How to Create a Multi-Channel Sales Cadence

When you get an influx of leads into your CRM from your company’s latest webinar or virtual event for your B2B sales team to follow up on, what do you do with those leads? Have you trained your sales representatives to go through and start calling the leads, or do they wind up as a lesser priority, potentially never being contacted? When you have sales cadence software, you’ll know that they’re being contacted almost automatically. Read on to learn what a sales cadence is; why you need a multi-channel sales cadence, and the steps to a smart cadence.

What is a Sales Cadence?

By the definition of Merriam-Webster, a "cadence" is a rhythmic sequence or flow of sounds in language. In the B2B sales world, part of that definition holds. A cadence is a rhythmic sequence (and some call it a "workflow") of sales outreach touches that go out in a set time frame. For some companies, that means just emails, and for others, it means just phone calls.

However, the best companies know that the sales outreach cadences that work the best involve touches across all channels, because you never know what will cause your potential customers to respond. And you do want them to respond, don’t you? In order for them to respond, YOU need to respond to their interest first before they grow disinterested.

Don’t Let Hot Leads Turn Cold

Harvard Business Review surveyed over 2,000 B2B and B2C companies in the US and asked them when they contacted new leads and the success of that sales outreach. The results showed that 37% of companies responded to a new lead within an hour; 16% within one to 24 hours; 24% took more than 24 hours; and 23% of the companies never responded at all. When Harvard Business Review further checked in with 40 companies about the success of the lead outreach based on time, they found that companies that reached out within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.

What is sales engagement? Read this blog.

Unless you hire 100 more sales reps, there’s no way your sales reps will be able to reach out to every one of those new leads within one hour. However, when you have sales cadence software, your reps can send out an automated cold email as soon as that lead is assigned to the correct rep’s cadence to ensure that the lead is contacted within one hour.

Why Use a Multi-Channel Sales Cadence?

Once your sales rep sends out that first automated email, they may think that they should continue to just send out emails instead of reaching out to the prospect in any other format.

Stop.

Think about that for a minute. Do you only reply to cold emails? Or do you prefer replying to cold calls? Or to LinkedIn messages? I did a survey on this topic on LinkedIn a few weeks back and 68% of the respondents said they exclusively reply to LinkedIn messages. However, considering it was posted on LinkedIn, that might have skewed the results just a bit.

People don’t all prefer replying to the same method of contact. But you’re not going to know what their preferred sales outreach vehicle is unless you use ALL of them, right? Why lose a potential customer just because you’re only calling and they only reply to emails?

Ultimate Sales Acceleration®

To succeed in B2B sales engagement, you need to contact your prospects through multiple channels. That's why our customers succeed by choosing our Ultimate Sales Acceleration®, which brings emails, phone, video, text, and social touches all into one sales engagement platform.

Here’s the list of multi-channel touches you can include in your sales cadence, followed by a sample cadence plan for you to try and follow:

• Cold email
• A cold email with a personalized video embedded in the email
• Cold call
• Text
• LinkedIn message

8 Steps to a Sales Cadence that Gets Results

• Step 1. Day 1: Touch 1 - Automated Email. Personalize it to the recipient if you can.
• Step 2. Day 3: Touch 2 - Phone Call
• Step 3. Day 3: Touch 3 - Automated Email. This will follow up the phone call and include a piece of content that will benefit the recipient.
• Step 4. Day 5: Touch 4 - LinkedIn Message. Make sure that it is personalized to the recipient.
• Step 5. Day 7: Touch 5 - Phone Call
• Step 6. Day 7: Touch 6 - Personalized Email with Embedded Video. Personalize the video for a conversational tone and show your face in it.
• Step 7. Day 10: Touch 7 - Text Message. NOTE: Only do this if you have permission to do so. Otherwise, make it a phone call.
• Step 8. Day 12: Touch 8 - Automated Email. Don’t make this a “break-up” message. Instead, just offer one last piece of helpful content.

Ready to try a multi-channel sales cadence that works? It’s time for you to meet Cadence, our sales cadence software that helps your sales reps stay on top of their leads and reach out to them in a timely manner through tested cadences of email, calls, texts, video, and social touches.

Reach out to us here at Koncert today to learn more about Cadence and our entire suite of sales engagement software, including Agent-Assisted Dialer, our human power dialer. Simply click here or give us a call at 800-955-5040.