Overcoming Hidden, Emotional Objections with Lead Nurturing

Much has been written about why companies should nurture leads until they’re ready to buy. These arguments tend to be logical, typically citing the need to assist prospects through the buying process and keep your company top of mind. But arguably, an even more important reason to nurture leads is overcoming prospects’ emotional objections—specifically, their fear of buying from you.

Logical Reasons  

As you’re probably aware, the logical reason for lead nurturing is that while it’s easy enough to generate leads by attracting people to download a white paper from KnowledgeStorm or buying lists, most new leads are not yet ready to buy.

Moreover, the buying process has changed. Five or so years ago, buyers turned to the sales force relatively early in the sales process. Now, buyers prefer to do much more research online, and they engage the sales force much later in the buying process.

This makes it imperative to keep in front of leads and provide them the information they’ll need throughout their buying process until they’re ready to speak with a sales rep.

According to Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation and the Complex Sale, up to 95 percent of qualified prospects on your website are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70 percent of them will eventually buy a product from you or your competitors. Moreover, a DemandGen report has found that on average, nurtured leads produce a 20-percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

So far, this sounds cut and dried. You get leads, but they’re not yet ready to buy, so you provide useful information. You stay top-of-mind. And when they’re ready to buy, they’ll consider you.

Emotional Reasons

The catch is that the human decisions are rarely as logical as we may want to think. While people may think they’re making decisions strictly on logic, people make emotional decisions and then find facts that support their decision.

Marketo’s “The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing,” makes an interesting observation about the emotions of buyers. It notes, “In B2B marketing, there’s an asymmetry between the upside and downside of B2B purchases: the buyer may or may not be rewarded for making a good purchase, but a bad purchase can damage the buyer’s reputation and job security. As a result, fear and risk play large roles in B2B-buying decisions. Organizational risk can be dealt with rationally, but personal risk is usually unstated and hidden from the rational process. Yet, personal risk is a huge factor in B2B buying.”

The report goes on to say that it's therefore critical for B2B vendors to establish credibility and trust. And the best way to do this is by sharing useful information. If you can help frame the discussion, your company will be seen as a trusted advisor and thought leader, and if the buyer believes your company understands their problems and knows how to solve them, this reduces fear and can dramatically improve your odds of being selected for consideration and purchase.

This argument rings true from personal experience. I’ve done content marketing since the mid 1990s, first with a printed newsletter, then with an online newsletter, and later with this blog.  While I also use other forms of marketing, content has been my most consistently successful tactic for keeping in touch with prospects, winning trust, and ultimately gaining the opportunity to work with them.

So when you do lead nurturing, remember that staying top-of-mind is only half the battle. It’s just as important to minimize the fear of purchase by demonstrating through your content that they can trust you.

Can describe any lead-nurturing campaigns you’ve done that have minimized fears of your potential buyers?

Comments

[Ryan Jacobson]

Well said! Content, free information, and being a trusted "partner", are all part of success strategies used in multiple industries. This is also not limited to B2B , as consumers need an emotional connection and need to trust that you are a valuable expert.

[Lead Generation]

I enjoyed this post. I agree, internet and web prospects need plenty of time before they are ready to pull the purchase trigger. Newsletters are a great way to incubate the propest until they are ready.

[Gogo]

Marketers often forget that B2B marketing still works at the human level. Someone (or a small group of people) still have a decision-making process to go through, and keeping their "decision experience" front and center is a can't-miss way to go about facilitating that decision.

White papers, case studies and emails should highlight positive results from people in the same risk-decision profile as target buyers, all the while educating them technically, and cementing a defensible-script; a script that the buyer can defend with higher ups or in the event of less than desirable results.

Thanks for a great post.