Reclaiming Leads from Sales

When sales reps reject a marketing-qualified lead, or recycle a sales-accepted lead, the decision marketing makes about how to handle them is important.

Research has shown that 70% of qualified leads ignored by sales end up buying within two years, so it's critical to keep nurturing, even if their buying horizon has shifted farther out. Especially if you want them to buy from your company.

If you don't, you're just wasting the overall investment your company has made in both generating and engaging that lead to date. This scenario reminds me of that commercial where the kid keeps trying to throw out the recycled minutes in favor of new ones, but the mom keeps saving them and telling her son why those older minutes are still valuable.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see the correlation to the general marketing mindset that wants to keep generating new leads despite the ones they've already spent time and money to attract. Kind of cavalier, don't you think?

So, what choice do you make when reclaiming a lead into nurturing?

Quite often, that lead is tossed back into the beginning of the funnel. But that doesn't make any sense.

That's like sending your leads back to Kindergarten.

Unless, of course, marketing tossed them to sales after one click to download a white paper or because they registered for one webinar. If this is the case, they weren't really nurtured, were they? Not when typical complex sales cycles are running 5 - 8 months.

Think about the message your company is promoting if you send reclaimed leads information they've already seen. Relevance is critical for every step of the nurturing process. If you insult their intelligence, how well do you think that bodes for a future relationship?

For companies who have business-cycle nurturing in place it's imperative to place leads into a nurturing program that progresses their knowledge and education beyond where they left off.

Here are a few ideas about how to insert leads back into nurturing programs:

• Re-assign the lead to the program at the point they transitioned out.
  
  This is dependent upon how much interaction they had with the sales team prior to being returned. It's also a big reason why marketing needs visibility into sales activities. Otherwise coordinating re-insertion to marketing is more difficult than it needs to be.


• Establish several extension nurturing programs and enable the salesperson to select which one is most appropriate for the lead when they send them back.


• Send a transitional email with several offerings that invites the lead to indicate through their behavior and selection how they'd like to be communicated with moving forward.
  
  Yes, I know. You're screaming - "Wait, what if they unsubscribe?" But, what makes you think they won't do so if your content is irrelevant to them anyway? Even if they just delete, delete, delete, wouldn't you rather eliminate those leads who are totally uninterested from your nurturing pool? Concentrating on those who want to hear from you raises your odds of success.

However you choose to reintegrate leads that salespeople aren't actively working, you need to give your process some thought. And you need to make sure you consider the lead's perspective when you do so. The point is to continue to build a valuable relationship while the lead deals with whatever got in the way of their buying process with you.

Priorities shuffle. Then they shuffle again. Marketing needs to take responsibility for the long-term and let sales focus on selling in the shorter window. It's how you reclaim those leads that will dictate the ROI on that investment you made in generating them in the first place.

What other ideas do you have for how marketing can best reclaim leads?

Comments

[Marci Reynolds]

This is good information. So often Sales Reps cherry pick leads and a majority get ignored.. Turning then back over to Marketing is wise- especially in this economy where every penny counts!

[Ardath Albee]

Thanks, Marci!

Hmm. Cherry picking - great idea for a blog post.

Ardath

[Michele Goetz]

So important! Great post.

I've also found that even if the leads aren't the ones that sales will engage with, they still tend to be the once helping and influencing decisions sales is currently working on. This is where marketing can really provide the air coverage that sales always begs for.

Michele
http://brain-vibe.com

[Ardath Albee]

Great point, Michele!

Influencers are even more important given "social" interactions and pass along. But what marketers often forget is that, depending on who the influencers are, the content needs to match their interests. This means that content is likely different from decision maker content.

Focus influencer content on stimulating dialogue by giving them something to talk to the decision maker about because you've addressed the stake they have in the project.

Thanks for commenting!
Ardath