In this stage, we look at why not every prospect should be pushed towards a sale straight away. Some people will be closer to buying than others, and understanding that difference is an important part of PRM. By taking prospects through a sales pipeline, paying attention to how they respond to your marketing and adjusting your approach accordingly, you can nurture them towards becoming customers without putting too much pressure on them too soon.

Taking Their Time

The simple truth is that not every prospect is ready to buy straight away. Just because someone is interested in what you offer, it doesn’t mean that now is the right time to start pushing for a sale. They might still be researching their options, waiting for the right time to spend money or simply need more information before they feel comfortable making a decision.

This is why nurturing is so important. Rather than trying to force the conversation forward, you can continue providing useful information and staying in touch until they are ready. Done properly, this can help you win more business in the short term, but it can also make a big difference further down the line when someone who wasn’t ready to buy previously becomes ready.

The important thing is to stay relevant without becoming intrusive. If someone isn’t ready to buy, bombarding them with sales messages isn’t going to change that. It is much more useful to understand where they are in their buying journey and give them a reason to keep engaging with your business.

The Right Foundation

As we mentioned in the previous Manage stage, having a sales pipeline will make this much easier. Your pipeline needs to reflect the way your business actually works, because not every company progresses its prospects in the same way.

Start by making sure the pipeline is familiar and easy for you to work with. There is little point in creating a complicated system that your team doesn’t understand or use consistently. At the same time, it needs to be detailed enough to show what is actually happening with your prospects. If you normally speak to someone several times before they become a customer, you need to be able to see those interactions and know when the next one is due.

The point of the pipeline isn’t to create extra administration. It is there to give you a clear picture of your prospects so that you can concentrate on the conversations themselves rather than trying to remember where everyone is.

Use What You Have, and Wisely

Once your prospects are organised, you can start using the information you already have to understand how interested they are. Email marketing, social media engagement, website activity and previous conversations can all give you useful clues about where someone is in their buying journey.

For example, imagine Prospect A visits your website occasionally and looks at a variety of different pages. They are subscribed to your emails, but they don’t open every message. They have shown some interest, but there isn’t much to suggest that they are ready to buy yet. This is probably someone you want to keep nurturing rather than immediately moving into a more direct sales conversation.

You could continue sending them useful content that is relevant to their interests and see whether their engagement changes over time. You might find that they start opening more emails, returning to your website more often or responding to particular types of content. Those changes can tell you that the relationship is becoming more valuable.

Now compare that with Prospect B. They have asked questions on social media, regularly return to your website and seem particularly interested in a specific product or service. They are giving you much stronger signals that they are actively considering what you offer, so it would make sense to increase the level of contact and look for an opportunity to have a more direct conversation.

These two prospects may have started in exactly the same place, but they are now at very different stages. Prospect A is still relatively cool, while Prospect B is much warmer. Your approach needs to reflect that difference.

Checking the Temperature

Thinking about prospects as hot, warm or cool can be a useful way of understanding where they are in the buying process. A cool prospect may have shown some initial interest but isn’t actively considering a purchase. A warm prospect is more engaged and is starting to show signs that they may be interested in buying.

The mistake is treating everyone in the same way.

If someone has only downloaded a piece of content or liked one of your social media posts, you probably don’t want to immediately start calling them every week. On the other hand, if someone has asked several questions, returned to your website and specifically requested more information, there is a much stronger reason to start a direct conversation.

PRM is about recognising these differences and using what you know about each person to decide what happens next.

What You Want, What You Need

This is where CRM software and automation can become particularly useful. Instead of manually checking every contact and trying to remember what everyone has done, you can use automation to help you respond to certain actions.

For example, you might want to be notified when someone fills in a form, registers for an event or reaches a particular stage in your sales pipeline. You could also use information about their interests to decide which marketing communications they should receive.

The important thing is not to automate everything simply because you can. Automation should make your process easier and help you respond at the right time, but it shouldn’t remove the personal side of the relationship.

If someone has shown an interest in a particular subject, sending them relevant information automatically can be useful. When that person is ready to have a proper conversation, however, there still needs to be someone there who understands who they are and what they are looking for.

This is why choosing the right CRM matters. You need software that can support the way you actually work, rather than forcing you into a complicated process that doesn’t suit your business.

Keeping an Ear on the Ground

Setting up your sales pipeline and automation rules is a good start, but you still need to pay attention to how your prospects respond.

If your emails aren’t being opened, ask yourself why. Perhaps the content isn’t relevant, you’re contacting people too often or the message simply isn’t giving them anything useful. If one type of content consistently gets a better response than another, that’s worth paying attention to as well.

The same applies to your other marketing activity. Look at what your prospects respond to, how often they engage and whether their behaviour is changing over time. Then use what you learn to improve your approach.

There isn’t a perfect nurturing strategy that works forever. Test, measure and adjust. Find what works for your audience and change what doesn’t.

Future Nurture

If someone doesn’t buy, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost them.

There are plenty of reasons why someone might not be ready to purchase. Their circumstances may have changed, they might not have the budget yet, or they may simply have other priorities. If there is still a genuine opportunity, you can move them back into a longer-term nurturing process rather than writing them off completely.

The advantage is that you don’t have to start the relationship again from scratch. You’ve already spoken to them and learned something about their needs and interests. Keep that information in your CRM and use it when you contact them again.

If you’ve continued to provide useful information and built trust over time, your business is much more likely to be remembered when they are finally ready to buy.

popcorn’s PRM

This is where popcorn can help bring the whole process together. Your sales pipeline sits at the centre of the system, giving you a visual way to see where your prospects are and what needs to happen next. You can also organise your contacts using tags and other information, making it easier to segment people based on their interests and activity.

popcorn also brings marketing and automation tools into the same system. You can create email campaigns, organise contacts, set up automation rules and connect your marketing activity with your sales process without having to manage everything across different platforms.

The aim isn’t to automate your relationships or remove the human side of selling. It is to make it easier to manage those relationships properly, so you can spend more time having useful conversations with the people who are most likely to become customers.

Some prospects will move quickly through your sales process, while others may take months before they are ready. That’s perfectly normal. The important thing is that you understand where each person is, communicate with them appropriately and stay relevant until the time is right.

Nurturing isn’t about rushing someone towards a sale. It’s about building enough trust and value that, when they’re ready to buy, you’re the business they think of first.

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