The long life of the B2B lead – and how to deal with it

We love prospecting.

And we love providing top quality leads that grow your business.

At the last count we reckoned we’ve provided our 300-plus clients with £50m of new business.

But the conversion of a lead into revenue is never a straight-forward path.

In fact, Salesforce recently found that:

• Only 13% of leads convert to opportunities – and the average time for this to happen is 84 days
• Conversion rates from opportunities to sale are even lower – running at just 6%. But at least the conversion time is mercifully shorter at just 18 days.

So, from lead to deal you can expect around a third of a year.

Which got us thinking.

• What tactics and strategies are there to maximise conversions and to move your lead along the sales funnel?
• What’s different about today’s B2B buyer than those in the past?
• How should sales and marketing be working together to create a unified front for conversion?
• And how can we best manage our sales pipeline to keep leads flowing through it?

Well, there’s certainly too much there for one post – so we’ve created a ‘Long Life of the B2B Lead’ series to answer all the questions.

Here’s what to expect:

1. The changing face of the B2B buyer
2. The complete guide to sales and marketing alignment
3. What is effective lead nurturing
4. Is lead scoring right for you
5. Five reasons you need a CRM – even if you don’t have any customers to manage yet
6. How to manage your sales pipeline to close more sales

And if we’ve missed something ping us a message and we’ll find time between the 150 prospecting campaigns we run every day to shed some light.