Most companies selling B2B do not effectively nurture their early stage leads.  In fact, according to a study done by the MetaGroup, fully 70-90 percent of marketing-generated leads are never acted on at all, because sales found them unqualified for immediate or near-term sales.

Of those leads that are followed up and qualified, only about 16 percent actually close, according to Aberdeen Group. The remaining 84% of qualified leads that do not turn into short-term sales will end up slipping through the cracks, either because there is no lead nurturing program available, or because the company lacks a mechanism for sales people to recycle leads.

Companies who do nurture and recycle their leads achieve significantly higher sales performance when it comes to lead-to-sales conversions, bid-win ratios, and average order value.

According to Aberdeen Group, nurtured leads net 47 percent higher average order values.  And, The Pedowitz Group (an independent demand generation consultancy), reports most companies that implement lead nurturing see a 2 to 3x lift in conversions from cold leads to qualified opportunities.

Generally speaking, lead nurturing campaigns won’t deliver instant results in the first few months. The Aberdeen Group reports it generally takes 6-12 months before the first qualified leads start to trickle out of a campaign. We tell our clients their nurturing program will take at least the length of a typical buying cycle  (not the selling cycle) before it starts bearing fruit.

With a 2 to 3x lift in conversions from cold leads to qualified opportunities, and 45+ percent higher average order value – the effort to nurture buyers is worth it – without a doubt!

The guy that really helped me improve my business-to-business marketing game is Hugh Macfarlane. Our relationship started 20 years ago as colleagues at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and since then we (and his clever team in Melbourne, Australia) have become friends and business partners.

You’ll want to soak up Hugh’s insights, and learn from the team’s extensive experience with more than 300 growth projects for some of the world’s leading companies. Usually it costs more than $20K.

Fortunately, Hugh wrote a book called The Leaky Funnel. In it he condenses many of his great ideas (and innumerable others from past colleagues, customers and thought leaders such as Jim Collins, Geoffrey Moore, Michael Porter, and Al Ries). Why? Because he and his team want to dramatically improve the effectiveness of b2b marketing by aligning Sales and Marketing to how businesses buy.

That said, take advantage of Hugh and buy ‘The Leaky Funnel.’  It will help you out-THINK, out-MARKET & out-EARN the competition.

Buy your copy of The Leaky Funnel

MathMarketing’s white paper, The Strategy to Action Gap: How to Turn Good Ideas into Hard Sales Results, is now available for you to download for free.

Find out the 3 overriding reasons why this gap exists, and learn about the 3 proven steps you can take to turn your strategy into action and results.  In this white paper we’ll show you how to:

• Build your strategy around your buyers’ journey;
• Take what you already know and make it work harder for you; and
• Get the whole team on board.

To find out how, read our free white paper today.

These traditional boondoggles cost valuable time and money, and are usually not effectively organized or measured for impact. Historically, companies have gathered their sales forces and distributors in a resort-type atmosphere to feed them motivational speakers, washed down by ample food, drink, and recreation, all with the objective to motivate their performance to achieve sales goals for the coming year.

One of my favorite examples can be found here.   Naturally, the CEO and the SVP/Chief Marketing Officer wanted to ‘ignite passion and the full power of the company around one mission.’  Most attendees, if they were brutally honest about it, would call the exercise a waste of time, energy and money.  Otherwise intelligent, well-educated, highly-regarded, wealthy people in huge offices make dunderheaded decisions like that every day, because they are surrounded by people afraid to tell them that they’re not wearing any clothes.

What motivates sales people? Money in the pocket, that’s what.

Try a creative alternative to the sales kick-off meeting by creating special compensation incentive programs based on achieving agreed upon goals. After all, remember that the budget should already reflect a bottoms-up process involving everyone in the organization, so spending a lot of time, effort, and money to encourage people to achieve their goal is redundant.

What really counts is rewarding the achievement of the goals after the fact, and distributing the money saved by avoiding the sales kick-off meeting to the achievers is a good adjunct to other incentive awards. If you use the sales kick-off meeting to communicate to employees or train new skills or sharpen old ones there are more cost and time effective local and on-line approaches.