With the holiday season coming up it gets most people thinking about vacations, good food and time with our families. For some of us, it’s hard to clear our mind from work and focus on relaxing during this time of the year. For me, I’ve got personal and professional events melding together in my mind; I couldn’t help but draw similarities between lead nurturing and the holiday season.

Lead nurturing systems help businesses start, as well as grow relationships with prospects and clients. These systems use technology to send personalized messages on behalf of individuals. We’re not talking company to company email blasts (what businesses did 10 years ago); we’re talking about tailored, targeted and personalized messages from sales to prospects/clients. The holiday season caused me to think about how sending holiday cards and gifts are similar to lead nurturing. In my situation, I’m fortunate enough to have a wife who helps me out during these buys times of the year. She’s the main reason why I’ve got strong relationships with my personal and professional network.

Here’s why; she keeps a list of friends, family members and co-workers I need to send gifts and cards to. She types out a message with personalized content. For example, “Grandpa – Thanks for sending our daughter the Scholastic book, she really loves it. I wanted to wish you a happy holiday season!” Then, I sign the letter and drop it in the mail. Almost systematically, she does this for holidays, birthdays and other important events. From my perspective, it’s great – there’s not much I have to do and messages look like they’re coming directly from me.

B2B marketers and sales people have a similar opportunity to nurture prospects and clients using lead nurturing technology. Lead nurturing technology runs in the background monitoring activity, looking for important events – just like my wife looks for holidays and birthdays. When nurturing technology detects an important event, it automatically sends a tailor-made message. With my Grandpa in the example above, we thanked him for the Scholastic book. You could tell your prospects thanks for watching our webinar on XYZ or thanks for learning more about our latest widget. Your sales people will save time and build bonds by responding to important events, as defined by your processes. Finally, nurture messages are personalized. It would look strange if my wife signed all the letters – my family and friends would think I do nothing (boy, if they only knew). Instead, I sign the letters so it appears it came from me. Similarly, lead nurturing messages are sent from the lead owner.

Thanks to my wife’s efforts, I’ve built stronger relationships with family, friends and colleagues. I’ve received more from them in return than I ever could imagine. Think about the impact of building better relations with clients and prospects and what that will do for your business. Sales automation, shorter sales cycle, better operational efficiency and more revenue are just a few benefits. Hopefully you can draw parallels from your own personal situations to lead nurturing to better understand how effective this technology can be in a business environment. Good luck to you (or your significant other) sending letters and gifts this holiday season!

What personal situations remind you of lead nurturing?

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