The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) is, at its essence, an umbrella organization for a large variety of smaller groups, or "Societies," which TAG divides into three categories: People, Function, and Industry. Each Society is represented by their own board or directors, sponsors, and hosts their own regular events. The Society pages on TAGthink are where the people involved in these groups connect and share in-depth information on a daily basis.
 |
Maximizing Lead Nurturing to Increase Sales Opportunities
Businesses often get overwhelmed by “lead noise.” Should salespeople chase down every lead? Should some leads be ignored in lieu of higher priority leads? Yesterday, TAG Marketing tackled this dilemma by exploring methods of automating lead nurturing in order to maximize the number of a company’s qualified leads with minimal effort. The panel discussion included Heather Pritchett (Ventyx), Paul Shiman (Stratix Corp.), Teri Marks-Bruner (Paymetrics), and Colleen Flynn (ThePort Network). Moderator Judson Phillips (Reveille Software) guided the discussion. Some takeaways:
• It helps to have a company’s marketing strategy clear and in line before implementing an automated lead nurturing program or solution. Without a good strategy, the lead nurturing will fail.
• Analyze where you are in your sales and marketing efforts in order to best customize a solution. Are you a small company with a relatively modest track record of sophisticated sales and marketing campaigns? Are you a large or growing company with many years of heavy sales and marketing experience? This history will affect how you approach automated lead nurturing.
• Examining how you nurture and respond to leads will force you to reassess your business processes, which can be a healthy exercise for your company.
• It is essential to start with a clean database. Bad data will spell disaster down the road.
• Lead nurturing doesn't work without great content. Content (i.e. value propositions, marketing messaging, etc.) needs to entice, nudge and nurture prospects as they move through the sales cycle.
• Pay attention to lead scoring. The panelists recommended that a company work with their vendor to help define how much each action the prospect takes is worth, and also to work with the sales team to define when a lead should be considered qualified.
• The end goal of improving lead nurturing is to not waste time with people who aren’t going to buy.
(Kevin Howarth, Sophicity, reporting)
