Now I know we’ve all been guilty of it at one time or another, but I’ve often viewed the lack of appropriate follow up as one of the biggest missed opportunities in business. The results can be costly, particularly in sales where the inability to build and nurture relationships with prospective customers not only impacts how your company is perceived by others, but can result in the loss of potential revenues.

I guess that’s why lead nurturing has always rang true with me as a marketer because in the end it all comes down to relationships. With so much time and money spent on building sales pipelines, why do we let the majority of new leads slip away when often times timing is the difference between prospects and buying customers?

I recently came across a nice article, “Lead Nurturing Maturity,” that discusses the importance of establishing best practices around lead nurturing, and how to maintain the interest of existing contacts throughout the sales process and eventually move them into the buying stage. Much of this is driven by content that’s relevant to their problems and where they are at in the purchasing process.

Unfortunately, the world of “close your leads or close your doors” has everyone in a frenzy to find more leads and turn them into actual revenue sooner than later. But from a buyer’s prospective, today’s slow-recovering economy still has many organizations slow at pulling the trigger, even when the need is there. This is why lead nurturing is so important to any marketing plan.

I’ve seen countless numbers of sales people come and go without closing a single deal partly because the sales cycle was so long. Was this the salesperson’s fault that a deal didn’t get closed? Maybe. But some of the responsibility also falls on the marketing plan. Without a plan to nurture the leads they’ve generated, too many unworked prospects drop off or are lost to competitors down the road.

Having an effective lead nurturing game plan that delivers relevant content to customers not only builds stronger relationships with your prospects, it keeps your company and products top of mind throughout the sales cycle, and most importantly, at the time the customer is finally ready to buy.