Sales leads are the life blood of your company. That’s a fact. Unfortunately, it’s also a fact that B2B leads are expensive.

What’s does a qualified B2B lead cost you? $100? $500? $1000? More? Yet B2B companies often quickly lose track of their leads. Sales wants HOT leads. HOT leads represent the low-hanging fruit…companies that want to buy NOW.

However, lead tracking research shows that only 20 percent of your leads are HOT leads. What about the other 80 percent? Half of this group will be buyers in three to nine months. At most companies they get filed away in the prospect database – which is really a mausoleum where not-so-hot prospects get buried alive.

A nurturing campaign can help keep these leads alive until they become HOT, usually at a much lower cost than finding new leads. Result: Treated right, a prospect database is an incubator for buyers, not a mausoleum.

Related posts:

1. Marketing Can Radically Impact Sales
2. B2B Marketing Renaissance?
3. B2B Marketing – Hit Home Runs, Not Pop-ups
4. Word of the Week – Close Ratio
5. Are B2B Web sites breaking out of Web 1.0?

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About the author:

Joe Schubert is the founder and CEO of Schubert Communications. He takes great pride in the agency’s B2B Sales-Centric Marketing™ approach based on many years of B2B client support. Joe keeps busy flying his Cesna, golfing, skiing and reading up on the industry’s latest trends.