Current sales industry research by Marketing Sherpa recently brought to light that 75% of all sales leads generated will eventually turn into paying customers in less than two years.
In other words, the frequently heard whining from sales reps about their marketing-generated leads are at least moderately misguided. Some prospects won’t turn into revenue overnight, or even in the time frame the rep wants. But contrary to popular belief, it’s relatively rare for a sales lead to be total garbage.
The data is proof positive that it’s critical to to use effective lead management and nurturing, even if they aren’t going to move farther down the pipeline for some time—and a sales CRM can act as a important part of a prospect development program.
However, sales managers need to be careful that a drip campaign program doesn’t become a crutch, or a fallback for initial contacting, qualifying, and lead generation activities.. Why make prospecting calls and respond immediately to new leads when you can simply “nurture” them instead?
This is a dangerous state of affairs, because as the Sales 2.0 Network observes, when a rep fails to close a deal, it’s almost always a result of one of two things—you shouldn’t have been pursuing the opportunity to begin with because you weren’t the right fit, or you got outworked by a rival.
“Drip” marketing is potentially valuable, but immediate response principles are just as crucial, because they inoculate companies against both causes of lost sales. Immediate response means reps have a much higher probability of making contact. Your ability to set an appointment and start a viable needs analysis increases, and it happens in less time. Furthermore, fast lead response makes a better impression for the contact. You’ll have a greater ability to know immediately whether you’re you actually have a realistic shot of closing the deal, and generate an environment of trust in both the short- and long-term.