Do you surprise the prospect based on their behavior? Or, do you ask for permission to move them into sales? Or, maybe you have a "good relationship" already so it isn't really a surprise? Transitions are always a change. And change isn't always easy. Thus, you should be spending your marketing time on managing the changes in the marketing and sales pipeline. One of the most difficult changes to manage is that from a nurture status to an active status. Assuming you got a prospect into a nurture status without too much process friction, it will be twice as hard to get them out. This is so because of two factors: inertia and sales-resistance. Transition from nurture to active status is, put simply, putting someone back in the "ready to buy" bucket. And most people are nervous about spending money. So, even if the _need_ your product or service, they will be reluctant to start talking to a sales person. They will put off this transition as long as they can. No one likes to go car shopping, even if they need a new car. Moreover, most prospects are in the nurture status for months before they become sales ready. During this process, they have become accustomed to a regular flow of valuable, no-strings-attached content. When nurture ends, they know they will lose this low-impact, high-value information sources. And they don't want to. We have prospects who have _requested_ to be "nurtured" forever. But, nurturing is not a newsletter. The goal of all nurturing is to return a prospect to the active sales process. And prospect who resist this change are to be encouraged or even pushed into the sales process. Sometimes, we have to care more about what our customers need than they do. And in those cases, it is up to us as marketers and salespersons to help our clients take that step. Selling is helping, and we need to be active helpers.