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How to Nurture and Engage Inbound B2B Leads

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How often does your business have this problem?

A lead comes in and, depending on the platform, they are interested in hearing what you say for maybe the first hour afterward. After that, they get busy with other tasks or projects and your service falls further down their priority list. Eventually, maybe they even forget why they wanted to contact you in the first place.

Either way – the result is the same. By the time you get around to contacting them, your very hot inbound lead has gone cold, and with it any chance of creating a sale.

Thankfully, we’ve found a way around this, that we’re going to share in this article.

The Best Way to Engage Leads to Keep Them Warm

Using a workflow and formulating a sales process is the best way we’ve found to keep leads engaged and interested in your product – while cultivating a relationship with them and building rapport. 

It is important to remember, however, that while workflows can be effective, you’re still dealing with a person on the other end – and people love the personal touch. Choosing the right workflow response at the right time is crucial. The more personal you can make each message the better, and don’t be afraid to break your workflow if things go faster (or slower) than expected.

You may be asking, however, what more is there to say? After introducing a client to your service, what more can you really engage with them about without it becoming a “hard sell”?

Here are a few topics we’ve found, that let you organically extend the conversation with potential clients:

  • Introduction to a valuable relationship.
    • Perhaps you know someone who would be of benefit to your lead. Introductions cost nothing, and reciprocity is a very powerful force.
  • A different product or service we offer that might be of interest to them instead.
    • Sometimes a lead’s hesitation is that your offering isn’t aligning with their needs 100%. In that case, try to identify their friction points and offer your best alternative.
  • Congratulating them on achievements, clients love to be recognized.
    • More relevant in the B2B space – but again another amazing way to engage with a lead for free is to keep track of their accomplishments. This shows that you both care about their business and are invested in their success.
  • Suggesting free tools that can help them – e.g. Hubspot for sales processes.
    • Finally, if you notice any room for improvement in their own business processes that you know the solution to – feel free to suggest it! This shows both expertise and again that you care about their success.

Our Email Flow for Nurturing and Engaging Inbound Leads

The best mailer flow we’ve found to automatically engage potential leads goes as below.
It’s worth noting that this flow is flexible – for instance, each mailer has a “cutoff point” where if the lead responds/doesn’t respond we can adjust the flow accordingly. 

Pre-meeting

The goal here is to secure that crucial first sales meeting with the lead. To that end, we have a flow of three mailers that ends as soon as the lead books a meeting time with us.

Email 1 – Introduction

Send out immediately after receiving the lead.

This first mail introduces our salesperson personally, as well as some more detail about the exact offering they’re interested in. We also first ask to book a meeting to discuss further here.

Email 2 – Reminder

The second mail serves as a reminder if they didn’t respond to our introduction within a week. It’s a friendly check-in where we ask if they got our last mail.

Email 3 – “Breakup” Mail

Finally, if they still haven’t responded within a week from the previous mail we send a final “breakup” mail to let them know we won’t be contacting them further. If they don’t engage within a week from this point we close their file and move on.

Post-meeting

The second flow is designed to engage with the lead and encourage them to take the next step in doing business with us. Once we’ve met with the client, we typically have a much better idea of how our offering can benefit them specifically – so the goal is to hone in on that.

Email 1 – More Information 

Send out asap. following the first meeting.

This mail reads along the lines of, “Thank you for the meeting, here is the information we discussed”. It’s designed to reach out immediately with all the final details they need to decide if your offering is for them or not. Be sure to hone in on the aspects of your offering that are most relevant to their business.

Email 2 – Added Value

Send out if you receive no response from the above within 1 week.

This is where we send them some free “added value”. Either a connection, a past customer who would recommend you, or some form of insight into how your offering can help them.

For instance, in our space, we might offer a free tip on how to improve their current digital marketing strategy – or introduce them to another client in the same industry who can serve as a reference.

Email 3 – Follow Up

Send out if you receive no further response to the above, within another 1 week.

If they don’t respond to either of the above emails, we send a final “breakup” mail to confirm that we won’t be contacting them again. If they still don’t respond – we may safely assume they’ve decided against our service, so our time is better spent on other leads. 

The Best Ways to Follow Up on Leads

So when your lead then does engage, what next?

The best way we’ve found to push a lead over the edge is to create a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)!

If they understand what they are missing by not taking your services, they will quickly know if this is the right way forward for them. In other words, we want to emphasize the pain points our offering is designed to solve in their business. 

If they’re still not engaging with you – we can safely assume it’s not the right time or the right fit then we can close the deal off.

The Best Channels for Following Up

The most critical element in our lead cycle, by far, is calling the lead as quickly as possible. Leads are always pleasantly surprised when you contact them quickly – and this is often the first competitive edge we’re able to establish. 

If someone is searching for a service, we can assume they are met with us and a few of our competitors when submitting their forms. You want to stay two steps ahead of the competition and start building a relationship with that lead as quickly as possible.

When a lead does not take a call, an email is the next best step. Failing that, you can send a text message to ensure that your emails are not landing in spam.

Bonus Tip – Ranking Leads

A final tip we’ve found to be very impactful is to “rank” leads based on how likely they are to do business with you. This is an entirely subjective ranking- and you’ll get better with them over time – but it can be very impactful in terms of guiding where you spend your time and energy. 

This process makes sure that nothing falls through the cracks and that all valuable leads are given every opportunity to close before closing them off as lost. If a lead is ranked, we know how many touchpoints they should have and how many times is reasonable to engage with them to bring them to the sale.

The higher the value, the more effort they’re worth.

Conclusion – How to Nurture and Engage Inbound B2B Leads

 

In the digital age, it has become very easy for people to access information, reach out, and then get distracted. This just means that we, as salespeople, need to adapt and learn how to reach out to leads as if they were customers walking in off of the street. 

Information needs to be presented quickly and relevantly to your potential leads – and don’t feel afraid to “poke” them with reminders, as long as the reminders add value themselves.

 

If you enjoyed this article or found it helpful, check out more e-commerce marketing content on the inSyte blog or listen to the inSyte Podcast.


This article was brought to you by Syte.

We’re a specialist e-commerce and lead generation digital marketing agency dedicated to driving up your bottom line.

If you need any help running your business’s inbound lead generation strategy, feel free to reach out with the form below or check out our case studies page to see what we’ve been able to do for our clients.

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