The

Ultimate P laybook
for nurturing non-advancing
B2B sales prospects
 introduction

nurture nrCHr/ Leads that have

Def.: care for and encourage the growth or development of. actively engaged
with you in the
Lets face the music you may be the best organization in the world at sales process
generating leads, but not every qualified lead is ready to buy after the first are a precious
meeting.
commodity
Did you know that 80% of sales are made on or after the 5th12th contact?
whether the
prospect has sat
in on a demo or
when sales are made self-identified
as a lead.
2% on the 1st contact

3% on the 2nd contact

5% on the 3rd contact

10% on the 4th contact

80% on or after the 5th-12th contact

Source: The National Sales

Executive Association

So the question becomes: If 80% of sales are made on or after the 5th 12th
contact, how do you stay front-and-center in the minds of prospects? Leads
that have actively engaged with you in the sales process are a precious
commodity whether the prospect has sat in on a demo or self-identified as
a lead. Nurturing programs are designed to keep prospects engaged with
your company. At its core, lead nurturing gives sales and marketing pros the
capacity to educate qualified sales leads that are not yet ready to buy. You
want to build a compelling brand image with your prospects, so that when
they are likely to make that purchase, your solution is top-of-mind.

Somewhere between 30-50% of the leads enter the pipeline qualified, but are
not ready to buy immediately, according to Gleanster Research. To
successfully shepherd those leads toward making a purchase from your
company, lead nurturing techniques must be based on the prospects
location in the buying cycle. CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 2

 introduction

According to most buyer models, prospects reside in one of the following ... its key to
phases.
know which
individuals you
Awareness need to reach
Prospects are aware of a pain or need and/or your type of solution.
to deploy the
Evaluation right
Prospects understand your offering, but are assessing if it is the best fit. communication
strategy to
Purchase reach those
Prospects are ready to buy. stakeholders.
As you start (or continue to develop) your lead nurturing program, you
have to be sure youve set the table first, so to speak.

Understanding the individual(s) involved

in the buying process

In larger organizations, complex buying decisions are made by committee

with multiple stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Thus,
its key to know which individuals you need to reach to deploy the right
communication strategy to reach those stakeholders. Optimally, you
should create an Ideal Prospect Profile that details the type of people
involved in buying decisions for your product. Let that IPP guide your
communication strategy.

Proper alignment between sales

and marketing

Lead nurturing is most often a function facilitated by marketing for the

purpose of fueling the sales team. If youre not careful, the process can
break down between marketing and sales teams. The two departments
have to work in tandem to (1) map a process where nurtured leads are
being passed to sales at the right time, and (2) ensure that suitable
content is being used content that will educate and subtly guide
prospects towards your solution. CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 3

 introduction

Proper alignment between sales Leads that have

and marketing (continued) actively engaged
with you in the
Sometimes, sales departments nurture leads that they want to keep close
sales process
to the vest (as is often the case with non-advancing but engaged are a precious
prospects), but the approaches of traditional marketing teams and sales commodity
teams often differ. Sales tends to use methods that are focused on whether the
building a direct relationship, while marketing tends to use mass prospect has sat
communication techniques to build rapport. Ultimately, no matter which in on a demo or
department you choose to manage lead nurturing activity, there has to be
good alignment and feedback.
self-identified
as a lead.
Evaluating buyer readiness and
setting benchmarks
Often buyers will clue you in with their digital behavior. They might be
clicking on your emails more, or visiting certain pages on your website. If
you have the resources that capture that information, you can use that
data to identify indicators of buyer readiness. Lead scoring becomes
extremely handy within the use case of a lead nurturing program. Often
organizations will establish a lead scoring model that benchmarks digital
behavior and, once a prospect reaches a certain score, an action will be
triggered like a phone call or some other direct outreach.

From a broader perspective, you can also use aggregate data to identify
the content that appeals most to your prospect base. Perhaps theres
some content that is resonating more with prospects; develop more of
that content to maintain engagement.

EMAIL NURTURING >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 4

 email nurturing

Elements of a Successful Email The purpose of

Lead Nurturing Campaign marketing-
oriented nurtur-
The objectives of a lead nurturing campaign driven from sales in a
ing campaigns is
post-engagement capacity are straightforward: to help move
prospects
1. Passive through the
Reinforce your brand and your solution so when the prospect has prospecting cycle
ripened, youre top-of-mind without much
human interac-
2. Proactive tion, until the
Give sales a reason to reach out. prospects initi-
Its important to keep these goals in mind throughout the process; they
ate action.
will guide you towards the specific techniques and content used to
construct and deploy sales nurturing programs.

