What Is a Sales Cadence, and How Can It Help Your Business?

It is rare for a prospect to purchase a product or sign up for a service at the first touchpoint, even if they are ready to buy. You will almost always experience a back-and-forth, especially when communicating with new prospects. 

Building a sales cadence comes with many advantages and can help boost your profit margin. It offers your sales team the tools and techniques to strategize a well-thought-out communication plan to reach out to prospects. 

Following up is one of the most important aspects of turning a lead into a sale. Therefore, a sales cadence can enhance that process for your company. 

In this blog post, find out the answer to the question, "What is a sales cadence, and how can it help your business?"

Key Takeaways:

1. Structured approach: A sales cadence provides a systematic and structured approach to engaging with prospects, ensuring consistent and effective communication throughout the sales process.

2. Customization is key: Tailoring your sales cadence to each prospect's needs and preferences increases the chances of success. Consider factors such as industry, role, and past interactions to personalize your approach.

3. Multichannel touchpoints: A successful sales cadence incorporates various communication channels such as emails, phone calls, social media, and personalized messages. This multichannel approach helps reach prospects where they are most responsive.

4. Timing and frequency matter: Carefully plan the timing and frequency of your touchpoints to strike the right balance between staying engaged and avoiding being too pushy. Test different intervals and adjust based on prospect response.

5. Measure and optimize: Continuously measure the performance of your sales cadence using key metrics like response rates and conversion rates. Use the data to refine your approach, identify bottlenecks, and improve overall effectiveness.

6. Automation for efficiency: Leverage sales engagement platforms and CRM software to automate repetitive tasks, streamline the sales cadence, and free up time for meaningful interactions with prospects.

7. Flexibility and adaptability: Sales cadences should be flexible and adaptable to account for changing prospect needs and preferences. Monitor prospect feedback and adjust the cadence accordingly to maintain relevance and effectiveness.

8. Team collaboration: Sales cadences can be further optimized through collaboration within the sales team. Share insights, strategies, and best practices to enhance the effectiveness of the overall sales approach.

 

What Is a Sales Cadence?

A sales cadence is a sequence of touchpoints that sales reps maintain with a prospect over time. Creating a sales cadence allows reps to establish a connection with that prospect with the hope of turning them into a bona fide paying customer. 

A sales cadence starts when a rep first contacts a prospect. It finishes when the rep converts the prospect into a customer or the prospect drops out of the pipeline. Sales cadence typically involves nurturing a prospect via email, phone, SMS, and social media. 

Why Do Businesses Need a Sales Cadence?

Every sales rep knows that making a sale in just one conversation is pretty much impossible. A sales cadence provides a way to create a connection with prospects by diversifying your outreach across multiple platforms over time.

You can't use the same cookie-cutter approach for each prospect. That's why sales reps need to expand their approach when it comes to nurturing prospects. Adopting a sales cadence can help by providing reps with the right techniques for getting in touch with target customers at the right time.

Some prospects might be more responsive on social media, while some might be more comfortable talking to your company over the phone or via email. A sales cadence provides reps with a definite plan to contact prospects sequentially, removing the need for any guesswork.

By incorporating a cadence into your organization, reps will be able to close more deals and ensure leads move through sales funnels. A sales cadence is also a great addition to outbound sales prospecting because it reduces stagnation and boosts conversion rates.

What Is a Sales Cadence? Touchpoints for Building a Good Sales Cadence 

Every business will have a different sales cadence based on its target audience and the kind of prospects they reach out to. You can create a cadence to fit any approach in your organization based on factors such as the size of your company, the industry, and other factors.

Here's how you can space out your touchpoints and stay on schedule for follow-ups. You can customize the B2B example below according to your business's specific needs.

After learning the answer to the question "What is a sales cadence," research your prospect and find out which social media platforms they use and what topics they are interested in. Take the time to understand their company and how your brand can help them. Once you've gathered information, send your prospect a personalized email that serves as an introduction to your brand. You can follow it up by sending the prospect a request to connect on LinkedIn.

This top-of-the-funnel cold email will introduce your brand to the prospect and increase awareness about your products and services. The prospect might be open to your offerings at this stage or need a little more nurturing. 

Since you've done your research, you should know the pain points your prospect experiences and which of your products and services can help solve them. Send an email emphasizing this with use cases and specific examples.

For example, you can showcase a particular product that solves a business challenge in an email. Include photos and a brief description of the product in the message and encourage the recipient to visit your website and social media pages for more information. 

This email is just a check-in to see if your prospect received the first message you sent them. Keep this short and to the point. The purpose of this message is just to remind them of your earlier communication.

You might want to reiterate how your product or service can solve a specific pain point or challenge in your email. However, the prospective customer is still at the top of the funnel at this stage, so there's no need for a long list of product features or pricing information. 

