When building your business, it’s important that you nurture – or cultivate – your prospects or leads. You want to build relationships with them, so ultimately, when they’re ready to buy, they want to buy from you.

Last time I talked about how to generate leads. You can click here to read that blog post.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to cultivate prospects. But first, let’s look at what cultivating prospects is NOT about…

• It’s not a single-sided conversation about how great you are or how great your products and services are.
• It’s not just a one-off meeting – or one-off email.
• It’s not about sell, sell, sell.

Let’s look at your prospect’s journey.

Someone new has joined your list. That person has signed up to receive your lead magnet, and now you’re emailing them. You want to continue to nurture them through those emails, providing value, as well as being persistent.

Persistence doesn’t mean emailing them every day, but on a regular basis. The right timing will depend on your target market and the length of your sales cycle. You’ll want to test and tweak to find what’s best for you.

You’ll have your initial engagement campaign (delivery of what they requested, as well as additional value), and then you’ll have your long-term nurture (ezines, for instance, that you deliver monthly at a minimum; weekly at a maximum).

When I talk about value, you want to continue to educate and inform them, but you don’t want to overwhelm them. How many times have you downloaded an ebook and never read it because it was too long?

You want your information to be consumed – that’s how your prospect will learn to know, like and trust you.

Here are 5 ideas to continue the conversation:

• If you’ve given them a checklist, send templates or short videos that further build on the checklist they initially requested as a bonus. Videos are a great way for someone to get to KNOW you, but you want the flow to make sense.
• Infographics are a great visual way to educate prospects. People love them!
• Send links to some of your popular blog posts that you’ve written.
• Invite them to join you on social media and what they can expect from following you on those social media channels. This would be a welcome or indoctrination campaign.
• Learn more about the prospect so you can better understand his or her interests and what challenges he or she is having. You can do this in a survey.

Now, earlier I said it’s not about sell, sell, sell… but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make an offer. In fact, you can. Click here to learn more about tripwire offers.

In a nutshell, you want to make sure you are following up with your prospects and continue to nurture or cultivate those prospects! Got some great ideas for how to continue the conversation? Share with me below!

Not sure where to go with yours? Schedule a free call!