The purpose of marketing-oriented nurturing campaigns is to help move

prospects through the prospecting cycle without much human
interaction, until the prospects initiate action. Sales-oriented nurturing
campaigns, the subject of this whitepaper, are intended to clue you in on
when re-engagement through personal interaction is likely to succeed.
When using a marketing automation platform (like Eloqua, Marketo, or
Hubspot), a straight-line drip program is usually the easiest way to
construct a nurture track. Its a straight line of emails spaced out by time,
with no complex behavioral branching or fancy automation. They are
highly optimized for those two very intentional purposes we keep harping
on: to stay in front of leads over a long period, and to offer clues as to
when a personal interaction is justified. Lets do a deeper dive into some
of the elements of a classic sales nurturing campaign.
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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 5

 email nurturing

Who Should be the Sender? Think about it

this way: Pros-
Its simple. If your sales department is originating the emails, they should pects wouldnt
come from sales. This is too often overlooked as an insignificant detail. normally expect
The whole point is to make each email look to be a direct interaction from a salesperson to
a salesperson. So if you can, the sender of the email should be the write fancy
salesperson that owns the lead. This shouldnt be too challenging as
most marketing automation tools offer robust functionality around
code for HTML
sender alias.
emails. The most
effective emails
Format and Layout for Sales Drip Nurturing are those that
are text-based
The format and layout of the nurturing email is very important and tends and personal-
to take the simplistic route for success. Think about it this way: ized.
Prospects wouldnt normally expect a salesperson to write fancy code for
HTML emails. The most effective emails are those that are text-based
and personalized. Here are a few more tips to help with engagement:

For deliverability, nix the links in your signature: These

links are in truth the least clicked links in an email. In fact, they can
actually hurt you on email deliverability. Spam filters often use
ratios of text to links to assess the probability of spam in arriving
email.

To get your email read, keep it short: As you draft your

templates, write them as if you were writing a note to a friend.
Optimally, keep your emails to three to four sentences and devoid
of extraneous information.

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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 6

 email nurturing

Subject Lines for Sales Drip Nurturing The purpose of

marketing-
The goal of the subject line in a sales lead nurturing campaigns is oriented nurtur-
building and maintaining rapport. In general, your subject lines should ing campaigns is
focus on the prospect and their function things that matter to them. to help move
They should not be focused on you or your sales goals. Look at email prospects
marketing campaigns that have been successful for guidelines on
subject lines that resonate with your prospect base. Sometimes you can
through the
also look at some of the emails of your most successful sales reps for
prospecting cycle
ideas on subject lines that work. Some classic examples of subject lines without much
for sales drip nurturing include: human interac-
tion, until the
Thought you might enjoy this prospects initi-
Just wanted to leave this with you ate action.
Did you see this?
This may be helpful to you
Saw this and thought of you

The All-Important Call-to-Action (CTA)

Ask any marketing pro and theyll tell you the call-to-action in a campaign
is of utmost importance. Once youve gotten the reader to open your
email, you need to give yourself the best chance of having the prospect
take action. Keep these things in mind when baking CTAs into sales
nurturing campaigns:

Hyperlink > No hyperlink: If you use a hyperlink, you can track if the
lead engages with your email. Then, you can use that intelligence for a
multitude of actions: notify your salesperson, use it towards a lead
scoring model, and track their digital behavior once they click through.

P lace the CTA at the top of the copy: People read top-to-bottom.
Research shows that you increase your chance for engagement by
placing the CTA at the top of the email copy.

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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 7

 email nurturing

Cadence and Timelines Try this: Go talk

to your favorite
Try to mimic sales natural follow-up process. These leads wont be in a salesperson or a
campaign until they are in the salespersons hands. So the campaigns high-performing
should simulate salesperson interaction to appear as personal and rep and ask
candid as possible. them what their
Try this: Go talk to your favorite salesperson or a high-performing rep and
follow-up pro-
ask them what their follow-up process is with sales leads. How long do
cess is with
they usually wait in their cadence of follow-up phone calls and emails? sales leads.
A sample follow-up cadence might look like this:

follow-up calendar

DAY 1 DAY 2 DAY 3

phone email email

call

DAY 4 DAY 5

phone email
call

Depending on your sales cycle and the responsiveness of prospects, you

might experiment with different cadences to ascertain if one works better
than another. Its a fine line between annoying and persistent. Be aware of
those unspoken boundaries.

