Personal Touch Nurturing Programs
March 3rd, 2008 by Mike McKinnonI came across this post today from Mike Volpe on his HubSpot blog. The post takes a much talked about program, in this case lead nurturing, and uses a real life experience to draw out the lessons. To me, this is always more powerful than theorizing.
What I really liked about this post is that Mike uses technology to assist his relationship not hinder it; as can be the case today. We have so aos many tools at our disposal that we often confuse “e-mail drip” as nurturing. Mike used technology. Admittedly, he used facebook, his blog, salesforce and a webinar. However, the difference was he injected the human touch into each of these technologies. Not once, did Mike resort to mass communication with Kristen. Each contact he had built upon their previous contact – he gained momentum and traction with each post.
We are implementing nurturing programs here at ReadyTalk and I am trying to find that balance between automated communication and personal touch. I believe to be efficient and effective a proper mix of both is needed. What area some of the ways you mix automation with the personal touch for your nurturing campaigns?
Technorati Tags: B2B, lead generation, Mike Volper, HubSpot
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Thanks for the comments on my article. I really think that no one has figured out the perfect lead nurturing system yet. It would be great to make it both more personal and more automated, but that is not simple.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Now this is the rub – isn’t Mike. Here I think what we are going to do in the beginning is leave the automation to marketing based on job function and industry segment. This way we can message appropriately. Any personal touches will be done by the sales person either through their own accord or at the behest of the marketing team. We have a relatively small (12) sales force so this should not be hard. Will this scale? I do not know.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Great stuff at your blog! May I please add some thoughts.
Historically, sales people have been terrible at “nurturing” leads. They are paid to close, so a bookable deal almost always pre-empts opportunity development.
That’s why most of my clients have moved “nurturing” from sales to marketing, and they are more effective for it. Of course, both sales and marketing must collaborate to establish definitions and criteria for “lead” and “sales-ready,” as well as the process for handling no-go’s and not-yets.
And a caution: do not over-rely on technology to nurture or produce results. Especially for considered decisions, most b-to-b prospects want to communicate with a live human being during the consideration and buying cycle.
Michael A. Brown, President
Business To Business By Phone
http://www.michaelabrown.net
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