Will You Marry Me?...Eventually

Selling is a lot like marriage.  It’s a relationship where partners agree to work together.   They form similarly, too.  A first date rarely ends with a marriage acceptance.  A first sales call gets similar results.  A marriage acceptance, like the sales process, takes time and requires persistence.   I recently heard James P. Cecil, a marketing specialist, speak.  He said that about 20% of prospects will never buy.  About 20% of prospects who inquire about your products or services will buy something like it within 90 days.  19% will buy within the first 6 months and 33% will finally make a purchase after 24 months.  The problem with this is that the first contact has been long forgotten when the customer is ready to buy.

Start a relationship.  Sure it’s nice to find a buyer with an immediate need for your products or services. Yet most buyers are not the low hanging fruit.  Since most buyers are later purchasers, isn’t the best time to meet a prospective customer when they have a serious and immediate need and when they already understand and prefer you as their first choice provider?  It’s your job to create that interest.  You do it with the strategy that Cecil developed called “nurture marketing.” The basic premise is keeping in touch with the right people at a meaningful level and on a regular basis.

How do I build a relationship? Letter writing is an effective way to build a relationship with a prospect.  Your objective is to capture and hold your prospect’s attention.  It starts with getting your prospect to open the letter.  You can do this with a specially selected enclosure, something big enough to make the envelope slightly bulge. You want the recipient to be curious about what’s in the envelope.  Ascendix Technologies (http://www.ascendix.com/), who sells customer relationship and sales automation software, recently applied the strategy.  They mailed a letter to prospects who had attended a nurture marketing seminar.  In the envelope along with the letter were pumpkin seeds.  The letter content should create an awareness of the problem you can solve.  Wes Snow, Ascendix’ President, wrote about prospects being like the pumpkin seeds that were enclosed.  They needed to be nurtured.  He cited a statistic that 95% of all companies identified as prospects by a sales rep simply vanish from the reps call list.  What also vanishes is the opportunity to develop a long-term relationship. 

Keep going.  Always make your second contact with your prospect an education-packed and a “nurturous” one. You’re not ready to ask for anything from them at this point.  Most likely they’re not ready to give you any business either. Information and "them-serving" knowledge-based enclosures tells them you are thinking of them. This contact could include a reprint of an article about you or a topic you think might particularly interest them.  You could invite them to an educational seminar to further get to know your prospects.  This might even be one your company presents.  Snow will invite prospects to future Business Boot Camp seminars that he hosts.  You could also introduce them to other prospects.  Just make sure you are targeting the right decision maker.  It should be the one writing the checks. 

How do you know it’s working?  Your prospects will call you when your nurture marketing program is working.  They call you because they now trust you and they have a need.  They also believe you’re the best company to work with.  Nurture marketing gives prospects a preview of how they’re going to be treated as customers.  One company president who uses nurture marketing says, "It's treating people the way you want to be treated, so that your clients say, 'This is the kind of company I want to do business with.'"  And just like a good marriage, with nurture marketing after the sale, your business relationship will last for a very long time.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work.  She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com.  She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997.  You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.

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