Make your first phone call to the prospect around the end of the first week. By now, you have sufficiently introduced yourself to them online, so you can push things forward by making a phone call. 

If your call is unanswered, leave a voicemail with your name and contact details and request a callback.

This follow-up email is the perfect way to introduce your prospect to the main features and benefits of your products or services. Showcase relevant advantages and solutions you can offer your prospect's business in a longer email and include contact links so the prospect can get in touch with any questions.

Use this opportunity to send customer success stories and case studies on how your products and services have helped other companies. Tell the prospect that other companies have benefited from your offerings and become more successful. 

You can also include contact links in this email so the prospect can reach out to one of your reps. 

If you still haven't heard back from the prospect, consider this the breakup email and a sign to end your chain of communication. One final time, highlight your brand's features and how you can help your prospect solve business challenges. Respectfully let them know you are available in case they become interested in your offerings later.

What Is a Sales Cadence? Other Factors To Consider When Creating Sales Cadences

Here are some other factors to consider when answering the question, "What is a sales cadence?"

Creating a buyer persona — a fictional representation of your target customer — can help you build more effective sales cadences. For example, if your target customer prefers to receive communications via social media, make this the basis of your sales cadence and send follow-up messages through Facebook or Twitter instead of email. 

A successful sales cadence is all about timing. Choose the best time of the day or week to send communications to prospective customers for maximum results. Calling a prospect late in the evening might result in an awkward sales conversation and cause the prospect to drop out of your funnel. 

You might want to create a sales cadence pipeline that only includes one communication method, such as email. While this might prove effective when nurturing some customers, adopting an omnichannel approach can make your cadence more successful. For example, emailing a prospect during the first two touchpoints and sending a text message at the third touchpoint can be more effective than sending three consecutive emails. 

Personalizing emails, texts, and social media messages can result in more conversions. That's because personalization allows you to engage with prospects on a deeper level. 

Instead of sending generic marketing messages in your sales cadence, include a prospect's first name in subject lines and message bodies for more desired results. Email marketing automation tools can help you improve personalization with email templates.

A sales cadence includes a significant number of touchpoints, and prospects might tire of receiving your messages over time. Keeping prospects engaged will prevent them from blocking your text messages, emails, and social media communications. Here are some ways to make your messages more interesting:

• Include photos and GIFs in email messages to increase engagement. You might want to include product photos or images of your team to build rapport with potential customers. 

• Emphasize key statistics about your offerings with graphs, charts, and other data visualizations and put these in emails and social media messages.

• Keep text messages short. You can have discounts or introductory offers that will catch the attention of prospects

How Do You Know if Your Sales Cadence Is Working?

Analyzing and collating data from prospects without the help of technology can be taxing and error-prone. Why waste your time and energy manually taking on this challenge, especially if you have lots of quality leads?

The best way to implement and measure the outbound sales cadence in your organization is to use an analytical customer relationship management (CRM) system. These tools automate contact management, allowing you to learn more about prospects for your cadence. For example, you can discover the best ways to communicate with prospects, as well as their interests and previous purchasing habits. That can help you personalize emails and improve engagement. 

By using the right analytical CRM, you can also generate insights into your sales cadence processes with the latest analytics. You can analyze metrics such as email open rates, click-throughs to landing pages, and social media interactions. That can help you learn which sales cadence methods provide your business with the most value. 

To know whether your cadence is working or not, you can track the following metrics in an analytical CRM system: 

This metric tracks the number of appointments created as a result of phone calls you made to prospective customers. It will help you understand whether you are targeting the right audience and which industries you should focus on in the future. For example, you might discover a particular demographic or segment is more likely to set up an appointment with a rep than others. 

Tracking these two metrics provides intelligence about the emails you send to prospects and helps you answer the question, "What is sales cadence success?" If a prospect opens an email from your company, it might mean you included a killer subject line that caught their attention. Additionally, if a prospect clicks on a link in your email, it might mean they are interested in your offerings. 

Email open and click rates help you understand your email campaigns, what catches your prospects' attention, and what doesn't. 

This metric reveals whether your target audience is interested in the content you send them. Receiving a reply from a prospect means your content resonates with them, and they are open to your products or services. If you aren't receiving replies, it might be time to change your email content strategy and make it more impactful. 

Bounce rate is one of the most critical metrics for measuring sales cadences. That's because it tells you the percentage of email addresses that didn't receive your emails. Email providers and anti-spam networks monitor bounce rates for every campaign you send and use that information to decide whether to accept mail from you in the future.

Bounce rate can help you understand which of the email addresses in your list are incorrect and why your emails aren't going through. Having this information keeps your email list clean.

A/B testing can also help you answer the question, "What is sales cadence success?" This method involves comparing two versions of an email, text, or social media message and seeing which resonates the most with prospects in your sales cadence pipeline. 

