4 Steps to Lead Nurturing: Walking the buying path with your customers

Lead generation can take you on a long hike. The one thing I can guarantee you about the journey is that more is not better if you don’t know how to nurture. The goal of lead nurturing is to help progress leads from initial interest toward purchase intent. It’s about progression.

That said, I’ve seen companies spend most of their budget getting people to raise their hands but not putting enough toward progression. Get out your walking shoes, and take a journey with your customers.

I define lead nurturing as consistent and meaningful communication with viable prospects (those that are “a fit” for your solution), regardless of their timing to buy. It’s not “following up” every few months to find out if a prospect is “ready to buy yet.” True nurturing involves a sometimes long and circuitous path, but along the way, you’ll be building long, meaningful and trust-filled relationships with the right people.

Salespeople often struggle with developing nurturing content without support. If you’re wondering what kinds of content helps progress leads further faster, ask your sales team. Start by asking your sales team questions like, “What’s the content you share with leads that helps them convert?” or “What’s the content you use to help take people to the next level?”

The first step on that path to success is to start thinking like a customer.

Step #1: Walk in your potential customers’ shoes to build a customer journey map

Be the customer, and get as you close as you can to their experience by really observing the behaviors of your customer. After you’ve gaining a solid understanding, build your customer journey map.

What is a customer journey map? It tells the story of the customer’s experience: from initial contact, through the process of engagement and into a long-term relationship.

The journey map is about helping you understanding the key interactions that your future customer will have with the organization. What are their motivations? What are their questions with each marketing touch point? Try to understand what they want and the concerns they’ll have along with peers they’re interacting with. The goal of customer journey mapping is to gain customer wisdom.

As you do that, consider the questions that customers have in mind before they make a buying decision:

• How will this product or service help my company?
• We’re doing OK, so why do we need this?
• Is there another company out there that is better?
• Will their solution really work? Can they prove it?
• Is the company credible?
• Can we afford it?

Help prospects find the answers to these questions, and you’ll remind them of the benefits of working with you. You’re creating value by giving them useful information in digestible, bite-sized chunks.

Step #2: Plan your path to create content geared toward progression

Invest as much in forming creative and content for lead progression as you do for lead capture. I’ve seen companies spend most of their budget getting people to raise their hands but not enough toward progression.

The goal of lead nurturing is to help progress leads from initial interest toward purchase intent. It’s about progression.

Read “Content Marketing Tips for Lead Nurturing” for ideas on content to use. Through the combination of all these, you’re providing relevant, educational and thought-leading content. For more ideas, read “Lead Nurturing: 5 tips for creating relevant content.”

It’s worth noting:

• The tactics employed and the frequency of touches will depend on the solutions being sold and the buying cycle of the prospect.
• You need to create different lead nurturing tracks based on demographic criteria, such as size, industry, role in the buying process and more.

Step #3: Walk the path with your customer

In a complex sale, the journey can be long and challenging to help people move from initial interest to purchase intent.

Your only job is to make certain you nourish your customer along the way and guide them with a meaningful compass toward the right and best decision for their needs.

Think of your marketing team as trail guides who will need to point out all the sights along the way that are useful in the decision-making process.

Slow down, and walk at the customer’s pace, even if that means taking the long route with them when it comes to buying your service or product. If you hurry them along, you might end up with an exhausted customer who doesn’t feel good about the journey and won’t turn to you to continue the path to purchase.

“How you sell me is how you will serve me”

Most economic buyers subscribe to the notion that how you sell me indicates how you will serve me. Here’s where that little statistic I mentioned earlier comes in. A study of business-to-business buyers shows that salespeople who become trusted advisors and understood the needs of economic buyers are 69% more likely to come away with a sale.

The complex sale requires that your prospect:

• Must be familiar with you and your company and with what you and your company do.
• Must perceive you and your company to be expert in your field.
• Must believe that you and your company understand his or her specific issues and can solve them.­
• Likes you and your company enough to want to work with you.

