How Important Is Prospect Cultivation To You?

By: Ashley Lichty

Any business without a strong follow-up plan isn't likely to go very far. Prospect cultivation is one of the most important aspects of a marketing plan. How are you suppose to turn leads into clients without a strong plan?

When it comes down to it, prospect cultivation isn't really THAT complicated. It just means treating your leads like human beings, providing them with what they need and being a trusted contact in their life until they're ready to buy. It's important to send them the kind of information they would actually find useful.

If you were a real estate agent with seller leads, you probably wouldn't be calling them once a month just to ask to list their home. Instead, keeping good prospect cultivation techniques inside, you add them to your follow-up campaign. This involves sending them weekly emails with market updates, open house tips, home value tips and an occasional CMA on their home.

That is what prospect cultivation is all about - consistent and persistent follow up. The agent in the above example came across as a trusted and helpful expert rather than a pushy salesperson. Every business should develop a similar method of following up with their leads and tweak it until it's the best it can be.

The only complication that may come with prospect cultivation is the NUMBER of leads many companies have to follow up with. Many companies deal with literally thousands of new leads per week. Sales people can contact these people by phone, but how do you know when you should call? What you should say?

Luckily, that's where a beautiful thing called technology comes in - automated follow-up software to be exact. Otherwise known as a customer relationship manager (CRM) or contact management system (CMS) these programs can help manage and automate your follow up. This helps cut down on confusion and time-wasting on your sales floor.

Most CRM/CMS's provide email campaigns - a series of pre-written emails that go out weekly or bi-weekly over a period of time on different topics the lead may be interested in. Many of these campaigns will also schedule in phone calls once or twice a month to the lead as monthly 'touch points' to ensure the lead receives the information. Consistent and persistent follow-up is TRUE prospect cultivation.

A company can often get a CRM system built to it's own specifications and have it include many other features. Unfortunately, many companies today don't even realize what CRMs are available, and if they do they don't realize what a difference it could make for their business. If you're not utilizing some sort of automated follow-up system, chances are your prospect cultivation is suffering.

About the author: Ashley Lichty is a copywriter and search engine optimization specialist at ProspectMX.com. Get more information on prospect cultivation, lead generation and other subjects from ProspectMX.com.

Article Source: http://www.marketingarticlelibrary.com

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