How to Warm Up B2B Lead Prospects: It Takes Both Marketing and Sales

Congrats - you brought in an array of new leads, but now you’re wondering why none of them haven’t automatically opted in for that demo CTA you’ve sent them in multiple emails requests and positioned front and center on the top of the home page and your product page.

Getting the lead is honestly the easy part. Getting them to do something is where the hard work begins. In B2B, “warming up a lead” is all about demonstrating value and relevance. That takes a myriad of approaches and requires both marketing and sales. 

Most companies tend to run a completely disconnected process:

Marketing pushes content - a mix of product heavy pushes - “check out these features, learn more about this new release, etc. etc.” 

And after marketing does its thing for a campaign series, then if you’re a bit more sophisticated, sales team members blast outreach sequences also using a variety of product-focused materials and urging a demo.

What is this approach missing?  Authenticity. Value. Relevance. Insights. Personalization.

Pretty much everything that makes your brand look, feel, sound different from your competition and anything that would probably make you want to buy from your own company.

Here are some tips to change up how you get a cold lead to hot with marketing and sales working in tandem.

Step 1: Marketing starts with value, not product

The first touch should never be:

• “Watch our demo”

• “Talk to sales”

• “Look at our UI”

Someone who just interacted with your organization for the first time isn’t ready for that yet.  They don’t even know if they “want to date you” yet, let alone marry you!

Marketing needs to show the buyer:

We understand your world and the problems you and your team are struggling with and need to solve.

It’s important to note that each of marketing’s messages need to be specific to each buyer type/ICP (ideal customer profile), because each person on the buying committee cares about different things when evaluating options. 

What does this look like? 

• A guide to “How the best {ICP}-teams are preparing for 2026”

• Short benchmark or industry insight 

• A webinar featuring a customer or peer who has worked through the same issues

• A POV article or blog that challenges their thinking

• A practical checklist or cheat sheet tied to their role

This earns attention and trust before a salesperson ever appears in their inbox. And you probably should provide a variety of these over the course of a few weeks or months (depending on your buying cycle) because no one is going to open every email, every time.

Step 2: Sales follows with personalized context

Once a prospect begins to open your emails, maybe download something, or attend an event, that’s the signal for sales to step in, with relevance. 

Creating some type of scoring system for marketing leads also helps determine when sales should start to engage with the lead (e.g. open emails, download a paper, attend a webinar, visit 3 website pages).

For B2B, we know that prospects need multiple touch points before they agree to have any type of conversation.

When sales enters the mix, the email outreach can’t be: “Hey, just checking in”

It needs to look something like:

• “You joined our webinar on onboarding, you might also like this example of what we’re seeing high-performing teams do.”

• “You downloaded our guide on reducing churn. I’m happy to share trends we’re hearing from similar orgs.”

• “If this is something you’re solving next year, I have a POV that may help you pressure-test your plan.”

This turns marketing momentum into a real conversation. The prospect also is now starting to build a relationship with your organization and a specific person.

When they're ready to get serious about buying, then they have a "face with a name" within your organization and sales has done the hardest part of the sale - building the relationship and establishing trust.

Why this works to accelerate the funnel and quickly warm up b2b leads

Given that most people skip a lot of these steps because they need opps/wins right now, I can appreciate that this feels counter-intuitive to speeding up the funnel.

But here’s why it works: 

• Marketing earns credibility and begins building trust.

• Sales is then able to create connections and start the relationship building

• The buyer feels understood 

• You stay relevant without being pushy

• You build value before you ever get to the product pitch

This is the difference between a pipeline full of noise and stagnation and a pipeline full of real opportunity and movement.