How do you nurture leads that are not ready to convert?

There are lots of ways to nurture leads, but most of them are guesses. Let’s remove those guesses by learning why and applying the right follow up strategy.

Reason #1: They’re not in the buying window.

If your prospect is under a current contract and not open to reviewing new solutions until a specific time, you must capture that information in your CRM and at least follow up as that buying window begins to open.

In the meantime, throw this lead over to marketing for drip emails with relevant content and keep an eye out for any changes with the competitor they’re using. For example, if your competitor goes out of business, has technical or other service problems, or gets acquired, those are all reasons to reach back out to this prospect and attempt an earlier conversation.

Reason #2: They’re not interested in your product because it doesn’t solve a need they have.

Needs change all the time. A CFO who was happy with her reporting tools may find that when they hire 100 more staff members, she’s suddenly inundated with requests for information she doesn’t have.

We typically follow up every 90 days with prospects who have expressed that they lack a problem we can solve. This is meant to be pleasantly persistent, not obnoxious. Remember - they don’t owe you anything. 

You can also use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and scoops from ZoomInfo to identify changes in the target account or even prospect’s team that could indicate a readiness to review your solution.

Reason #3: Your message/offer didn’t appeal to them (they weren’t enticed).

This is, by far, the most common reason for disinterest if you’re talking to your next best customer. They may say that “now’s a bad time” but they’re most often just not interested in what you had to offer.

You should be differentiating between prospects who weren’t interested with a good reason (like disqualifying factors or using a competitor), and those who weren’t interested but didn’t offer a reason. 

The most likely cause of the latter disinterest is a weak offer. If you called up and asked for their time to learn about your company’s product, that might not have struck a chord with them. You can try again with a more valuable or personalized offer in a couple of easy ways:

1. Talk to people who work with them or perform additional research to identify more specifically their pains related to the problem you solve.

   Example:
   Initial offer:
   “Tim, I talk with a lot of VPs who are busy and don’t have time to coach calls. I wanted to find time for us to demo our call coaching platform so you can see just how easy it is.”
   New offer after research:
   “Tim, I know you’ve got 20 sales reps who report to you and that’s a lot of time to spend on coaching their calls if you even get to it at all. Can I send a quick video highlighting how the VP of Sales at Company X uses our tool to coach 25 reps in fewer than 2 hours a week?”

2. Provide them valuable information with no obligation.
   Example:
   Initial offer: (Same as above)
   New offer:
   “Tim, if you’ve got 30 minutes during an upcoming layover or lunch break, it would be worth your time to check out a webinar we did on coaching senior sales reps. Can I send you the link and follow up to get your thoughts on it?”

Conclusion

In all cases, nurture leads by connecting with them on LinkedIn and engaging with their posts, sharing content that matches their interests and functional needs, and occasionally tagging them where appropriate in content you think would be particularly relevant to them.