9 Actionable Tips To Nurture Warm Leads

Collecting a pool of different leads is not a difficult job anymore but, According to a report generating high-quality leads is a huge challenge for 61% of B2B marketers. The real challenge lies with managing the funnel of warm leads. One of the hardest parts of this funnel, which requires considerable effort is to keep a warm lead from growing cold.

If you are struggling with the same, you have help at hand! In this post, we have put together a few actionable ways to stay in touch with warm leads. There are ready-to-use templates for you as well!

So, without much ado, let’s get started.

Types Of Sales Leads

You all must have encountered this situation while generating leads. All leads are not alike, so how do you differentiate among all the leads generated?

In the process of lead generation, there are three types of leads:

1. Hot leads

2. Cold leads

3. Warm leads

Let’s have a look at cold leads vs warm leads & warm lead vs cold lead,

1. Hot leads

As the term says, hot leads are ones who already know you, have worked with you, have read about you, or have been in touch with you.

So, how to get hot leads?

These are qualified leads that already exist on your list, and a connection is already formed with them. Hot leads are ready to connect for the sale of your solution.

They can be a recommendation or those who are looking for your product or service. In order to convert them, you have to put in some effort. 

2. Warm leads

A warm lead is an individual who periodically engages with your company through various channels. They may be reading your blog posts, following your company on social media, and subscribing to your newsletters. You can start nurturing the leads and know about their needs and pain points. 

3. Cold leads

Cold leads don’t have any idea of who you are. They are the most difficult to convert. They can’t trust you so early as you are completely new to them and they have no idea of what you offer. Know how to nurture cold leads.

Lead generation is an essential step in the business. The concept is easy to understand. The challenge lies in how to stay in touch with warm leads.

To create an opportunity for your business to thrive, you need to be in front of the target audience. One of the key areas that the business must master is how to interact with warm leads.

Learn more about Cold, Warm, Hot Sales leads

Where Are Warm Leads In A Sales Cycle?

Warm leads engage with your company and marketing channels periodically. They also read your blog posts, follow your company on social media, share their details, and subscribe to email newsletters. In addition, you can nurture them by learning about their needs, what issues they face and how your product or service can solve them.

How To Generate Warm Leads?

Here’s how to get warm leads,

1) Hiring email prospecting service – It is a good idea to hire the services of a firm that generates warm leads for you. You only have to specify the type of prospect you are interested in, and the firm will give you warm leads that fit your needs, i.e. incline your brand.

2) Using Google/Facebook ads and opt-ins on websites – You can use opt-ins on your website or capture leads using ads on Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn. Qualifying leads before you speak to them is a great idea. Also, several lead generation firms can help target your ads accurately.

3) Writing blogs – You can create content for your website, LinkedIn groups, and other famous websites. Also, keep your blogs relevant to the target market, and people will engage with your content. 

How To Identify And Market Warm Leads?

You get in touch with cold leads through cold email outreach or cold calling. As already mentioned earlier, they have no idea about your product or service. It is important for salespeople and marketers to know the difference between cold email and email marketing and understand which one suits their business needs better.

You can make the initial contact using email, text, or phone calls. Cold calls target a part of the audience with a problem that your product or service can resolve. It helps let leads know that you know about their pain, which would attract them towards you. You have to get the attention of the prospect by making phone calls and emailing.

1. Send them tailor-made emails – Use emails to get in touch with cold leads and nurture them. You have to show them that your product or service can help in resolving the issues they face. However, you have to give time to the prospect to open up. Don’t start pitching your solution right away.

2. Offer value – You can grab the lead’s interest by adopting a value-based selling approach. This can be done by offering something in return, such as a free trial, free consultation, an attractive discount, or a free e-book. It would be best if you tried to mention it in the email subject line so that the leads open the email. 

3. Get in touch with leads on social media – You can request leads to follow you on social media. It is a great idea to share news and tidbits of information regarding your company.

Why Warm Leads Should Not Grow Cold?

Every organization needs to follow up and nurture warm leads as part of its sales process. 

The benefits of staying in touch with these type of leads are many they are far more promising than cold leads, they are more flexible as compared to others and appear to be more lucrative. Also, warm leads are simpler to convert into sales than cold calls.

Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits of targeting leads that are warm,

1. Increase in conversion rates

When you target warm leads, you will witness a jump in the conversion rates. The reason is that, unlike cold leads, warmer leads already have an interest in your product or service. Logically speaking, if you have previously engaged with the prospect, the person is more likely to go ahead with the purchase.

