The long life of the b2b lead – and how to deal with it
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:
- The changing face of the B2B buyer
- The complete guide to sales and marketing alignment
- What is effective lead nurturing
- Is lead scoring right for you
- Five reasons you need a CRM – even if you don’t have any customers to manage yet
- 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.