Any seasoned salesperson knows that anybody interested in their products or services is worth cultivating. The problem is that they're not all worth investing time in now. As a result, the salesperson must devote his energy to those most likely to purchase soon. But what happens to the other prospects in the meantime? Well, if the salesperson has the time, they can continue to "nurture" the prospect until they're ready to act.

A common practice is to divide prospects into categories – perhaps, for example, by the expected time to purchase – e.g. 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, and longer than six months. Good nurturing might ensure that each category of prospect gets “touched” somehow on a regular basis with some type of useful trust-building offer. For example, perhaps the six-month category will be offered an informative white paper, the 90-day category gets offered a customer case-study, the 60-day category gets offered a demonstration, and the 30-day category gets offered a proposal. With continuous nurturing, not only do prospects begin to qualify themselves, but they also develop trust in your company!

Unfortunately, careful nurturing isn't as profitable as selling, so all too often, prospect nurturing get short shrift when the pressure is on.

But not with automated Customer Relationship Management (CRM). With CRM, the entire prospect nurturing process and workflow to achieve it can automated. Prospective customers get appropriately categorized and automatically get pre-prepared mailings and offers based upon their categorization. The result is your salespeople can focus their energies on closing accounts and longer term prospects will get appropriate attention and nurture. You build trust and confidence early in the mind of the prospect and your sales grow because of the steady cultivating of prospects that don't get lost in the shuffle when the pressure is on. It's just another way that CRM can be used to look after and grow your business.