2. Turning a salesperson into a consultant

A warm lead knows about your offering, and when they connect with you, they are upgrading you from a salesperson to a consultant. They want to know more about your product and service and look up to you for advice to help their business grow. The focus gets shifted from selling and moves towards offering ideas which is a pleasure for any person in sales

3. Faster closing of deals 

With a warm lead, you can close deals faster because they have taken the initiative in getting in touch with you. They have the intention to make a purchase sooner or later as they have thought about using your product or service

4. Less expenditure

Generating warm leads costs less than cold leads, no matter what the size of your organization is. The amount of effort from your end is also less unlike in outbound marketing, and probably that is one of the biggest advantages. 

Therefore, you must try to convert leads that are warm into sales.

How To Nurture Warm Leads?

If you want to prevent warm leads from turning cold, you must nurture them. Here are some handy tips for that,

1. Make sure that reps are fully-equipped

You have to ensure that your sales team has everything required to nurture warm leads in the form of tools and resources. Most often, leads that are warm search for detailed information about your product or service that enables them to make a choice. Events, sales webinars, blogs and case studies would be helpful here.

2. Plan your follow-up

When you communicate with leads, it is essential to be consistent or else the warm lead can turn cold. Create a sequence of emails with the right gap between each touchpoint. Here’s how you plan it,

First response after 24 hours – Send a thank you email to the leads with your sales pitch.

1. Follow Email. 1 – Call up the lead the next day to understand their needs better and turn them into hot leads.

2. Follow up No.2 – Send another email 1-2 days later offering resources that the lead may find helpful.

3. Follow up No.3 – Send an email to invite them to a webinar.

3. Put in efforts to win over the lead

Everyone likes attention, and you must try your best to make the lead feel special. You can personalize your email and show that you are putting in extra effort by researching before connecting with the lead. In your follow-up phone calls, try to make the prospect aware of their pain point and how your solution can help them. Keep the content of emails and calls engaging and tailored for the lead.

4. Keep track of your interaction

Keeping track of your interaction is as essential as following up with prospects effectively. You can use any good CRM for that purpose. It would be even better when the CRM integration is available with your sales outreach tool, just like how it is in SalesBlink. Also, it is possible to find out which technique is working the best by getting reliable data. It would help your lead nurturing get better results.

9 Ways To Keep Warm Leads From Growing Cold

If you think you are stuck and don’t know how to stay in touch with warm leads, get a headstart through these tips and tricks.

1. Use multiple channels

In today’s age, there are a lot of options to connect with people. You must use them for your benefit and connect with warm leads across different channels like email, phone, SMS, and personal meetings.

The more diversified your contact methods are, the better it is in building relationships with leads. 

2. Ensure appropriate use of social media

To keep warm leads from growing cold, you need to actively interact with them on social media.

Social media is one such tool where you can be in touch with them at their comfort. This is the area where you can easily tap and increase your presence. You need to take out multiple ways to interact on a regular basis.

73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.

3. Follow up regularly

As already mentioned, regular follow-up is a sales mantra that works but you have to go a little easy with it.

Striking a balance is important. You must neither be a pest nor be too tardy. Be somewhere in the middle of both extremes. Being aggressive will scare your leads away.

On the other hand, if you are too laid back, it will seem as though you don’t care about selling your product or service, and the lead would lose interest in you. Chances of a warm lead forgetting about you are also high once you go out of sight. 

It is good to follow up with a purpose. You can give the prospect information about your business, the latest offers and services and provide them with the latest news.

Choose to check-in casually in between but do keep a purpose or choose to add value. Prospects like it when there is something in it for them. 

4. Make friends with them

It is not necessary to always have sales pitch conversations with them. Try to have more friendly conversations with the prospect on common topics of interest. It helps to build trust and take forward the sales process. Show genuine interest in them.

Don’t make the prospect feel that you are faking it at any point. 

Wish them on their birthdays and anniversaries to give them a special feeling. The same goes for festivals. It will help in keeping the connection alive, and you can stay in touch with leads that are warm.

Try to add value in some way or the other. You can send them gifts like free trials, ebooks, consultations, special discounts, and much more. Do keep their personal interests in mind while sending the gifts. It will bring positive feedback and enhance your relationship with them. This is a good way to keep warm leads from growing cold. 

5. Talk less and listen more 

You have to focus on the leads and not on yourself.

Do you know that people like to engage in conversations and enjoy it when someone listens to them?

Talk about what interests the lead and gain their interest. Closely listen to what they have to say. Making the prospect feel important can go a long way in helping you close a sale.

All you need to do is lend an ear and be an active listener. 