Remember you can’t automate trust. Trust-building should be the theme of your nurturing efforts.

Building trust

By providing valuable education and information to prospects up front, you become a trusted advisor. You are then perceived to be an expert. You don’t sell; you don’t make pitches. Instead, you provide insights and solutions all within the realm of your expertise and, as a result, become the first company they turn to when there’s a need.

Make your marketing program’s single point of focus be to develop trust, and your business will become more profitable and less reliant on competing on price. Selling, per se, is reduced in the interest of more open and honest conversations with prospects. You win more business on a sole-source basis, and more new business referrals come your way.

Step #4: Keep marching

Startling as it may seem, recent research (and even studies from 20 years ago) shows that longer-term leads (future opportunities), often ignored by salespeople, represent almost 40 to 70% of potential sales. Research compiled by the MarketingSherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Report showed, “marketing departments with a lead nurturing campaign reported a 45% higher ROI than marketing departments that did not utilize a lead nurturing track.”

If inquiries are simply passed on to salespeople, reps, partners or distributors for follow up, beware.  You may be leaving as many as eight out of 10 sales prospects on the sales path for your competitors.

Now, get your compasses out and begin the long-yet-fruitful journey toward an effective lead nurturing program. You’ll be surprised how many potential customers will want to join you along the way.

5 Ways to Develop Prospects for Dental Labs

5 Ways to Develop Prospects for Dental Labs -- By David H. Khalili, CEO DentalLabSupport.com

In the digital market, there are many dental laboratories vying for the same dentist. As web offerings increase, the potential customer base essentially stagnates, or at best, grows more slowly than the products and services offered, it will become increasingly difficult to find new prospects. To stand out from the crowd, your business has to do more than just offer a product. It also must do so in a unique and memorable way. Your dental lab must think about more than the current sale, it must also consider how to make a one time purchaser into a long term customer.

Offer something unique. Your product and services may be something which is available in one form or another from a variety of dental labs, but that does not mean that you cannot have, or create, a unique marketing draw. Perhaps you feel that you have insight into the industry which other dental labs do not. Blog about your knowledge, or if you have enough detailed technical information to do so, write a whitepaper. This demonstrates your specialized knowledge, it makes you an expert in a crowd of websites who limit communication to generic FAQs.

When you offer something, get something back from a potential prospect in return. For example, if you have something on your website that you offer to customers as a free download, such as a whitepaper, request their email or other contact information. This contact information does not automatically translate into a prospect, but it does indicate specific interest in your product by at least one specific user.

Ask permission. There's a saying that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, but just the opposite may be true when gathering potential prospects. Do not subscribe people to your mailing list without expressly communicating your intent to do so. It may seem like an obvious match from your perspective, but you need to consider the perspective of the potential customer as well. People sometimes spend their first couple of minutes with morning email weeding through the junk mail. It's an annoying reality of email, but don't be an annoyance to someone who may one day become a customer. Consider how many times you have added an email to a spam filter versus how many times you have gone into your spam filter and removed an existing entry. Once you are in someone's spam filter, you are likely to stay there permanently. Don't get into the spam filter in the first place by sending unsolicited emails.

Build on your reputation with existing dentists. This sounds simple, but there is a wrong way and a right way to do it. The right way is to be completely open and forthright about it. If one customer is happy with your service, tell them directly that you value them and their ideas about other potential customers. Facebook received some negative publicity when it went about this process the wrong way: Facebook decided that if a customer used a product, they could be translated into an unintended spokesperson for that product. Public reaction was terrible. Build a relationship, not a database.

Ask satisfied customers to let you mention them. In a business to business relationship, this is a win-win proposition. The customer expands their presence and your product gains legitimacy by actual testimonials. It may be tempting to rework the statement you put on your website in a testimonial, but resist the temptation. Ethics issues aside, the customer may be able to address potential customers better than you can simply because they are both in the same, or nearly the same position.