For example, you can create an email message that includes product features in a detailed list and a second message that includes photos of your product and a brief description of it. You can then send the emails to different customers and see which generates the most interest by comparing open and click rates. A/B testing can help you decide what type of communications to send prospective customers in future sales cadence pipelines. 

What Is a Sales Cadence? Final Word

Using a sales cadence for your business ensures that no prospects fall through the cracks and that each one is efficiently and successfully moving along your sales funnel. Collect, build, analyze, and test your sales cadences to ensure they fit your brand and positively impact your business.

How FiveCRM Can Help You Create a Sales Cadence

FiveCRM is the only CRM system designed for telemarketers. It can help improve sales cadences in the following ways:

1. FiveCRM enhances sales efficiency with workflow automation, call management, and sales process optimization. Call guides and scripts can help reps convey the correct information to prospects during sales cadence pipelines and adhere to data governance principles in your jurisdiction or sector. 

2. FiveCRM offers unlimited data storage and up to 999 separate databases, helping you compile the information to need for a sales cadence. You can also grow and scale your company with these storage benefits. 

3. Lead-scoring tools allow reps to generate high-value leads during sales cadence pipelines and convert them into paying customers. Identify prospects interested in your offerings and send these potential customers follow-up emails.

4. FiveCRM's marketing and performance tools track day-to-day tasks in your organization, providing salespeople with the latest insights about your sales cadence and the overall sales cycle. 

5. FiveCRM's flexible platform access tracks real-time data on departmental performance, helping you identify the most productive reps for your sales cadence. You can also use metrics to optimize sales growth, close deals, improve lead generation, optimize response rates, and generate insights about sales pipelines. 

FiveCRM has a wide range of features for telemarketing, telesales, cold calling, and other inbound and outbound marketing tasks. It can help B2C and B2B sales companies achieve their long-term sales cadence goals by providing a single source of truth for sales data and generating a 360-degree overview of customers. 

Here are some other key features of FiveCRM that help your organization’s sales strategy:

• Power dialing

• Preview dialing

• Auto-dialing/hang-up

• Consolidated reports

• Call recording

• Enhanced security

• Native app builder

FiveCRM can help you build a unique sales cadence for reaching customers over multiple touchpoints. Email hello@fivecrm.com for a demo, or get FiveCRM now. 

FAQs

Q: What is a sales cadence?

A: A sales cadence refers to a systematic sequence of activities and touchpoints that sales professionals follow to engage with prospects and guide them through the sales process. It outlines the timing, frequency, and content of interactions to maximize effectiveness.

Q: Why is a sales cadence important?

A: A sales cadence is important because it provides structure and consistency to sales efforts. It helps sales teams prioritize their activities, maintain a proactive approach, and increase the chances of converting prospects into customers.

Q: What elements are typically included in a sales cadence?

A: A sales cadence typically includes various elements such as emails, phone calls, social media outreach, voicemails, personalized messages, follow-ups, and targeted content. These elements are strategically planned and executed to nurture leads and move them closer to a purchase decision.

Q: How do you create an effective sales cadence?

A: To create an effective sales cadence, start by defining your target audience and understanding their needs. Determine the ideal number of touchpoints and the appropriate timing for each interaction. Craft compelling messaging and leverage automation tools to streamline the process.

Q: Should a sales cadence be the same for all prospects?

A: No, a sales cadence should be tailored to each prospect's unique characteristics and preferences. Consider factors such as industry, company size, role, and past interactions to customize your approach and provide a personalized experience.

Q: How do you measure the success of a sales cadence?

A: The success of a sales cadence can be measured using key performance indicators (KPIs) such as response rates, conversion rates, pipeline progression, and revenue generated. Analyzing these metrics helps identify areas for improvement and optimize the cadence over time.

Q: Can a sales cadence be automated?

A: Yes, sales cadences can be automated using customer relationship management (CRM) software and sales engagement platforms. Automation helps streamline the process, ensure consistency, and free up time for sales representatives to focus on building relationships.

Q: How often should I follow up with prospects in a sales cadence?

A: The frequency of follow-ups depends on the nature of your industry and the prospect's engagement level. It's important to strike a balance between staying top-of-mind and avoiding becoming overly persistent. Test different intervals and adjust based on prospect response and feedback.

Q: Can a sales cadence be adjusted or customized during the sales process?

A: Yes, a sales cadence should be flexible and adaptable. As prospects progress through the sales process, their needs and preferences may change. It's crucial to actively listen, gather feedback, and modify the cadence accordingly to meet their evolving requirements.

Q: How can FiveCRM assist with optimizing sales cadences?

A: FiveCRM offers a comprehensive CRM platform that empowers sales teams to optimize their cadences. With features such as contact management, automation, activity tracking, and analytics, FiveCRM provides the tools to streamline and enhance your sales process.