6. Generate enriching content

93% of B2B companies say that content marketing is more successful for lead generation than traditional marketing. 

After taking a close look at your leads and understanding what they care the most about, create high-quality content tailored to their pain points. For example, you can create a personalized interactive demo explaining how your product can solve their exact use cases. You can nurture warm leads by providing them with content that adds value to their lives. 

Create and share online stuff such as blogs, articles, e-books, webinars, whitepapers, how-to videos, infographics, and many more. Sending these as personalized messages would be even better as the lead would feel that you value their desires.

Relevant and useful content will promote your brand-wide and create an interest in the leads that are warm. It would be best to find the right balance of communication to stay in touch with warmer leads. 

7. Bring the spotlight on what is new

If your lead lost interest in you, it’s ok.

You can always revive their interest by letting them know about a new launch by your company. It could be a new product or service, new features or some exciting offer.

Never miss out on the chance to tell leads about the recent developments even if they have gone cold. You can’t predict when a lead gets interested in you again. 

8. Give trial/demo

Think about this: before purchasing a car, you like to go for a test drive. Only after a test drive can you decide whether you want to buy the car or not.

Similarly, to keep leads that are warm from growing cold, you need to offer a test drive of your product or service. It is quite natural that prospects would want to try your service or product for some time before going ahead and investing their money in it.

After some time, this test drive will call for a sales action. So, if you do not have the test drive option, there are high chances of losing out to competitors who provide it.

9. Optimize emails

In order to boost your leads that are warm, try the following ways out-

1. Try to attract them through incentives, free trials, discounts, and many more.

2. Integrating contact form submissions, to loop them in your email subscribers list.

3. Try to use urgency. People tend to react faster when you offer them a limited period. They generally spend rapidly when it comes to limited period offers.

All these tips boil down to a few more important points-

Cold Emails have a bad reputation. But here are a few general concepts you need to keep in mind before you send an email to a warm lead.

i) Customize your Email

Customize email for decision-makers. You need to understand what is the purpose of your email. When sending warm emails, the only purpose is to start the communication. Don’t hop for discounts and deals.

ii) Email Length

Before you start writing a long story, keep in mind they are not interested in your story. They did not ask you to narrate a story. So be short and crisp. They are not interested in giant texts that have nothing to do with them.

Nobody will be keen to read a novel in the email body and that is one big reason why you should keep your emails short. Try to catch the recipient’s attention in the opening of the email. 

iii) Try to build the connection

Wherein they can relate your product or service to their existing problem. You have to explain how well your product or service fits into the needs of the prospect. 

And over the years, in an attempt to be professional, you tend to ignore small informal talks.

So, we saw how to keep a lead warm. Now it is time for a few templates.

Follow-Up Templates For Warm Leads

Following are a few warm follow up templates:

Template 1

Hey {{Name}},

Last time we talked you wanted to get in touch around June. Since we are in the last week of May, I wanted to reach you and touch on your goal.

What is a good date to schedule a meeting with you? I am looking forward to our succeeding steps.

Cheers

{{Name_Contact_Info}}

Template 2

Hi {{Name}},

I just saw you were still looking for a photographer for your wedding photos on Instagram! We understand that wedding memory are special to the heart. We make sure that these bright and colour moments live forever in the form of pictures. My organization gives you the necessary skills and knowledge to take your photo editing to the next level! Here’s the link to all our reviews. Should we chat again soon?

Looking forward to the next steps and details about the function.

Cheers

{{Name_Contact_Info}}

Template 3

Hi {{recipient_name}},

Hope you are having a pleasant day. It’s been quite a while since we last got in touch. {Your organization} ran a trial of {our service name} for the purpose to generate quality leads.

I have recently hit some groundbreaking improvements since you last signed up. 

How about having a quick discussion this week? I would be really happy to walk through these improvements.

Does Friday, 5 P.M sound good to you?

Tip:- Always mention the important updates in your product or service to gather the attention of the lead. It increases the chances of them saying yes to a meeting. Remember these emails depend heavily on personalization.

Time To Nurture Warm Leads The Right Way

Staying in touch with warm leads can be a little challenging, but these simple tips can set you in the right direction and be of immense help to keep them from growing cold. It will also help to build that trust and rapport among leads that are warm. By not being too salesy all the time, you win more points. 

There is always a sense of uncertainty as warm leads may not convert all the time. But by following the best warm sales outreach practices mentioned above, you will inch closer to your goal. 

The best strategy for your business to drive sales is to stay in touch with leads that are warm and be genuinely interested in them.

Use our inputs and see how your warm lead generation improves!

Happy lead generating!

FAQs