That was indeed the question I mulled over when travelling home from the recent B2B Marketing conference on lead generation. It’s not often that I think about breasts, and that may have been the result of too much wine, but the parallels between lead nurturing and breast feeding suddenly struck me.

You see, there is a line. Like breast feeding, you can nurture for too long and before you know it you’re the subject of a Channel 4 documentary with two seven year olds clamped limpet-like to your teats. You enjoy the contact, the interaction, the reliance and it makes your campaign figures look healthy. But the child should’ve moved on long ago and be paying its own way.

As a client marketer, I am also subject to the demands of a lead-devouring sales team. Like child-snatchers they constantly come in search of fresh leads – taking them away before they’ve been nourished and warmed and have received all of the anti-bodies they need to stop some other company from adopting them.

So when is the right time to let go? How do you get the balance right? It’s a matter of creating the right formula, looking out for the behaviours and sounds that tell us as marketers it’s time for a lead to be passed on. This of course requires a lot of trust, investment and foresight within organisations to test new approaches and come up with a solution that above all delivers the best commercial results.

I came to the conclusion that breast feeding is always best to begin with but true lead nurturing requires two parents and a collaborative approach across both sales and marketing to bring up baby together. As we enter into a lead nurturing future, I look forward to our first parents’ evening and excellent grades.