Turn Prospects Into Customers By Nurturing Your Leads

Once you have a lead, it can be tempting to move them into “won” and “lost” columns after your initial interaction. But this is a huge mistake! Even when potential customers aren’t ready to schedule services with you right away, they may be in a position to do so in a few weeks or months.

When you nurture your leads, you build relationships with potential clients, which makes them keep you in mind as an expert provider of pest control services when they are ready to buy. Studies have shown that nurtured leads produce about a 20% increase in sales opportunities.

Start by putting yourself into your customers’ shoes. Build a timeline of what they are doing in each step of their journey toward scheduling regular pest control services. Write down what they are thinking and how they’re feeling at every point in the process. As you do this, identify the questions they have along the way: How will this affect my home or business? How will this affect my family, pets or employees? How long will this solution take? What is this provider’s reputation? Can we afford this? Will this solution really work? How can they prove it?

Begin creating content that helps potential customers answer these questions. Try to remember that they will correlate the quality of the content you share with them with the services you will eventually provide them.

Target your content to the different types of leads you receive. Keep in mind at every step whether the contact you are making is a helpful one and then proceed with a campaign to stay in touch.

This campaign can include occasional emails that are entertaining and visually appealing to inform your leads about seasonal service needs and promotions you may have. You also can implement a disciplined text or call schedule to keep you on their radar.

Include in your efforts those customers that you haven’t performed pest control services for in a while or that you have only worked with one time. Re-engaging with these groups can lead to improvements in your number of regular customers. Make personal connections and reference the work you provided in the past to identify what their current needs may be and how you can help meet them.

You should also have a process in place to reconnect with regular customers to inform them of other pest management solutions you offer or to give them tips they can implement at home. By giving them information that is helpful and makes their lives easier, you solidify yourself as their expert service provider who genuinely cares about their pest control needs.

Nurturing your leads will be well worth the effort, as some reports have shown that those who perform lead nurturing campaigns report a 45% higher ROI than those who don’t.