What is it?
Cadence refers to “a flow or rhythm of events.” In sales, those “events” are interactions with prospects, typically referred to as touchpoints. Once you make contact with a prospect, how often do you touch base with them without verging on obnoxious?
Keeping a good sales cadence is a delicate art, and it often looks different from one sales process to another, and sometimes even one sale to another. A good sales cadence provides a standardized procedure for keeping in touch with clients so that it’s easier to track where each client is in the sales process. What are the best series of touches to garner a response from a prospect? Through which channels? And when?
It may seem like a challenge at first, but a well-kept sales cadence is proven to increase sales revenue, not to mention it removes unnecessary extra calls or emails so that you can use your time more efficiently. When it comes to successful sales cadences, it’s all about quality rather than quantity.
Timing Your Cadence
The first step to establishing a good sales cadence is response time. How long do you wait after a query is submitted to establish contact? If you wait longer than 5 minutes the chances you’ll be successful decrease significantly. Speed to lead is critical when following up with inbound prospects.
Every minute, warm leads are growing colder. That certainly isn’t an excuse to reach out excessively, but instead, it should be motivation to start the sales cadence process as quickly as possible in order to give leads the chance to be as responsive as possible.
The duration of your sales cadence is the next most important element. There are many different suggestions when it comes to how long to continue getting in touch with a prospect before letting the lead go. While you don’t want to miss an opportunity, you also need to give the client a little bit of breathing room.
The common industry advice is that the average sales cadence should last between two and four weeks.
It is critical that you do not reach out too frequently; your communication attempts can quickly become irritating rather than friendly or helpful. With the goal of moving prospects between nurture and sales cadences by converting potential customers into actual opportunities, fewer and higher quality touchpoints is often a more effective strategy than thoughtlessly utilizing a “spam cannon”.
However, it is important to note that there is no perfect formula to dictate the exact structure of your cadence. Effectiveness will vary from client to client and rep to rep, and your cadences will require adaptation, but their overall goal is to provide structure to the sales inquiry process that can be easily tracked and utilized for multiple clients.
When establishing your sales cadence, it is also important to keep in mind the optimal dates and times to contact clients.
While of course, you can’t limit all your sales touches to those windows, it’s important to take time and scheduling into account as a part of your sales cadence, if for no other reason than empathy in regards to the client’s schedule. Maybe structure your cadence so that contact isn’t typically made on Mondays, or perhaps those are good days for an email instead of a phone call.
Flexibility
Aside from showing consideration to a client’s schedule when creating your cadence, it is important to be aware of the communication channels at your disposal. An effective sales cadence will incorporate touchpoints from multiple sources, including voice, email, texting, and even social channels like LinkedIn. By utilizing a variety of touchpoint types, you increase the likelihood that a prospect will notice your efforts and reply.
In today’s digital B2B world, customers expect a streamlined buying experience. You need to be able to know how to reach them through the channels they prefer. By keeping aware of whether calls, emails, or texts are the best avenue for achieving responses, both on a general and individual client level, you can operate with the flexibility to maximize the value of your conversations.
Tracking Your Cadence
The last integral element of operating effective sales cadences is tracking cadence and touchpoint data. It’s important to know where each client is in the cadence process in order for the cadence to truly be effective. So, be sure that you are tracking the client’s stage in the cadence as well as recording the metrics along the way. Proper management of that data will ensure that your leads and call lists are getting the nurturing that they deserve every step of the way.
Creating a sales cadence is no simple task, but it truly optimizes the value of each of the sales contacts you make. If you can communicate with clients in a timely (but not obnoxious) fashion, you can ensure that you’re following every lead to the best of your ability.
Build Your Sales Cadence Directly in Salesforce
However, even the most thoughtfully planned series of touchpoints won’t be much help if your sales reps don’t actually follow or use the cadence. Cadence adoption is a critical part of a successful sales strategy. What better way to get your team on board than to build your cadences directly in the CRM that your reps already work out of every day?
Conquer Cadence is the only Sales Engagement Platform that is Truly Native to Salesforce, enabling your reps to complete all omnichannel touchpoints of their cadence (calls, emails, video, texting, and social) directly from the CRM. And, all of these touchpoints are automatically recorded in Salesforce without any manual intervention so your reports are always accurate.
Want to learn more? Take a quick product tour of Conquer Cadence or book some time with our sales team for a discovery call at conquer.io.