Lead Nurturing across Product, Marketing & Sales

Lead Nurturing - Don't Ghost Marketing Leads

Over the past 10 years, I’ve delivered over 20,000 leads for clients through initiatives mostly in B2B via seo, programmatic seo, lead forms, landing pages, business events and more. As a marketer generating leads isn’t the main challenge, but nurturing them into a sale is. When I was starting out, I saw leads as numbers we did monthly reporting showed the figures and shared the success; but in truth it was hollow because we weren’t outreaching with conviction and we weren’t empowering the sales teams to unlock lead potential (also, email automation tech wasn’t as fancy as it is now)

For companies, looking to scale every time someone fills out a form, registers attendance to a webinar, starts a chat, or subscribes to an email list is an opportunity to warm and nurture. Very rarely are these leads actually in buying mode, but are mostly curious. When free reports get downloaded and then don’t get spoken to again (unless you engage with Cognism, 6Sense or Appollo.io), email automations start then end never to be spoken to again.

Getting The Messaging Right

Knowing who you are - and why you exist - isn’t marketing fluff; it’s strategy. It gives your team purpose, your customers clarity, and your investors confidence. Strong messaging unites marketing, sales, PR, and product under a shared language - your brand’s hymn sheet - so every touchpoint reinforces one coherent narrative.

Before you can manage or nurture leads, you need to understand what truly drives their decisions. Identify both the broad pain points and the individual stakeholder pressures within each company. This insight allows marketing and sales teams to adapt conversations in real time, document learnings, and evolve messaging in step with the market’s changing needs.

Your moat - the reason you win - comes from your difference. Early on, that’s often unclear. Over time, your strengths in product, process, or people become your advantage. Messaging isn’t about generic claims like “we save 30 minutes a day”; it’s about storytelling that shows why your approach matters to the specific role, industry, and scale of your audience.

In sales, the motivators that drive action are trust, ability, conviction, and knowledge. In today’s market, a website and a few social posts aren’t enough. Buyers expect insight before engagement. To earn attention, you must create moments of value - through thought leadership, conversation, and proof that your brand understands their world better than anyone else (reports, webinars, events).

B2B Alignment Across Marketing, Sales, and Product:

1. The Audience

Before a single call, map the landscape. Who are the real decision-makers, influencers, and blockers? Often, finance holds the veto, while marketing or operations drive need. Build clear audience personas, understand their motivations, and tailor your outreach to align your value with their priorities.

2. The Thing / Product

Great nurturing starts with having something tangible to offer - a quick-to-deploy solution that solves a real problem and demonstrates visible value. Reduce friction for the buyer and blockers alike. For SaaS, this could be a free trial. For me, it’s testing 20 highly targeted programmatic SEO landing pages that deliver immediate proof of concept.

3. The Pitch

Your first conversation isn’t a monologue - it’s a discovery. Keep it short, structured, and curious. Rather than diving into features, use open questions - what, why, how, who, when -to uncover goals, constraints, and context. By listening before pitching, you show credibility and respect while shaping a more relevant, value-led proposal.

4. The Process

Once interest is sparked, clarity of process becomes everything. Define who delivers what, when, and how. Map your onboarding flow, milestones, and communication rhythm so the experience feels organised and professional. When marketing, sales, product, and leadership align on delivery, you create trust through transparency and consistency.

5. The Automations

Automation should enhance - not replace - human touch. Use your CRM to route leads to the right people fast. If someone fills out a fintech form, assign it to your fintech lead. If a prospect revisits the site after a week, trigger a personalised follow-up. Intelligent automations maintain momentum while freeing your team to focus on real conversations.

6. The Human

People buy from people. No technology replaces genuine human guidance. SeedLegals’ founder Anthony Rose built early traction by personally onboarding thousands of startups onto the platform, building loyalty one founder at a time. That kind of empathy and involvement turns users into advocates - and ensures your brand is remembered for care, not just capability. In the process capturing 70% of the UK startup legal market.

7. The Commit

Before any discovery call, I ask three simple but powerful questions:

• What three business or marketing challenges do you need help solving? 

• What are your goals for 2025 and beyond? 

• What are you looking for in a partner?

These questions filter intent, reveal priorities, and set expectations. The best business relationships I’ve built - all lasting years - began with these three questions.

Lead Nurturing - Turn Leads Into Champions

The role of marketing is to build trust, for sales it’s to build confidence, and for product and design teams it’s to create engagement that lasts. In a service business, everything revolves around repeatable processes that deliver real outcomes for clients. Early in my career, we generated hundreds of report downloads for a major professional service, but the follow-up was broken. We saw the leads as data points, not as people. When you treat every download as a number, you miss the chance to turn curiosity into conversation, conversation into champions and champions into sales.

Finally, don’t ghost leads when they take action. Every click is a signal of trust - and trust, once ignored, doesn’t return. The companies that win don’t chase leads; they nurture belief.