The Secret of Prospect Cultivation

By Ashley Lichty

Any business without a strong follow-up plan isn't likely to go very far. Prospect cultivation is one of the most important aspects of a marketing plan. How are you suppose to turn leads into clients without a strong plan?

Prospect cultivation isn't hard at all. It just involves treating leads like human beings and not being too pushy. It means building a trusting relationship with them and becoming known to them as an expert in your field that they can rely on. It's important, when following up with leads, to send them information relating to your products and services that they may be interested in.

If you were a real estate agent with seller leads, you probably wouldn't be calling them once a month just to ask to list their home. Instead, keeping good prospect cultivation techniques inside, you add them to your follow-up campaign. This involves sending them weekly emails with market updates, open house tips, home value tips and an occasional CMA on their home.

That is what prospect cultivation is all about - consistent and persistent follow up. The agent in the above example came across as a trusted and helpful expert rather than a pushy salesperson. Every business should develop a similar method of following up with their leads and tweak it until it's the best it can be.

One thing that can throw a wrench in prospect cultivation efforts is the sheer number of leads to follow up with. For a company dealing with hundreds of thousands of leads, a systematic plan is a must. Sales people can't just randomly contact leads with no rhyme or reason.

Believe it or not, automated follow up systems are easily available and can do wonders for prospect cultivation efforts. These systems come in the form of software commonly called customer relationship managers (CRMs) or contact management systems (CMSs). They can automate and track much of the follow up a sales floor must do.

All the many different programs available for prospect cultivation tend to have similar features: email drip campaigns, task scheduling and alerts, calendars, etc. The email campaigns allow you to automatically send informational emails to leads on a regular basis. They often incorporate a sales call and script into the schedule as well.

A company can often get a CRM system built to it's own specifications and have it include many other features. Unfortunately, many companies today don't even realize what CRMs are available, and if they do they don't realize what a difference it could make for their business. If you're not utilizing some sort of automated follow-up system, chances are your prospect cultivation is suffering.