8 Best Sales Cadence Examples That You Can Steal

You’re getting a lot of leads, great!

How do you keep up with each lead and promptly ensure they get the right message?

A sales cadence is a great way to consistently reach your leads and ensure no prospect gets left behind. It includes emails, calls, voicemails, and video prospecting. Sales reps use a sales cadence to stay on top of their leads and engage them over a set time period.

Read below to learn more about a sales cadence, best practices, and eight examples to steal!

What is a sales cadence?

A sales cadence is a series of touchpoints over a period of time used to engage prospects. An effective sales cadence involves cold emails, calls, social selling, and networking. All touchpoints are completed across a period with specific messaging to book meetings and close deals.

The benefits of a sales cadence:

• Ensure follow-up of leads.
• Speeds up the conversion.
• It helps you manage your time and effort.
• Ensures your prospecting activities are scalable.

Adopting an effective sales cadence will help you stay on top of your leads so you don’t lose or forget to follow up. Additionally, you can leverage different channels to engage prospects.

Read below to learn about sales cadence best practices and get inspiration from eight proven examples.

How do you create a sales cadence?

Building a sales cadence is an ongoing process. Each sales cadence differs based on buyer persona, target market, region, and product or service. 

There’s a lot of measurement, experimenting, and optimizing to determine what works best for your company. However, the overall fundamental pieces of a sales cadence stay the same.

Here are the seven fundamental pieces of an effective sales cadence:

1. Buyer Persona 

Understand your best potential customers, their pain points, and which platforms they use for research.

Determine how your product or service would benefit them and solve their pain points. All of this research will help you craft your cadence. 

2. Content

The quality of your message and content will be crucial for getting prospects to respond.

Great messaging resonates with your buyer persona and intrigues them enough to respond. The message includes research, relevancy, content, and a request for action. 

3. Media

The typical sales channel includes email, phone calls, voicemails, social media, video, and sometimes text messages.

Based on your buyer persona, identify a list of channels your potential customers will most likely be active. For example, if your prospect is a Social Media Manager, they’re likely to be more responsive on LinkedIn than on a phone call. 

4. Attempts

According to The Brevet Group, it takes an average of eight touchpoints to get a prospect to respond.

Create a sales cadence with enough attempts to engage your potential customers. You’ll have to launch and iterate your sales cadence to determine the correct number of attempts.

5. Duration

The first aspect of time within a sales cadence is duration.

Duration is the length of time between the first and last touchpoints. According to XANT, 1,000+ companies reported that the average duration for inbound leads was 4.89 days, but the best outbound sales cadence was 20.8 days.

6. Spacing 

The second aspect of time is the spacing between each touchpoint.

Spacing is determined by hours, days, and weeks. If you send three touchpoints within one hour, prospects may be turned off by your approach.

7. Tiering

If you’re selling into different customer segments such as regions, company size, industry, etc., you’ll want to categorize your sales cadences by tier.

For example, if you’re focusing on a small number of enterprise companies, you’ll create a Tier 1 sales cadence focusing on more custom touchpoints. A sales cadence focused on SMB companies would be categorized as Tier 3 with more automated touchpoints.

Different communication channels for sales cadences

Email

Did you know that over 306 billion emails are sent and received daily?

Emails are essential to your sales cadence and are effective with other communication channels. 

In a sales cadence, you can use automation to schedule emails. However, the best-performing emails are typically personalized based on research and business intelligence.

Email Sales Cadence Best Practices 

Use email templates to save time and increase your productivity.

Sales cadence tools like Salesloft or HubSpot allow you to create and manage different email templates. You can also use different email tokens to pull in personalization, such as a prospect’s job title and the industry or company name.

The best email length to get responses is 50-125 words, around 3-6 sentences.

Write with a third-grade reading level. Don’t use complicated words to sound smart. Instead, use simple and easy-to-read words so that it’s easily understood.

Call

Phone calls are a key part of a sales cadence, but they often get skipped.

The average lead is only called 1.5 times, according to Harvard Business Review and Xant.ai. That’s not enough calls if you’re trying to connect with a prospect live.

If cold calling is integral to your prospecting strategy, then having a sales cadence will streamline the process. 

CallHipoo found that sellers have a 90% success rate in contacting their leads on the sixth call. Meetings and sales opportunities are missed when the average lead gets only 1.5 attempts.

Best Days for Sales Calls

According to a 2020 study by Gong, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days of the week for call prospects. 

It’s unsurprising because most people transition from the weekend to work mode on Mondays. While people transition Friday to weekend mode and aren’t interested in making a buying decision. 

By mid-week, people are caught up, have enough time to settle into work, and are more receptive to taking calls.

