A Perfect Blend Of Lead Scoring And Lead Nurturing

A Perfect Blend Of Lead Scoring And Lead Nurturing:from Business 2 Community by Belinda Summers

There are various ways that your company can generate much needed business to business sales leads, from online social media to advertisements to word-of-mouth. However, it is necessary to come up with a strategy to make sure that those b2b sales leads convert to sales, if not soon, then in the near future.
It is a given that only about 15%-20% of your generated b2b sales leads will convert to sales immediately, give or take a few. So how do you make sure that there are no wasted efforts and all leads convert to a sale? The best way to do this is to plan a lead nurturing strategy and complement that with an effective lead scoring system. A lead nurturing strategy alone is all well and good, but without a means of effectively measuring how likely your leads are to convert into sales, you will end up directing all sales leads through your lead nurturing program, when they could have already converted into a sale earlier with just a little bit more aggressive marketing.
Not all sales leads will follow the ladder of cold, warm and hot. Certain unforeseen events may take place that could take them directly from cold to hot: a sudden change in corporate leadership, essential operational equipment breaking down or unexpected changes in company workforce numbers. Even an unfortunate reverse transition may occur with the leads in your lead nurturing program. Unchecked sales and marketing agents who fail to follow up on leads, unintentional communication errors that end up frustrating executives, again – changes in corporate leadership and other lamentable factors.
Your lead scoring system must be tested and compared against previously closed sales to ensure its reliability, and explicit and implicit scores must be well defined. Since implicit scores define attributes that are specific and unique to each sales lead, this should be utilized more as the basis for scoring throughout lead nurturing. Explicit scores define a broader characteristic for identifying sales leads, therefore are more effective in scoring during sales lead generation than during lead nurturing.
Continuous lead scoring throughout lead nurturing would immediately alert your sales team when warm sales leads skip a level directly to hot, allowing you to take advantage of the situation right away. It will also allow your marketing team to implement appropriate procedures to save a backtracking lead before it’s too late.
This post originally appeared at CallBoxInc