The Nurture Institute’s Jim Cecil, an acknowledged leader in customer-relationship strategies and loyalty marketing, sat down with us this week to talk nurture selling and CRM, as part of our thought leadership blog series. Check out Jim’s advice for nurture skeptics below:

1. You are considered one of the brightest marketing minds in the industry, tell us how you got into B2B marketing and what lead you to carve out a path in loyalty marketing and customer-relationship management.

My entire business career has been focused on the unique marketing challenges inherent to the BtoB space. My personal interest has been in the entrepreneurial space. I decided long ago to focus on differentiating the strategies attack marketing vs. relationship cultivation we call Nurturing.

2. You pioneered the Nurture Selling Process, can you give us a quick synopsis of how it works?

It boils down to Identifying, Individualizing and Interacting regularly with key clients, prospects and centers of influence. Following the simple laws of nature, nurturing recognizes that all plants must be carefully selected, cultivated and truly nurtured before attempting any harvesting. It follows the farming principle of drip-irrigation and allows a respectful and valuable strategy of helping customers succeed and not just helping clients buy.

3. What do you see as the most persistent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) problem faced by most B2B marketers today?

In itself, CRM is a misnomer. No software can manage a relationship with a human. We should just ‘fess-up’ and admit that the accurate definition should be Customer Relationship Data Management (CRDM). It has evolved into an even larger rolodex and burns sales time complying with the data demands of the CRM principles. If sales people will not participate, CRM fails. Unless and until CRM acknowledges the need for a simple to manage follow-up process to support the marketing and sales effort CRM will continue to disappoint and ultimately fail.

4. For nurture skeptics out there, why is nurture marketing so crucial in growing your customer base and driving customer loyalty?

I think it could be as simple as – customers buy when they are ready to buy and as Marshal Field stated in 1899 and repeatedly thereafter, “When affluent customers have a choice of where they spend their money, they invariably go back to that place where they have been intentionally and consistently made to feel special.”That’s a fundamental principle and nurture addresses that being there when the customer is ready and being of such consistent value that you are truly memorable. For the hardcore skeptics and the verbal anti-nurture doubters, I suggest before they do anything at all on their own database but rather, experience the Miracle-Gro™ test. Plant two pots with the same soil, sun and plants, water both but feed the Miracle-Gro™ to only one and your usual plant food on the other and at the peak of the season tell me which pot did better. What better metaphor can I use to explain the basic law of nature, which to my knowledge has never been broken without serious consequence to the violator. No exceptions I can find forgive humans from the law. ’As ye so’ works everywhere. I do not attempt to convert the scavengers. Old habits are difficult to change. And for those who truly live their business and have the vision of the value of nourishing long term, loyal customers, natural nurturers need no convincing. They need the technology, they need authentic support, precise messaging sequences and always valuable content and the appropriate follow-up tactics to ensure that no opportunity falls through the cracks. Sales people and their marketing support team need education more now than ever.  With the tsunami of change our clients have endured, one value survived. Those who nurtured flourished. Those ignored, withered. Our Co-Founder, Eric Rabinowitz originally prototyped the model for creating a unique place where nurturers could go to get the best in education, motivation, creative and strategic go to market campaigns and tactics.

5. Social media is emerging as a big trend in CRM, do you see this as one B2B marketers should embrace?

The jury is still in debate over the efficacy of all social media marketing. I have found that business social media such as LinkedIn or Plaxo are a natural adjunct to nurture – not just branding and communication. For example – You nurture on LinkedIn by joining groups and offering your expertise to the community by responding to their questions, challenges, branding and communications strategies.

6. What advice do you have for B2B marketers in retaining customers in the down economy?

In a few words, a. micro-segmentation of the database, b. profile and personify customers into simple A B C D categories, c. a precision niche focus, and d. behaving as a true friend in the business. Immediately Google-alert your top 20 customers (revenue sources), discover specific pain, passion, challenges and goals and devote the time and resources to cementing bonds with your most important constituencies.

7. How important is sales and marketing collaboration in converting prospects and does this fit into nurture selling?

Sales people stay focused on the top sales opportunities and frequently will not take the time to nurture someone with a longer buying cycle. Nurture marketing is a perfect solution to this problem as it keep the opportunities “warm” and engaged. When sales re-engages they are re-engaging with someone who has an actual relationship with the company. Marketing has a opportunity to drive sales with authentic collaboration. The schism lies in the position descriptions. Sales feels that marketing’s contribution is often glitz and glitter and does little to move the relationship forward. Marketing feels that sales are all bluff and bombast and do not appreciate the lead-gen efforts because such a high percentage are slow-adopters and so few low hanging fruit. Each blames the other for failure to fix the follow-up failure in nurturing slow adopting opportunities.

8. Your book, Nurturing Customer Relationships: A Step-by-Step Process for Growing Clients by Design, is a valued marketing resource, are you planning a follow up, and if so, what will the focus be?

We began the series in 1997 with “A Cure for the Common Cold Call, 101 best Nurture tips”. The second in 2007, “Nurturing Customer Relationships” with Nurture Institute partner, Eric Rabinowitz was the first how-to, do it yourself, treatise on relationship nurturing.  Our focus in the latest book entitled “101 Business Love Letters”,  Saying thank-you and meaning it, is about campaign content and about helping nurturers with this most critical and frequently ignored relationship step for the lack of the right words.

Thanks Jim!
For more on Nuture Selling check out the Nurture Institute Web site