Cold calls, cold emails, follow-ups, social media connections are all the repetitive tasks continuously done by the SDRs. These same tasks are to be followed with multiple prospects together which will definitely bang the head of the reps.
Don’t you feel it’s a tough job to keep the accountability of each prospect? Can a human brain be trained enough to remember whom to call today and whom to send an email?
I don’t think so and most of you will agree with me. That’s where building a sales cadence comes to rescue. Sales cadence can be used to maintain the records of contact attempts with the prospects and guides you with the next step for each prospect.
What is a Sales Cadence?
Sales cadence is a sequence of contact attempts done by sales reps to his prospects for converting them as a customer. This includes all the calls, emails, voice mails, social media messages, and continuous follow-ups.
Sales cadence helps in making sure that none of the prospects leak out from the sales funnel. It also acts as a reminder for the SDRs about their task with a prospect, while moving through successive stages of a sales funnel.
In simple terms, using a sales cadence helps the reps to close more deals efficiently by building a seamless follow-up flow.
Example of a sales cadence
The above image describes a basic sales cadence of 8 weeks. This is preferably for B2B sales. This sales cadence will also act as a communication sequence chart for the SDRs.
Let me explain the sales cadence example in a simpler manner.
- Week 1: SDR starts with a social touch with the prospect and does the necessary research.
- Week 2: Another social touch for a connection request followed by a cold email.
- Week 3: First follow-up email to the prospect.
- Week 4: A cold call followed by a voice mail.
- Week 5: A follow-up call with a follow-up email.
- Week 6: Third follow-up email.
- Week 7: Follow-up call with voice mail and fourth follow-up email.
- Week 8: The final follow-up email and last social touch.
In the next section of the article, I will briefly describe to you how to build a sales cadence for your sales team
How to build a sales cadence?
The sequence of sales cadence varies with companies, product/services, your potential customers, and the strategies you use. Sales cadences are usually designed by sales managers and VP sales after discussing the same with the team.
Although the sales cadence highly depends on your use case and above factors, you need to follow the below pointers to design the cadence effectively. The pointers will act as the backbone of your sales cadence as each of them is equally important.
Decide your ICP
The first step towards building a sales cadence is determining your ideal customer profile (ICP). Your product/service must be having various use cases. For example; if you are selling one of the CRM tools, it can be used by Sales professionals, Marketers, Recruiters, and others. But everyone is not your ICP. There must be a particular profile that will be getting maximum value from the tool. So, you need to focus on different use cases and find the best profile for your product/service.
Your existing customer base will act as the best sample for deciding your ICP. Research their work pattern with your product/service. Check their satisfaction score. Conduct surveys to know their expectations and achievements. These metrics will help you in deciding your customer profile and moving forward in building an effective sales cadence.
Pro tip: How to see your Ideal Customer Profile visiting your website
Choose the mode of communication
It’s time to find the place where your ICPs usually visit. This will help you in finding the best way to reach your prospect. There are various modes of communications like emails, calls, messengers, and others.
Using all the modes of communication might not provide you value as your prospect will not be using everything. But using a single-mode is not efficient enough. To get the best from the communication, you need to select a set of communication modes and prioritize according to the prospect’s behavior.
For B2B business the most efficient channel of communications is considered to be emails, calls, voicemails, social media, and communities.
Determine the number of touchpoints
The 3rd step that is required for building a sales cadence is deciding the touchpoints. The touchpoints are various contacts made with a particular prospect to move him towards the customer stage.
Sending a cold email, trying for a cold call, a connection request in LinkedIn or a voice mail are considered as different touchpoints towards a prospect. You cannot stick to a single prospect for a long time ignoring other prospects. So you need to decide the number of touchpoints for every individual prospect.
The number of touchpoints should not be too less as most of the sales occur after at least 5 touchpoints. On the other hand, adding too many touchpoints might annoy your prospects. Your number of touchpoints should be optimized enough and make sure you provide value to your prospect in every approach.
Decide the length of the cadence
Adding a sufficient number of touchpoints is not enough if you won’t use them effectively. You must provide an adequate time gap between consecutive touchpoints to allow your prospect for making decisions. This is how you decide the length of the sales cadence. The length of the sales cadence is considered as the total duration taken by a rep for initiating a communication with a prospect till the closure.
The length of the cadence is dependent on the ticket value of the product/service you are selling. An offering with high ticket value will have a longer sales cadence and vice versa.
Once you decide the length of the cadence with all your communication modes, you are all set to start approaching your prospect. Your first sales cadence is ready to launch.
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Convey the right message through the right mode
This is the most essential part of building a sales cadence. Your messages will start by creating awareness for your prospect, followed by building interest and ends with making your prospect take the desired action.
The message should be relevant for your prospect and should reach him at the right time. Your message should directly hit your prospect’s need or pain which will make your cadence process smoother. Also, never forget to personalize your emails. A personalized email provides 6x more transactional rates. Personalization also makes your prospect feel the email is dedicated to him and gets interested in starting a healthy communication.
You should also focus on the right communication mode. For example, if your prospects are members of top management, you should start with a cold email, whereas if your prospects are field sales personnel, try for a cold call.
Usually, for B2B sales, it preferred to start your conversation by writing a cold email followed by a cold call for getting better results.
Continuous testing for cadence optimization
You got your cadence ready, started sending your messages frequently, and made a kick-off start with good results. It’s not the end of your cadence building process. You need to check it periodically for any leakage in your cadence.
Sales cadence maintenance is a continuous process and needs to be optimized every time depending on the situation, use case, and prospects.
Experts suggest trying various combinations of communication mode and make changes in the length of the cadence to know what’s best for you.
Taking everything into account
Building a powerful sales cadence requires thorough research and continuous optimization. Also, it can not be built in a day or two. We need to work on it continuously. You need to monitor it periodically, evaluate the performance, and change according to its necessity.
Along with a perfect sales cadence, it is very essential to reach the right prospect at the right time through the right medium. These things can help your sales team in outperforming with their targets and boosting the revenue.
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