TYPES OF EMAIL LEAD NURTURING CAMPAIGNS >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 8

 types of email lead nurturing campaigns

The types of lead nurturing emails you choose depend largely on your The most
product or service. If you have a software solution and you find heavy successful trials
conversion with a free trial, then perhaps that route might be good to
experiment with. If you offer services, perhaps some free content might
offer a suitable
be in your prospects futures.
combination of
how-to and
Free Trial best practices
resources, and
If you have a SaaS solution or a freemium model, free trial lead nurturing plenty of
techniques welcome the prospects to try your solution no strings opportunities to
attached. Trial offers are ultimately used to immerse prospects in your engage with
solution during their SaaS or software evaluation. your sales reps.
Lead nurturing with a free trial allows you to gives you the ability to
engage the prospect during their trial by offering helpful guidance along
the way, and selling them along the way with features and benefits. You
can enhance the prospects experience by driving insights intended to aid
users in learning your solution and overcome common obstacles and
issues. Trials typically range in length anywhere from a few days to a
few months long; optimally a free trial will include a number of
interactions with the sales rep during that period. The most successful
trials offer a suitable combination of how-to and best practices
resources, and plenty of opportunities to engage with your sales reps.

If the trial is about to expire, you can initiate a softer sell to guide the
prospect towards a close. A harder, action-oriented sales pitch or price
discount could be used to close the lead, after the trial expires.

KPIs for a Free Trial Track:

Trial activation rates (%)
Trial conversion rates (%)
Won revenue from Trials

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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 9

 types of email lead nurturing campaigns

Content-Based / Lifecycle Nurture Lifecycle nurture

journeys can
Lifecycle nurture tracks feature content meant to inform and engage help you stay
leads. These types of tracks are the most common (and arguably the top-of-mind
most important) of all lead nurturing types. By providing helpful content
to prospects on a consistent basis, you have furthered your objective of
with these raw
keeping your company top-of-mind.
leads through
the use of
Theres been lots of research done on inbound leads and the consensus, different types
according to Gleanster Research, is that upwards of 50% of inbound of content:
leads are not sales-ready. MarketingSherpa cites that 79% of marketing whitepapers,
leads never convert into sales and that lack of lead nurturing is the industry
common cause of this poor performance.
information,
One would surmise that the other half of leads that are not sales-ready at
case studies.
the time of their inquiry are doing research, evaluating solutions, lack a Youre trying to
compelling event, or have yet to define the scope of a potential project. earn
Lifecycle nurture journeys can help you stay top-of-mind with these raw engagement
leads through the use of different types of content: whitepapers, industry from these
information, case studies. Youre trying to earn engagement from these prospects.
prospects.

For more sophisticated tracks, content can be tailored to the different

stages of the buying cycle prospects might be in, or other pertinent
customizations on which you might have data. Savvy marketers are
increasingly using lead scoring as a method to identify where prospects
are in the buying cycle, allowing you to provide them with just the right
content at each step in the lead nurturing track. Most marketing
automation software solutions allow users to attribute a score to every
lead based on their digital behavior. Not only does lead scoring allow you
to gauge which content may be most meaningful to a prospect, but it can
also serve as a cue (and notification) to sales reps that the prospect is a
hot lead, and may be ripe for phone follow-up.

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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 10

 types of email lead nurturing campaigns

Content-Based / Lifecycle Nurture (continued) We keep

pounding home
The best content for a lead nurturing track tends to focus on things like: that the goal is
to stay in your
Challenges encountered by your prospects
Best practices related to your solution and the
prospects
challenges you solve consciousness
Industry shifts and insights not to try to
sell your services
Ultimately, in the context of the content you provide, you have to ask with these types
yourself: of lead nurture
touches.
W ill my prospects find this useful and valuable?
W ill my prospects find this relevant and timely?
W ill my prospects find this engaging and interesting?

We keep pounding home that the goal is to stay in your prospects

consciousness not to try to sell your services with these types of lead
nurture touches.

KPIs for a Content-Based /

Lifecycle Nurture Track
Number of re-engaged prospects created from nurture
Email click rates
Number of content downloads

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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 11

 types of email lead nurturing campaigns

Call-to-Action Call-to-action
tracks normally
These types of lead nurturing email tracks are designed for prospects include a few
near the end of the buying cycle the ones that know about their communications
challenges, have researched some solutions perhaps, and are likely and are
actively evaluating a solution. These campaigns direct prospects towards conversional in
sales rep engagement.
nature.
Call-to-action tracks can be initiated with prospects already identified as
Prospective
actively engaged, or they can be initiated as a result of previous buyers who
content-based campaigns triggered when a prospect clicks on an email engage with a
or engages in some other desirable behavior. Call-to-action tracks call-to-action
normally include a few communications and are conversional in nature. track might
Prospective buyers who engage with a call-to-action track might have a have a
compelling event and are considered warmer prospects.
compelling event
If a prospect does not click or engage on any of the call-to-action track
and are
emails, they will often be redistributed back to a content-based track. considered
warmer
KPIs on Call-to-Action Tracks prospects.
Number of sales qualified leads (SQLs)
W ins/revenue from track

INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO LEAD NURTURING >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 12

 integrating social media into lead nurturing

You have to use every tool available to you in staying in front of your Social media is
prospects, so that when they are ready to buy, you are embedded in their here to stay
consciousness. While email is a proven tool in nurturing leads, its not the
only tool in your arsenal. Another tool you can use to engage prospects is
and surprise
social media.
your prospects
are using social
Social media is here to stay and surprise your prospects are using sites.
social sites. As most shrewd marketers know, social networking
platforms are much more than a place to share birthday photos and cat
memes. Social presents another opportunity to engage prospects
throughout the sales cycle. Here are a few ways you can integrate social
media into lead nurturing efforts:

Include social media icons in

lead nurturing emails
What an easy way to integrate social media. If you can get your prospects
engaged on multiple channels (email AND social media), your
opportunities to expose them to your content increase. Its an opportunity
to drive reconversions and pull them back into the sales funnel.

Include social calls-to-action

on content thank-you pages
If you are including gated content (requiring registration) in your
content-based email tracks, throw some social icons on the Thank You
page theyll see upon registration.

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THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 13

 integrating social media into lead nurturing

If a prospect mentions you on Twitter, initiate Business has

a social (or email) lead nurturing track changed. If a
prospect is
Many fully integrated marketing automation platforms allow you to engaged with
automate a stream of communications to a prospect that may mention one of your
your brand on Twitter. So for instance, if a prospect mentions you on sales reps, they
Twitter, you can automatically cue up a series of Tweets to that prospect
to further nurture them. Alternatively, if you have the resources, you can
may expect to
source their email address and initiate a cross-platform email track.
find and
connect with
Encourage your employees to be social that rep online
not your
Business has changed. If a prospect is engaged with one of your sales company, but
reps, they may expect to find and connect with that rep online not your that person.
company, but that person. Did you know? The number of CEOs that are
active on social media will surge by over 40% in the next five years,
according to a recent IBM study. Encourage your employees to be active
on social media. They can share your content and ultimately provide
another opportunity to connect with prospects. At a minimum, once a
sales rep is engaged with a prospect, they should connect with them on
LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter.

THE TRADITIONAL PHONE CALL >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 14

 the traditional phone call

Heres a quick tip: Dont depend on email marketing or social media alone If resources and
to nurture your valuable prospects. The whole idea is to re-engage in the time allow,
most personal way and it doesnt get more personal than one-on-one
interaction.
follow up on
any meaningful
If resources and time allow, follow up on any meaningful interaction with interaction with
your social media or email nurturing tracks with a phone call. Your your social
guiding principle should be to uncover anything that might have changed media or email
since you last spoke to the prospect: challenges, needs, hot buttons. nurturing tracks
Open-ended questions encourage dialogue: Since we last spoke, I saw with a phone
you downloaded our whitepaper on XYZ. Did you find that useful? Are you
still in the same position as when we last spoke or has something
call.
changed?

If someone responds to a nurture campaign, it is so crucial that you call

them immediately. You incited the behavior you wanted. Dont wait
around. The whole objective of any nurture campaign is to stay in front of
prospects, to be there when they have a question or may be ready to buy.
So make sure youre there when theyre ready.

ABOUT SALESSTAFF >

THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOOK FOR NURTURING NON-ADVANCING B2B SALES PROSPECTS 15

 about salesstaff

Our History W hat Our Clients

Are Saying
Our company evolved from a 1990s consulting practice that guided
hundreds of CEOs and Entrepreneurs on the implementation of sales
training, systems and processes; staffed thousands of sales people; and
created branding, messaging and go-to-market plans for hundreds of In evaluating Demand
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with key executives and generate leads on behalf of our clients B2B sales IT Security Client
teams to expand their sales pipelines and accelerate sales cycles.
What we liked most about
Services Overview working with the team at
SalesStaff was the open
communication we had
Pay for performance appointment setting can jump-start your throughout the course of
organizations sales pipeline. A 100-Day Pilot will offer your company the
the campaign. They were
opportunity to build a sales pipeline with our meetings, monitor
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Pay for performance guarantees qualified meetings with successfully developed a
qualified prospects structured process to
Various meeting volume options follow-up with key
Custom lead modeling according to your marketing plan prospects. Managed
No set-up or data Fees Services Client
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Your Pilot will be designed to include a strategic lead nurturing plan for
What I like most about
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