“Relationship Marketing” is better than “Lead Nurturing”

January 22, 2010

The term “lead nurturing” has been increasing in frequency over the last few years. It is an unfortunate term, as it almost forces companies to think of important prospects as objects rather than real people with goals that they want to meet. The coldness of the term also may steer companies to develop cold marketing programs, rather than warmer marketing programs that truly try to build relationships with prospective customers and to address their prospect’s goals.

I prefer the better and broader term “Relationship Marketing”, as the idea is to try to build a relationship with the prospect in a manner where

  • the prospect truly trusts you and understands what your company has to offer,
  • you truly understand the prospects objectives and create value in the mind of the prospect to help build the relationship, and
  • you can address how your product/solution addresses each prospect’s goals. 

Ultimately, where there is a good match from the perspective of the prospect, you will have a sales opportunity and have a great sales close rate, and where there is not a good match (again from the perspective of the prospect) you won’t have a poor close rate.

Founder & Partner

As the founder of OpenView, Scott focuses on distinctive business models and products that uniquely address a meaningful market pain point. This includes a broad interest in application and infrastructure companies, and businesses that are addressing the next generation of technology, including SaaS, cloud computing, mobile platforms, storage, networking, IT tools, and development tools.