piece of Content: Try again to get their attention and warm them up by sharing a useful article or video they might enjoy along with another call-to-action.

Alongside sending sales emails, a salesperson might also partake in social selling or other methods of outreach. And marketing might be sending them automated emails of their own. Typically, once a lead accepts the CTA for a sales call in the email, they are moved to the sales call stage.

Sales Call

After a lead has agreed to a call, a salesperson will hold a phone or video call where they give their first full sales pitch to the lead. The pitch will include a diagnosis of their problem, an introduction to the solution (the product or service), and the benefits of fixing the problem. It will also have a unique selling proposition (USP) explaining why this is the best option for the buyer.

Below are a few sales activities a seller might do in the sales call stage:

• Conduct Pre-Call Research: Learn about the lead’s interests, responsibilities, company, job title, and needs in order to personalize a sales script.
• Write a Sales Call Script: Craft a script that outlines the talking points you’ll hit during the sales call.
• Make Small Talk and Set an Agenda: Set the tone for the entire call by coming off as personable and confident.
• Deliver the Sales Call: Hold the call and give an elevator pitch for your product or service. Be sure to ask for them to take next steps with you at the end of the call.
• Include a Strong CTA and Next Steps: Depending on what step is next in your sales process, encourage your lead to act quickly and move forward with a decision.

The actual sales call will last anywhere from 5–20 minutes, and the seller will attempt to both build a relationship with the lead through two-way conversation and convince them to take the benchmark-hitting action — typically accepting a longer demo or presentation of the solution. Depending on your product or service, hosting a consultation call may serve this same purpose.

Live Product Demo

After a sales call, the next stage for businesses that sell products is often a 30-minute live product demo over screen-sharing software where the seller shows the lead the software or physical product in action, focusing on 2–3 features that relate specifically to the lead’s pain points. The seller’s speaking points will revolve around the benefits that each feature will bring to the lead.

Below are some other demo-stage nurturing tactics a seller might employ:

• Prepare a Personalized Demo Flow: Choose the features you want to show the lead and write out the order in which you’ll do so, along with the verbiage you’ll say.
• Set up the Technical Aspects of the Demo: Get the demo environment ready, ensuring the data, workflows, and integrations are relevant to the lead.
• Deliver the Product Demo: Open by holding introductions and reminding the lead of why they’re attending. Then give a high-level overview of the product, give the personalized demo, and secure next steps.

In this stage, marketers might also send white papers and product videos and invite leads to attend webinars or events. Usually, the goal of a live product demo stage is to get the lead to attend a more in-depth technical demo or sales presentation. In the B2B space, it might also be to get a meeting with another decision maker.

Sales Presentation

The sales presentation stage could either come after a demo or a sales call stage. For service businesses, it will likely come immediately after the sales call. During this presentation, the salesperson verbally explains the value of the product or service to one or multiple buyers, typically with the backdrop of a sales deck (aka slideshow). The goal is to get a verbal expression of interest, either during or after the presentation, in buying the solution. In the presentation stage, sellers will commonly do the below stage-appropriate activities:

• Write a Sales Presentation Outline and Script: Figure out what you’re going to say to the lead and the order you’ll do it in. This usually includes an intro, an assessment of their main problem, its costs, the benefits of solving it, and your solution.
• Prepare a Personalized Slide Deck: Create a slideshow that relates to your presentation’s outline.
• Gather Supporting Materials: Include case studies, props or demonstrations, and graphs from your CRM, data or marketing teams to help build credibility in a presentation.
• Deliver the Presentation: Build rapport, set the agenda, and begin presenting your slides. Finish with a strong close and recommended next steps.

The sales presentation is usually one of the final stages of the lead nurturing process, and it’s a vitally important one. After it, the lead should have a clear understanding of the value you offer. At this point, a lead might even be ready for you to ask them for the sale and initiate the closing phase.

