Let’s face it: B2B buyers are a tough bunch. Day in and day out, these buyers get calls and emails from sales reps. But they’ll only engage with those who meet (or exceed) their high expectations.
If a sales rep expects to get a buyer’s attention (and hold it), they must consistently engage with them at the right time through the right channels. A sales cadence is an important tool that helps sellers do just that.
In fact, with a solid sales cadence (and the right sales enablement to support it), sales reps can improve their outreach, engage more buyers, and ultimately, close more deals.
But what is it?
In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know on the topic, including:
- What it is, and why it’s important to have one
- How to create one
- Sales cadence examples
- Best practices for driving great results
What is a sales cadence?
One of a sales rep’s primary responsibilities is engaging with prospective customers. However, determining how best to engage with each prospect can be difficult and time-consuming. That’s where a sales cadence comes in.
A sales cadence is a defined series of touchpoints a sales rep uses when engaging with a prospect. With the right one, a sales rep knows when and how to reach out to a prospect. It’s like a roadmap for effective sales engagement and outreach.
Typically, it includes a variety of different types of touchpoints, including:
- Emails
- Phone calls
- Videos
- Social media engagement
- In-person meetings
Sales cadences vary based on several different factors, including industry, product or service offering, and company size – among others. Developing one that fits your business’s unique needs and yields the best results is important. Later on, we’ll share some tips for developing your own sales cadence and an example to get the ideas flowing.
Why is a sales cadence important?
Engaging with customers and delivering great experiences is key to closing more deals. But many sellers don’t have the time to do so effectively. Consider the fact that, on average, sellers spend less than 30% of their time selling.
Sellers spend less than
A sales cadence gives reps a framework for effective sales engagement. Sellers don’t have to sink time into reinventing the wheel for each prospect that comes their way. Instead, they can use a cadence to understand how and when to engage with prospective customers.
When sellers use a data-driven cadence, they’re better able to move prospects through the funnel – and eventually convert them to customers. Sales reps can spend less time developing outreach strategies and more time engaging with buyers.
In addition, it can help new sales reps get ramped up faster. Sales reps don’t have to figure out what type of outreach to use (and when). Instead, they can leverage a sales cadence – and close their first deal faster.
Finally, it helps ensure a consistent customer experience. Every prospect gets the same level of attention, regardless of who their sales rep is.
How to build an effective sales cadence
There’s no one-size-fits-all cadence that works for every organization. Instead, you must develop one that works for your organization and yields great results.
But great sales cadences don’t happen by chance. Instead, there are certain steps any organization must take to build an effective one that empowers sellers to improve sales engagement and close more deals.
Understand your target audience
Before determining how to engage with your audience, you must take a step back to understand who your audience is. After all, different people have different needs and preferences. You wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) engage with the founder of a startup in the same way you’d engage with a marketing manager at a Fortune 100 company.
Consult your buyer personas to ensure you understand key things about your target audience, including (but not limited to):
- Industry
- Company size
- Job title
- Opportunities
- Pain points
- Communication preferences
If you haven’t already created buyer personas, now’s a good time. They’re foundational for any sales and marketing strategy.
Develop a schedule of touchpoints
Once you understand who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to develop a list of outreach touchpoints. This will include initial contact and a series of follow-up touchpoints.
Use what you know about your target audience when creating this schedule. In addition, be sure to leverage data. For example, analyze the touchpoints in closed won deals to see what works. In addition, look at what your top sales reps are doing differently regarding outreach.
Be sure to incorporate a mix of different channels to increase your chances of getting the prospect’s attention. Some channels might include email, phone, LinkedIn messages, and videos.
Determine timing and frequency
If you reach out too often, you risk overwhelming prospects. If you don’t reach out enough, buyers may forget about you and take their search elsewhere.
What’s the best frequency for your sales cadence? There’s no easy answer.
Start with best practices for your industry. In addition, leverage data to understand the timing and frequency of touchpoints that led to closed won deals.
Develop consistent messaging
Prospects should experience consistent, on-brand experiences and messaging, no matter which sales rep they engage with.
Be sure to develop messaging sales reps can use throughout the sales cycle. This might include:
- Email templates
- Phone and voicemail scripts
- LinkedIn message templates
However, it’s important to empower sellers to personalize messaging as appropriate. After all, modern B2B buyers have come to expect tailored communication and experiences.
Measure sales cadence performance and optimize accordingly
It’s not enough to create a sales cadence and hope for the best. Instead, you must continuously measure your sales cadence to determine what’s working and what isn’t.
Be sure to track key metrics related to sales cadence performance and engagement. Some examples include:
This includes metrics like email opens, click-through rates, and response rates. If a touchpoint is generating low sales engagement, you may want to replace it, change the timing, or eliminate it altogether.
This measures how many leads take the desired action at each step of the sales cadence. Examples of these actions might be booking a call, watching a video, or purchasing. If the conversion rate is particularly low on one sales cadence touchpoint, there may be an opportunity to optimize it.
Churn rate can help you understand where you’re losing prospects during the sales cadence. For example, they might unsubscribe to your email or ask that you stop reaching out.
This is the average amount of time it takes for a buyer to complete the entire sales process—from initial contact to closed deal. If you notice customers stalling at a specific point in the sales cycle, there may be an opportunity to optimize the sales cadence.
