Many companies are utilizing digital nurturing as an important component of their marketing strategy. However, frequently marketers are missing a “human-touch” element. Consequently, they are missing an opportunity to proactively engage with their top prospects and increase their pipeline with buyers who are ready to talk.
Why Do Human Interactions Matter?
Before going into detail on the specifics of a Human-Touch Nurturing strategy, let’s first discuss why it matters…
SiriusDecision’s new buying study (released at their 2015 Summit) debunks the notion that the B2B sales person is dying and that buyers are predominately buying digitally. In fact, their research shows human interaction increases as price point increases. At higher expenditure levels (i.e. $50K or more), human-to-human interactions are used more frequently. Furthermore, the report illustrates buyers interact with sales representatives (humans!) from the beginning to the end of the buyer’s journey. Consequently, SiriusDecisions recommends go-to-market strategies are a balanced mix of non-human and human-to-human interactions.
What is Human-Touch Nurturing?
Human-Touch Nurturing is a methodology which utilizes a 1:1 communication strategy combining well-timed phone calls, relevant one-to-one emails and marketing content. This methodology is not intended to target an entire marketing database, but rather a core group of pre-qualified decision-makers, ideally those who have been profiled via prior teleprospecting or digital initiatives. The goal is to continually engage with your most qualified prospects in order to move them towards “sales-readiness.”
At TeleNet, we deploy human-touch nurturing strategies using a team of dedicated marketing specialists who continually reach out to our clients’ top prospects and engage in meaningful dialogue. To avoid a “just checking in” approach, our marketing specialists are armed with relevant and valuable content, which is customized based on each prospect’s profile. Thus, we are communicating with prospects based on what they’ve already shared is important with them. And we’re engaging in a real-time, human-to-human dialogue exchange in order to proactively move prospects to “sales-readiness.”
Depending on the type of decision-making (independent, consensus or committee), SiriusDecisions reports that the average number of interactions during the sales process ranges from 11-17 with 5-8 of those being human interactions.
Based on these statistics, it’s clear that human-touch should not be a one-time initiative, but rather an ongoing approach.
How can Human-Touch Nurturing Boost Results?
Today over half of TeleNet’s clients use our human-touch nurturing strategies, in addition to our traditional outbound teleprospecting services. 100% of these clients see higher LPD (lead per day) metrics from their human-touch nurturing activities.
As an example, TeleNet has a client who began engaging with us in early 2013 for a proactive outbound teleprospecting initiative. In mid-2013, we expanded this effort to include human-touch nurturing, focusing on those who were already profiled (but not yet a lead). Both efforts continue today, and while both are successful, the nurturing activity yields a 42% higher daily output, resulting in more sales-ready leads filling their pipeline. Furthermore, our client’s reports show leads, which are derived from our human-touch nurturing activities, convert more quickly to active opportunities, thus shortening their sales cycle.
If you are seeking effective ways to boost your marketing output, increase your pipeline and shorten your sales cycle, implementing a human-touch nurturing strategy is certainly a leap in the right direction.