Ideally when you have a lead, you can turn them into a customer after the initial proposal. But you know that isn’t always the case. Even a contractor who has a fantastic close rate will still have a bunch of leads that they don’t sell. 

Too often contractors give up on these leads and lose touch with them. But, this is a mistake! If you have their contact information, you can still keep in touch with them in a respectful and helpful way. 

After you give an initial proposal, you will probably want to touch base a few times to see if you can close the sale. Maybe they go with a different contractor, or maybe they just ignore you. Sometimes you have no idea what happened to the lead. This is when you should enter them into a long term lead nurturing program. 

What is long term lead nurturing?

Long term lead nurturing involves a series of emails that you send to specific people in your funnel. These emails would involve: 

• Information about the product you discussed in your initial contact
• Specials on service or if the equipment they were proposed has a new discount 
• General educational information 
• Information about complementary products: Thermostats, Indoor Air Quality, Service Plans
• Case Study examples of similar work you’ve done

When you keep in contact with these people, you still have a chance of making them your customers. If you don’t ever contact them again, you will never know if you can land this opportunity in a later season. 

Lead never Closed With Anyone

Sometimes the lead never closed at all. Maybe they decided they didn’t have the money at the time, or simply didn’t need the system right away. That would mean the next season they would still need a new system, and probably a lot more than the previous year. If you are keeping in contact with this person, you are FAR more likely to receive a call the following season when they revisit the issue. 

Lead went with someone else but wasn’t happy

Even if a lead was lost to a competitor, you never know how their experience was. Maybe they weren’t happy with their installation, or their new system isn’t working too well. They may regret not going with you and decide to use you for future service and installations. Even if you lost a lead in the first place, it doesn’t mean you can’t land them later on. 

You offer other products 

Once again, the lead may have gone with a competitor, but that competitor may not sell everything you do. Maybe you offer indoor air quality products, thermostats, generators, and even more equipment that your competitor doesn’t. Staying in contact with this lead will allow you to promote other products that can turn them into your customer as well. Even if you sell them something small, turning them into a customer can turn into continued business and you may even win their next installation proposal. 

Using Marketing Automation

In order to plan this long term lead nurturing, you will want to set up some marketing automation and workflows. These will allow you to set up all the emails you want to send to this lead, and space them out over a certain amount of time. You can also base what email goes next on the lead’s behavior. If they open certain emails or don’t, you can build different triggers into the workflow that determine how much time goes in between the emails and what ones to send out. 

You can also customize these workflows based on who is getting the emails. Not every lost lead was proposed the same thing, or contacted you for the same reason. Building out email series based on the different interests each lead has is essential to making sure you are sending them the right content. 

Low Investment/High Reward

Most of the work involved in long term lead nurturing happens up front. You create all the emails, set up the automation, and then you let the nurturing do its job! This is why the investment pays off VERY WELL when you use long term lead nurturing. You are spending money up front to produce all the content and set it up, but once that is done, the maintenance is low cost, and you simply have to pay for the automation service. 

If you end up booking 1-2 jobs a year with long term lead nurturing, it will already pay for itself! You won’t sell every lead you lose in the long run, but if you don’t have a system to keep in contact, you aren’t even giving yourself a chance!