The Importance of Nurtured Relationships in Sales Prospecting

B2B prospecting is a challenging feat all around. In order to rise above the cluttered landscape of typical cold outreach methods, a more personalized approach is required. Here are the steps to nurturing these relationships from the get-go.

Discover your ideal customer profile

As much as 50% of a marketing budget (possibly more) can be wasted on unqualified leads. Hence, the importance of figuring out who your Ideal Customer Profile and buyer personas are and targeting relevant audiences.

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Develop a more tailored outreach plan

Planning campaigns and outreach strategies take time. One of the ways to help reduce the time and resources spent on such tasks is through audience segmentation and drilling down to their preferences, so you can adopt a more tailored outreach strategy.

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Deep dive into your messaging

Once you've drilled into the specifics of who your audience is, you can then create messages with their industry and professional pain points in mind, giving you a greater advantage in terms of positive response rates.

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Benefits you can expect from lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is the pillar of relationship-building online. It is the starting point of converting a prospect into a long-standing client, increasing the odds of expanding your market share in due time.

The benefits of proper lead nurturing are many and include:

• Scaling your business. Lead nurturing is effective at targeting quantifiable and qualifiable leads. This, in conjunction with automated lead nurturing techniques, enables the correct identification and nurturing of quality leads at scale.

• Longer-lasting client relationships. Established brands know that the key to longevity is the quality of client relationships. Relationships are usually built over a period of time, and only after having earned the trust and respect of your audience as a result of the statements you make, the promises you keep, and the problems you solve.

• Better rates of conversion. Lead nurturing is very much a process of walking your ideal customer through the sales cycle, and acting as their point of reference at each touchpoint throughout the sales journey. Leading the conversation every step of the way essentially removes the 'guess' factor and replaces it with the surety factor prospects need to progress further along the sales funnel, resulting in better rates of conversion, sales, and ROI.

• Improved marketing spend. A large proportion of marketing budgets is wasted by throwing all the money in one direction as opposed to allocating it more frugally across a more focused marketing spend and seeing better results.

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Common outreach strategies and tactics

Do what works best for your business. Deciding which channels to use depends on preference and what your outreach strategy dictates.

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Email

Considered one of the most cost-effective methods of outbound marketing with one of the highest ROI, email marketing is a force to be reckoned with, especially in sales prospecting.

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Personalized messages

Whether through email, or social media, elevating your sales pitch to include elements of personalization is an excellent way to 'humanize' outreach messages or calls, thereby giving every interaction a personal touch that prospects naturally expect.

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Social selling and social listening

The power of social selling to generate leads and scale business growth is limitless. Knowing how and where to engage with your audience is an essential component of creating authentic relationships online.

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It's all in the workflow

Knowing what the process is will not only keep your sales strategy more aligned with your objectives, but your workflow will also act as checkpoints for each step of the lead nurturing process, ensuring you don't miss a beat at any point in the sales cycle.

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Measuring the results

The process of lead nurturing is an unending one; one in which you are likely to experience many dips and bends in the road en route to gaining loyal clients. Measuring your performance along the way is a critical component in lead nurturing to know what works and what doesn't. Furthermore, one can expect preferences and tastes to change over time, whether through evolution or competition. 

In summary, the sales prospecting journey can only be described as a thorough one; one in which all avenues are explored and exhausted in the pursuit of reaching and building relationships that few can compete with. Fortunately, the guys at Hangar49 have perfected their outreach process to produce proven results time and time again. Need assistance building a sales pipeline and growing market share in the B2B space? Reach out to us to make those necessary and very crucial introductions.