What is a Sales Cadence? Best Practices for Sales Outreach

Acquiring great leads is an important first step in your B2B marketing funnel. Once you have your list of prospects ready and raring to go, two big questions come to mind. How do you reach out to them? How often? We know that the average prospect needs between six and eight touches before they’re ready to convert.

We also know that the key to any successful marketing campaign is constant testing. You need to know what messages work, when to send them, and how to send them. If your messaging strategies are all over the place, you’ll never have a truly good idea of exactly what’s working and what isn’t. Sales cadence is the answer to these problems.

A proper sales cadence schedules messages to go out to the same prospects at the same times. You’ll be able to take a look and see what happens and tweak the cadence to improve results. Over time, everybody will receive messages at the exact right time, with the exact right message.

To help get you started, here are four best practices you need to know in order to establish a successful sales cadence.

Sales Cadence Best Practices

1.Leverage the Right Metrics

Your sales cadence won’t be very effective at all if you’re not tracking and tweaking the right metrics. Here are some examples of metrics you’ll need to track to develop a good sales email cadence: 

• Open and click-through rates by day and time. 
• The number of responses necessary before the next step is taken. 
• What type of follow-ups are most successful (phone calls, emails, etc.). 
• The overall number of prospects that successfully convert. 
• What content entices people enough to come and take a second look.

Trackable metrics for phone calls, however, are much different: 

• When does a particular prospect answer the phone? This varies greatly by person, but 9 am to 11 am and 1 pm to 3 pm tend to be prime calling hours. 
• Does sending an email a couple of hours before the phone call impact how often your prospects answer?
• What type of phone calls actually lead to a successful conversation and follow-up? 
• How much more effective is a phone conversation than an email open?

The more information you’re able to collect on what works in regards to messaging, timing, and channels will give you a better idea of what your next message should look like and how it should be delivered.

2. Create Several (or more) Sales Cadences

Active outreach means always being engaged. Sales reps should allocate large amounts of their day for email or Depending on your audience and your organizational goals, there’s no telling how many sales cadences you’ll need. You’ll need an outbound prospecting cadence and an inside sales cadence. Experiment with sales cadence email templates and telephone scripts for prospects coming in from various channels, that have different demographic profiles, and with different goals in mind. Eventually, you’ll learn what learns best for each type of prospect and you’ll be much more effective at driving them down through the marketing funnel.

3.Use a Variety of Content

Sending the same type of message over and over again will quickly tire your audience out, even if the actual content itself is different. You’ll want to experiment with various topics such as these to give your audience a reason to keep paying attention and also as a way to understand what actually works: 

• Snippets or opinions about recent industry news. 
• Highlights of important or brand-new features of your products or services. 
• Pertinent blog posts that you think would resonate with each specific segment. 
• Case studies and success stories.

The worst thing you can do is send an email or make a phone call ‘just to check in’. You need to offer something of value. Empty touchpoints don’t push the needle and may even annoy your prospects into leaving the funnel altogether.

4.Have the Right Sales Cadence Tools at Your Disposal

Sales cadence cannot efficiently be handled without the right tools helping you out. A platform such as Koncert's multi-channel B2B sales engagement software will let your sales team handle touches at lightning speed. You won’t have to manually track touches or schedule critical emails, phone calls, or text messages. Knowing when to reach out to your customers is one thing, being able to do it effectively is what truly takes you to the next level. 

 
Now that you have a better idea of what an effective sales cadence is and how it can help your sales team, it’s time to take a further look. Koncert Cadence gives you everything you need to qualify, contact, and convert your sales leads at an incredible pace. All you have to do to request a demo is click here and reach out to us today!

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