Business Proposal

This stage is popular in complex B2B sales. You create and send a business proposal outlining your product or service, why it’s a good fit for them, and the terms and pricing of the agreement. This proposal is tailored to their internal processes, current technology stack, and other factors that will affect how you implement your solution. It’s more personalized than any previous sales actions since you’ve had so much time to accumulate details about the lead.

Here are some common sales activities you’d find in the proposal stage:

• Choose a Business Proposal Template: Many businesses use proposal templates to make the proposal creation process faster.
• Write the Personalized Proposal: Tailor the proposal to the needs of the prospect and be sure to end with a call-to-action.
• Send the Proposal: Email or mail the proposal and a business proposal cover letter to the decision makers.
• Hold a Meeting to Review the Proposal: Go over questions and concerns of the recipient and overcome them.

If included, this will usually be the final stage of the nurturing process. It’s followed by the closing step, where you’ll try to turn a verbal agreement to buy into a written one.

Closed/Won or Closed/Lost

How to Create Your Lead Nurturing Process

Your lead nurturing process tells your team what they need to do to get qualified leads into a buyer mentality. There are steps you can take to create a nurturing process that fits your needs, sales process, and business model. Keep in mind that the same business might have multiple nurturing processes — one for each unique product or service.

Here are the steps for creating a lead nurturing process:

1. Outline Your Overall Sales Process: Before mapping the specifics of your lead nurturing process, sketch out your overall sales process, which includes your lead generation and deal-closing efforts. This will help with nurturing because you'll know where leads are coming from and where you want them to end up.
2. Map Your Lead Nurturing Process: With your overall sales process loosely defined, further refine your lead nurturing portion by defining the 3–5 milestones necessary to get a lead in the buying mentality on their journey from qualified to closing. Look over the journeys of past closed/won customers and jot down the most common sales interactions.
3. Translate Your Nurturing Process Into Pipeline Stages: Turn each milestone of the nurturing process into a specific stage in a sales pipeline, which we recommend hosting in a CRM. Learn how to do this in our article on how to build a sales pipeline.
4. Determine Each Stage’s Required Benchmark: Select the criteria a lead must hit to move through each stage of your lead nurturing process. These criteria are often an action a lead must take or demonstrate, such as accepting a sales call or saying yes to a live demo.
5. Identify Sales Activities for Each Stage: Pick the impactful actions your salespeople must take during each stage to move a lead into the following stage. The goal of the activities is to inspire the lead to take the action that qualifies them for the next stage.
6. Start Nurturing Leads Through the Pipeline: Place your current leads in the correct stage in your pipeline and begin doing each stage’s associated sales activities. In your CRM, you can move leads through the pipeline when they hit the benchmark for entry.
7. Measure and Optimize Your Process: Measure key CRM metrics to assess the performance of your nurturing process and to find weak spots, like certain stages where many leads drop out.

You should always strive to improve your lead nurturing process through testing new strategies like adding more touchpoints, diversifying your communication channels, or using new lead nurturing strategies, which you can learn about below.

Top 6 Lead Nurturing Strategies

Throughout your different lead nurturing stages, you’ll use strategies to help the lead feel comfortable with and desirous of buying your offering. Below are some powerful lead nurturing strategies that will help you in this endeavor, such as being available to answer questions, running email nurturing campaigns, using social media, and more. You can adopt all six strategies or pick and choose the ones that work best with your lead nurturing process.

• Address Questions and Concerns: Make yourself available to answer questions or rebut any objections, proving your expertise and value add.
• Run Email Nurturing Campaigns: Build trust with your leads by sending them automated yet personalized emails as they move through your pipeline.
• Interact Over Social Media: Engage with leads casually by tagging them in appropriate posts to keep your name and business top of mind.
• Create and Share Valuable Content: Use your lead’s specific interests or needs to create targeted content to support their research and confidence in your solution.
• Use Lead Nurturing Software: Track, organize, and automate your nurturing methods through software to visualize when and how to engage with leads.
• Invite Leads to Events: Extend invites to leads for any company hosted event, such as conferences or webinars, for them to learn more about your brand and solution.

