Alma – You have to be the judge of which prospects/suspects you’ll put in your nurturing list. Absolutely agree that some folks aren’t worth pursuing any longer because they just weren’t qualified based on factors other than timing (for instance, I won’t write copy for, say, a nutraceutical company because I don’t know that business at all. I focus mostly on high tech and other B2B).

Let me put the benefit of deliberate nurturing in perspective. Our real estate agent sold us our current house a few years back. I heard from her a couple of times afterward, but then her communications stopped. Then, after years of silence, once the bottom fell out of the real estate market, I get emails from her every week with articles about home improvement, the housing market, etc.

Now…I appreciate her efforts, and I feel bad that the real estate market is in the toilet. However, her sudden, now-I-need-to-market nurturing effort makes her look desperate. It feels phony to me. And it just makes me wonder….where were you all those years?

I don’t want to try and start a dialog with my “not today” prospects when I REALLY need the work. The best time to do that is when you DON’T need the work. It communicates to my prospect that I’m interested in their long-term success, regardless of what they decide to do.

And when you DO need the work, you won’t look foolish giving them a call to see if you can offer them a new service you just rolled out (or something along those lines).