For more information on how to identify and gain prospects, and turn them into long term and loyal clients, please contact DentalLabSupport.com or by calling 1-888-715-9099.

Dental Lab Solutions: Solving the Problem of Dental Techs' Attitudes Towards Certification

Thank you for reading last week’s post about the problem and solution to USA dental tech certification becoming increasingly unavailable. This week we tackle the problem of dental technicians' attitudes towards certification; chiefly, modern dental technicians don't care to be certified.

Problem #2: Dental technician certification is either not required or unimportant to dental techs

Unlike their predecessors, new dental technicians do not consider certification important and instead reason that gaining several years' experience will enable them to sufficiently perform their duties.

Solution: Dental lab owners must emphasize the benefits of certification through their hiring decisions.

Although the problem of dental techs' attitudes towards certification go hand-in-hand with the problem of dental tech certification becoming increasingly unavailable, dental lab owners do have some power in this situation. Dental lab owners must publicly announce the beneficial differences between what an uncertified and a certified tech can earn at their dental lab. 

In your job ads, don't be shy to display outright the salary range you're willing to offer to a certified dental tech vs an uncertified dental tech. Make it clear that certified technicians will require less micromanagement, have more freedom, and be placed on a faster track to salary increases and bonuses. Explicit salary increases and the opportunity to eventually operate their own dental lab are great incentives to reshape dental lab technicians' attitudes towards certification.

Dental tech certification enables the dental community to have faith in the quality of custom crowns being produced. Dental lab certification is especially necessary now more than ever as offshore dental labs and digital machines threaten the existence of the dental technician industry.

By explicitly announcing your dental lab's need for a certified dental tech, you are asserting the importance of a quality-controlled set of skills and requirements to your business. Plus, dental technicians who feel they must be certified are more likely to take greater responsibility for their designs, thereby branding your dental lab as a reliable lab with highly skilled technicians and unbeatable product quality.

Thank you for joining us again this week and please stop by on Thursday, July 23 as we address the 3rd problem of the 4 Major Problems in the Dental Laboratory Industry: offshore dental labs grow, creating unequal competition with USA dental labs.

Dental Lab Solutions: Solving the Problem of USA Dental Technician Certification becoming Increasingly Unavailable

Thank you for reading last week’s post about the 4 Major Problems in the Dental Laboratory Industry. As promised, this week, we're sharing a simple solution to the problem of USA dental technician certification becoming increasingly unavailable. Keep reading as we dismantle this issue in the dental lab industry:

Problem #1: USA dental technician certification is increasingly becoming unavailable

When there are fewer opportunities (i.e. dental lab schools) available, dental labs obviously experience more difficulty finding skilled dental lab techs. 

Solution: If you’re one of the few, fortunate, large-sized dental laboratories, the solution is for you to offer training programs to educate recently graduated technicians. 

Small- and mid-sized dental laboratories may not have the funding to offer training programs, but can offer on-site training instead. 

Worried about your dental lab tech taking advantage of your on-the-job training and leaving you for a larger lab? Determine the cost of on-the-job training to your business and factor this into the work contract with a stipulation along the lines of “[EMPLOYEE] agrees to work for [MY DENTAL LAB] for a consecutive period of at least [TIME DURATION e.g. 12 months] otherwise [EMPLOYEE] agrees to repay [MY DENTAL LAB] for the cost of on-the-job training, [$$]”*.

While standardized testing and certification is necessary for the future, on-the-site dental lab tech training is benefits the dental community at large.

Thanks for joining us this week, and remember to check in again next Thursday when we answer part 2 of the 4 Major Problems in the Dental Laboratory Industry: Dental technician certification is either not required or unimportant to dental techs.

*Dental Lab Support is a marketing and consulting agency for dental laboratories. Please speak with an attorney prior to creating a work agreement. Dental Lab Support retains no liability for employment contracts.