Getting prospects to your sales pipeline isn’t enough to close deals. You need a solid follow-up plan to move your leads through the sales funnel and increase conversion rates.
According to the rule of seven, it takes about seven interactions with your brand for prospects to make a purchase. This means, if you don’t follow up on prospects, you’re likely to lose some quality leads.
You must back up your B2B lead prospecting with a well-structured follow up mechanism to qualify the leads, contact prospects, engage customers and close deals.
A structured sales cadence will help your sales teams streamline the sales process, enhance prospects engagement and deliver desired results.
What is sales cadence?
A sales cadence is a sequence of multiple touch points representing a series of connections with prospects through different channels to establish engagement or make a sale.
This can be through phone calls, social media, email, and other sales channels over a specified period. A prospecting cadence begins with the first touchpoint and ends with a conversion or when the prospect exits the cadence.
By executing a B2B sales cadence, your sales team can confidently coordinate prospecting efforts, nurture relationships with potential customers, and close more deals.
How long should a sales cadence be?
The ideal duration of a sales cadence is between two weeks and a month.
Why is a sales cadence important?
A sales cadence is the lifeline of your B2B prospecting efforts. It compliments your outbound prospecting by ensuring your outreach efforts are effective and efficient.
Your sales teams can leverage a winning sales cadence to diversify their outreach across multiple channels. When you engage prospects through diverse communication channels, you’ll realise that while some prospects are receptive over the phone, others prefer emails.
Some reasons that make sales cadences indispensable for your outbound sales strategy include:
- Having a structured framework makes it easier to keep track of, monitor, and optimise the sales process while moving leads through the sales funnel with ease.
- Gives room for scaling up things. For example, you can tell when to double your pipeline or grow your team.
- Maintains consistency of your sales team’s efforts, as they have a specific set of procedures to follow.
- Helps to speed up conversions for leads generated through outbound marketing by providing room to identify and eliminate weak points.
The general perception is that sales cadences are less intrusive. Besides, using different channels goes a long way in reinforcing your message and boosting credibility.
How do you develop a sales cadence?
Developing a well defined sales cadence is a continuous effort. You must always test, monitor, and keep it in motion. You can never have a one-size-fits-all cadence. It will change depending on the buyer persona, seasonality, product/service and region, among other factors.
Here are six key components that make up a good cadence to help you win more:
Define your audience
Identify your target audience’s pain points and determine how they relate to the solution you’re offering.
Get the timing right
Knowing what time of the day is best to reach out to prospects can be challenging at first. The trick is for you to study the trends. This also applies to spacing. Aim at spacing contact attempts by a day or more.
Number of touch points
Again, you will change as you go along. As a rule of thumb, work with 7-12 touch points. Sometimes, using two touch points simultaneously like a call and an email can prove to be more effective.
Diversify your channels
Every prospect is different so aim for variety in your sales cadence. A diverse and effective sales cadence should include phone calls, emails, voicemails, video emails and LinkedIn messages among other options.
Focus on quality content
Your messaging should focus on how your solution will add value to the prospect’s life and nurture a relationship with your brand. The chance of getting a prospect to the bottom of the sales funnel will depend on how well you articulate your value proposition.
Duration
This is the period from the first touchpoint to the last. This will depend on the number of contact attempts and spacing between them.
Outbound sales cadence example
Day 1 – Phone call and voicemail.
Day 3 – Personalised email.
Day 16 – Second phone call, no voicemail.
Day 11 – Email with an offer.
Day 13 – LinkedIn connection.
Day 16 – A message on LinkedIn.
Day 21 – Plain text follow up email (After accepting request to connect).
Day 23 – Third phone call and voicemail.
Day 26 – A break up email.
A good sales cadence makes it easier to structure your sales outreach giving most sales reps a chance to engage prospects efficiently and move them smoothly through the sales funnel. This will no doubt bolster your lead generation efforts.
Discover how Quantanite can get you more B2B leads by booking a call today.