ROI is calculated by comparing the costs of running the sales cadence with its revenue. The goal is to ensure revenue far exceeds costs.
Be sure to examine these metrics across the entire sales team – as well as for specific teams and even individual sales reps. For example, if a particular metric for one sales rep is far lower than average, there may be an opportunity to provide additional training and coaching.
Also, be open to feedback from your sales reps. They’re engaging with prospects and have good insight into what’s working and what isn’t.
You can use metrics and feedback to optimize your cadence for better results.
Sales cadence example
As we’ve mentioned before, there’s no single sales cadence that’ll work for every business. Instead, it’s important to analyze what works (and doesn’t) for your company and what resonates with your target audience. Then, you can build one that works for your revenue organization.
But creating a cadence from scratch can feel overwhelming. Starting with a template or seeing some examples can be helpful.
With that in mind, let’s look at an example:
In today’s world, many ways exist to engage with prospects. But phone calls are still a great way to reach people.
Kick off your sales cadence by picking up the phone to briefly introduce yourself and your business. If there’s no answer, leave a brief voicemail.
You may not receive a response to your initial call. If that’s the case, follow up with a personalized email.
Don’t go hard on your sales pitch. Instead, use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself and gauge your prospect’s interest in continuing the conversation.
LinkedIn is a popular social media channel for professionals. At this point in the cadence, contact your prospect via LinkedIn. Send a personalized connection request if you’re not already connected to them.
Make another attempt to get your prospect on the phone. If they answer, you can use this as an opportunity to discover. If they don’t answer, leave them a message telling them you plan to follow up via email.
Send a follow-up email to the prospect. Consider including a resource relevant to their company or industry, such as a video, report, article, or guide.
If they answer, you can use this to do more discovery. If they don’t answer, leave a personalized voicemail that speaks to their needs and challenges.
Send a direct message via LinkedIn and/or engage with the prospect’s content on LinkedIn.
Try one more time to get the prospect on the phone.
If there has been little to no sales engagement up to this point, it’s time to end the sales cadence. Thank the prospect for their time, and let them know you’ll no longer be following up. However, leave the door open for the prospect to reach out to you in the future should their needs and priorities change.
Sales cadence best practices
A sales cadence can be a great tool to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales reps. But creating one doesn’t mean it’ll generate great results.
Read on to explore some best practices to help your sellers engage prospects and convert more of them to customers.
Personalize each touchpoint
A report from Adobe found that 66% of B2B buyers expect fully or mostly personalized content when buying a product or service. Generic touchpoints and experiences simply won’t cut it.
Templates and scripts are key to a sales cadence. But be sure your sellers understand the importance of personalizing their outreach based on what they know about a prospect. After all, tailored, relevant communication is more likely to capture your prospects’ attention.
Provide a flexible framework
A cadence helps reps understand what types of outreach to do and when. But it’s important to note that a sales cadence isn’t set in stone. Sometimes, a sales rep can (and should) adjust the sales cadence based on the prospect’s behaviors, responses (or lack thereof), and preferences.
For example, let’s say your cadence includes three phone calls. However a prospect indicates they only want to be contacted via email. In this case, the rep should adapt the cadence accordingly.
In addition, you can use revenue intelligence to understand which deals are most likely to go through. This information can be used to make adjustments to the cadence.
Provide proper training and coaching
Whether it’s a sales battlecard or a cadence or something else – it’s important to ensure your sellers know how to use the tools and resources available to them.
Let’s say you spend a ton of time and resources developing a winning sales cadence. But if your sales reps don’t know how to use it, it won’t have an impact.
Ensure your entire sales team knows your cadence and how to use this tool. Of course, you’ll want to cover it as part of sales onboarding. However, it’s also important to provide ongoing training, coaching, and sales enablement so sales reps can hone their skills.
Be sure to measure KPIs related to sales cadence regularly. That way, you can understand each sales rep’s performance and determine when they might need additional training, coaching, and enablement.
Revisit your sales cadence often
As we’ve already mentioned, it’s important to track cadence performance and optimize accordingly regularly.
But there are also other times you should revisit your cadence. Some examples include:
- When you’re releasing a new product
- When you’re breaking in to a new market
- When there’s increased competition
Leverage the right sales cadence tools
A sales cadence has several moving pieces. Multiply that by several prospects, which can be difficult for a sales rep to manage.
Look for opportunities to leverage sales cadence tools and technology. These tools can help you streamline and automate your sales cadence and improve outcomes.
For example, you can use an AI sales assistant tool to automate follow-up emails. Or, you can use an AI-powered tool like Mindtickle Copilot to draft personalized, contextual emails to accompany a piece of sales collateral you’re sharing with a prospect.
With the right sales cadence tools and technology, sales reps can spend less time on tedious, time-consuming tasks and more time building customer relationships and closing deals.
Set your sellers up for success with a winning sales cadence
Modern B2B buyers are busy, and they have high expectations. A proper, data-driven sales cadence ensures your reps know how to reach out to these busy prospects at the rights times and in the right ways. With this framework, sales reps can move more prospects through the funnel – faster.
With Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform, your sales reps have the training, coaching, and tools to master the sales cadence – develop all the other skills they need to crush quota.
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By Helen Waite
By Kristen Session