Consider testing several strategies throughout your pipeline to see which resonate with your leads best and help you move leads through your sales process efficiently.

3 Best Lead Nurturing Examples

Below are three examples of lead nurturing from different seller types: B2B or B2C services, B2B products, and B2C products. As a rule of thumb, the more complex or expensive the solution, the more touch points will be needed between the seller and the buyer because the buyer will need more understanding and trust to become comfortable enough to make the purchase.

B2B or B2C Service Lead Nurturing Process Example

B2B or B2C services, from event catering to financial advisory, will often speak with a lead, then give a virtual or in-person presentation, then follow that up with a written proposal to lay out and finalize the details. Here are the common stages:

1. Sales Call Stage: Over a few calls, the seller learns more about the lead, asking them questions about their needs and business, and then gives a full sales pitch if it seems like a good fit.
2. Sales Presentation Stage: The salesperson gives more in-depth information about the service and how it will solve the lead’s specific pain points with the help of a sales deck.
3. Proposal Stage: In a sales proposal, the seller goes into greater detail about how the service will work for the customer and the specifics of the agreement such as deadline dates and pricing. B2B proposals tend to be more comprehensive.

If you’re selling writing, web development, consulting, accounting, or other service-based offerings, it’s crucial that you spend time forming a relationship with the buyer. Since they’ll be interacting with you routinely after purchase, they’ll want a partner who is both easy to work with and attentive to their needs.

B2B Product Lead Nurturing Process Example

B2B product companies, such as SaaS or equipment, usually have lead nurturing processes rich in live product demos and calls with various decision makers. Below is a common lead nurturing process these businesses will use:

1. Sales Email Stage: The salesperson sends a few emails to the lead, explaining to them how they can help and attempting to book a consultation.
2. Sales Call Stage: The sales rep will hold a call or two to both fully qualify and pitch the lead. These calls will also form the foundation of the relationship.
3. Product Demo Stage: This will usually involve giving multiple live product demos to various decision makers within the company, as well as answering questions about the solution and providing supporting material to help them make their decision.

Whether you’re selling a SaaS product, a piece of machinery, electronics, or supplies, you’ll want to focus on demonstrating why your product is the best fit for your lead's need. Focus your conversations and demos on the lead’s specific pain points and spend time discussing the features that will address them.

B2C Product Lead Nurturing Process Example

B2C product businesses in industries like consumer electronics or automobiles use slightly different lead nurturing tactics than B2B or service industries. Their process relies more on the marketing team’s nurturing efforts, and, if the product is low-priced, might even forgo detailed lead qualification or involvement from a sales team. However, in the two-step example below, we include a sales rep:

1. Email Nurturing Campaign Stage: After a lead downloads a lead magnet that signifies interest in a product, marketers send an automated email sequence offering a demo. Usually, the emails also deliver content that helps the lead solve a relevant problem.
2. Product Demo Stage: When the lead agrees to a demo or schedules it on a meeting scheduler app, a salesperson conducts the product demo, either over video conference or in person (e.g., at a car dealership).

The lead nurturing for lower-priced products like a piece of jewelry or a T-shirt is often short. Sometimes businesses will get a purchase from a lead they just generated. For instance, a Facebook ad might send a lead to the ecommerce store where the lead buys something right away. Regardless, B2C product companies should still create a lead nurturing process for those less trigger-happy leads and to nurture buyers into customers for other products.

In each of the scenario examples above, we suggest the appropriate stages to include in the lead nurturing process. You can always add more touch points as needed. Whether you’re selling B2B or B2C products or services, the lead nurturing process you adopt into your sales process will strengthen your relationship with your lead and get them closer to a purchasing decision.

Bottom Line: Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of consistently engaging with your leads to get them increasingly comfortable with your brand and desirous of your product or service. To do it well, personalize your nurturing to each new lead, share content that relates to their interests, and hold calls and meetings that give them the information they’re interested in. Once this stage is complete and your lead is satisfied with the information you’ve prepared, move on to closing the deal.