Does this seem like a silly question?

Because I assure you it is not.

The issue starts with commercial heads whose whole outlook is concentrated in the bubble-world that is sales.

And there’s a reason that sales tend not to be interested in anything that is not directly talking about the features and benefits of the product/service. That’s their job! That’s what they’ve undergone intensive training for.

They’re judged on deals through the door… nothing more, nothing less.

Yet we have to think of how those leads get to the point where sales can work their magic closing deals.

OK – we all understand the sales funnel.

But do we really?

If you think that for most commercial propositions, you would be doing well to move from 100 expressions of interest to 5 actual sales. That’s a fairly high-performing funnel.

50% are not in a position to purchase (existing contract, don’t have budget, etc.)

Of which a further 25% can’t (or don’t) make a strong enough business case internally.

15% go with the competition.

And you get half of the remaining 10% over the line.

What does that tell us?

Sales are only following the weeding out process and all their attention has to be devoted to the emerging minority of deals that WILL go through. ALL their attention.

So what happens to the remainder in the meantime.

Just because they’re not deals today doesn’t mean they won’t be next week, or next month, or next year.

Who is looking after them in the meantime?

Who’s keeping them engaged and warm?

Who is holding their interest with relevant and interesting content and insights?

Who’s putting them together with customers who have bought (who simply by sharing their positive experience help get at least some of their peers over the line)?

Too many (less experienced) business people think that the funnel is linear. You fill it up, some sales result. You fill it up again. Some sales result. Repeat…

WRONG!

Sure there are some people who will never buy. Your ‘time-wasters’.

But a goodly proportion who do not buy in the first phase sales cycle are highly likely to buy if nurtured.

So your content and thought-leadership strategy needs to be two-fold.

First, it is crucial in getting initial eyeballs. Getting people into the top of the funnel. Standing out from the competition. Providing interesting things for prospects to sign up to, consume, attend. And then a series of interesting pieces of content will then help move them down the first-phase funnel.

But it’s also critical for keeping the people who don’t buy straight away warm, aware, admiring, desiring.

Example: I once had a business contact (who had never bought) follow me and my outputs for ten years. TEN YEARS. Without engaging. Without buying. Then one day, they were on the phone. They’d been kept in touch, engaged. It resulted in a further ten years contract – serious revenues.

Equally, we had someone who we’d worked with in the past, but lost touch with. Because we were regularly putting out good material, this kept us visible to them. They came back after eight years – different firm, different product, same skills and techniques required. Bingo.

Perhaps the moral of this tale is that sales management should spend more time understanding the strategic importance of keeping the audience warm for future sales. And equally, marketing management needs to make more of an effort to understand the sales imperatives, but constantly be reminding (and convincing) sales that what they’re doing is creating future pipeline.

This is such an important theme, I’ll riff on it more over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, do comment – either here or (as you often do) directly and privately.