Nurture Programs

Do you have a list of new prospects, or even old ones, that you need to contact periodically until they're ready to buy? Do you have trade show leads that need to be followed up? Or do your salespeople have prospects that they just can't get to? A "Nurture Program" can help.

While a traditional "drip" campaign is a proven waste of time and money, nurturing prospects with a combination of (1) telephone, (2) email/text/snailmail/fax, and (3) targeted Social Media Marketing (t-SMM) until they're ready to move forward can be a very efficient and cost-effective way to mine your market.

(The problem with a traditional drip campaign is that you can never know when the prospect is ready to buy, of course, because the communication is only one-way.)

With Nurture Program, however, you can advance prospects through your funnel, and drive revenue straight through to your bottom line.

While the implementation is a little more complex, here's the basics of how it works:

1. We start with a list of suspects - your Target Market - that we can help identify for you from our list of over 15,000,000 US businesses, or any of a number of other sources. From this we select a batch for targeting, using criteria like industry, location and/or size. (And we can add more lists whenever you need them.)

2. We then make an initial cold call, find the decision makers, and give them your pitch (based on the Telemarketing Plan we write together). Just like in our standard lead generation program, the goal of the call is to uncover needs for your products or services, and to persuade the prospect to be interested in your solution.

Typically, some people will have an immediate need, or we can uncover a need, and we can get you in the door right away. (This is indicated by the "Yes" star above, on the left.) But some people will have no need for your product, or no interest, and it's not worth your time or money to try to change their minds. (This is indicated by the "No" sign.)

But if yours is like most businesses, most prospects will actually fall into a "Maybe" category. They may not have a need now, or they may not be ready to talk to a sales person right away. They may want more information before they want to meet, or some event may need to occur before they're ready to consider your solution. These are the "Maybe's" - which are, in all likelihood, the bulk of your prospect list - and therefore they're the prospects that need to be Nurtured.

3. To reach these people, and turn them from a "Maybe" to a "Yes", you need to nurture them over time. You need to keep in touch with them, of course, and six or more touches are typically necessary. But you also need to do it in such a way as to increase their interest over time - not just spam them. That means you need to actually reach them, engage them in the conversation, uncover needs, and build your value - even if they're not quite ready to talk yet.

That's what a Nurture Program is all about: keeping their attention, and building interest, desire and value over time, and even creating urgency - until they're ready to act.

A Nurture Program is a little different for every situation, but the basic structure consists of three elements: (a) Professional B2B Telemarketing, (b) Push Notifications, and (c) Targeted Social Media Marketing.

1. Professional B2B telemarketing is where we call the prospect periodically, re-engage them in the conversation, checkpoint where they are in the decision process, uncover additional needs, and identify (and reach out to) additional contacts and decision makers. Unlike traditional B2B calling, calling in a nurture campaign is periodic (and therefore less likely to burn your list) because it involves multiple calls over a period of time.
   
   
2. Push Notifications are periodic send-outs of relevant and useful information that are sent to the prospects on an opt-in basis, using JV/M's Push Notification System. An important factor in the success of Push Notifications is that the material is delivered in the specific format that the prospect has requested (e.g. email, snail mail, fax, text, SMS, robocall, or alert,) so they're more likely to receive it, read it, and respond. That is, unlike traditional email marketing, or even direct mail, prospects actually want to receive the material - because it's opt-in - so they're actually going to read it.
   
   
3. Targeted Social Media Marketing refers to one-on-one engagement with your key prospects on the actual social media sites that they use. (We actually ask them what sites they frequent.) In Targeted Social Media Marketing, we discuss online with the prospect the specific topics in which the prospect has explicitly expressed interest (which, by the way, may have nothing whatsoever to do with your product.) Also, unlike traditional SMM, (which is really just glorified advertising and PR,) Targeted Social Media Marketing has no waste. Instead, it builds genuine, positive relationships with your prospects, on subjects in which they're interested, which we then leverage to generate the lead.

The combination of Professional B2B Telemarketing, opt-in Push Notifications, and online engagement on the Social Media sites that your prospects frequent dramatically increases rapport, trust, familiarity and credibility. It prevents you from getting blocked by gatekeepers or spam filters. It keeps you on "top of mind" until they're ready to act. And it enables you to uncover needs for your products and services over time, where there's more opportunity, while identifying additional decision makers that you can sell to. Most importantly, though, it insures that you're there when the prospect is ready to buy - because, as they say: Timing is everything.

So you get the lead, and the sale.