Best Times for Sales Calls

Revenue.io says the best times to call are in the late afternoon, with peak engagement during 4-5 pm followed by 3-4 pm and then 5-6 pm.

Calling in the late afternoon makes sense because mornings are busy for people. They have their tasks and responsibilities to do. They have meetings and have to take care of urgent requests as well. In the later afternoon, requests have dropped, which makes it more likely for a prospect to be at their desk.

One of the most effective sales cadence best practices is scheduling cold calls during peak times and days.

Voicemail

You won’t be able to reach every prospect live on a cold call, so leaving a sales voicemail can be viewed as an effective touchpoint rather than a dead end.

A study by InsideSales says that a well-planned sales voicemail script can increase response rates by up to 22%. The first goal of a voicemail is to get a prospect to call back and advance a sale. Second, it can help increase the effectiveness of parts in your sales cadence.

For example, end your sales voicemail script by informing your prospect that you will send a follow-up email.

Voicemail Best Practices 

Be persistent with your voicemail. One voicemail is not enough to connect with prospects, so you’ll have to leave two or three as part of your sales cadence.

Research your prospect before calling so you can use the information gathered in your voicemail. 

Leave a voicemail confident in your tone. Research shows that 7% of personal communication is through the spoken word, 38% through tone of voice, and 55% through body language. The tone of your voice can help make an average voicemail sound more compelling.

Have a sales voicemail script written down before calling. Winging a voicemail will lead to a confusing and disjointed message. Write your voicemail script and practice.

Social Media

Social media is a unique but great opportunity to engage prospects.

Engaging on social media is different than emailing or calling. Instead, an effective social selling cadence involves having a professional LinkedIn profile, sharing educational content, and interacting with your target audience.

Social Media Best Practices

LinkedIn is the ideal channel for getting your prospect’s attention. You can do so by commenting, liking, or resharing their posts. Be thoughtful about your comments and show that you’ve read the content beforehand. 

Connect with prospects in your target market. When you request a connection, send a personal note referring to your initial interaction or a personal connection.

However, avoid jumping into a sales pitch after they accept your connect request. You have to build a relationship before speaking about your product or services.

Video

Videos humanize your sales cadence and build rapport.

Showing a friendly face can help convey your personality more in an email. It provides a memorable way to stand out amongst the hundreds of emails a prospect gets daily.

According to Vidyard, 75% of top-performing sales professionals who use video email say it increases their response rates.

You can add videos in your cadence to show who you are and why you’re reaching out. It’s an engaging way for prospects to consume information rather than reading a written email. 

Sales Video Best Practices

Keep your videos short and sweet. Vidyard recommends prospecting videos to be under two minutes.

Front-load your information since you only have a few seconds to grab your prospect’s attention. Your opening statement should be impactful, insightful, and valuable for the prospect.

Share your personality in your videos. There are countless ways to be creative, such as writing your prospect’s name on a whiteboard, turning your sales pitch into a song, or including the prospect’s LinkedIn profile in the video.

Direct Mail

Direct mail can help differentiate your prospecting efforts and sales cadence. It consists of sending a physical or digital item. 

Physical items include cupcakes, hand-written notes, and gifts. In comparison, digital items include gift cards and donations to charities. All of which entice prospects to have an initial conversation.

Direct Mail Best Practices

It is a unique part of a sales cadence when targeting a specific group of prospects, such as decision-makers, executives, or key stakeholders. It can surprise and bring delight to your prospect. 

Research prospects beforehand to find their interests. Send them direct mail that would personally excite them. For example, if they’re a fan of a specific baseball team, then send them a jersey. Or, if they’re a fan of sweets, send them a box of cupcakes as a treat.

8 Best Sales Cadence Examples

1. Demo request sales cadence for SaaS companies

Prospects that have requested a demo often want to speak with a sales team member immediately or have a product demo.

Demo request cadences require immediate follow-up, so speed and urgency are essential. 

One sales cadence best practice for demo requests is to schedule a meeting early on. This will allow you to run a discovery call or qualify the prospect.

2. Convert free trial users to paid customers

If a prospect signed up for a free trial, they’re often familiar with your company and its solutions. It’s a higher chance they’ll convert to a customer.

A sales cadence focused on free trial conversion would educate and convince customers about the benefits of becoming paid customers.

A free trial cadence is typically heavily email-based, with support from in-app notifications. Most emails will be automated because free trials are typically higher in volume. The sales cadence length typically matches the free trial’s length.

3. High volume transactional outbound 

This is the best sales cadence for a high volume of leads because it is more transactional. This means it focuses on converting smaller deal sizes and shorter sales cycles with fewer prospects per company.

Typically the sales cadence best practice here is to focus on converting individual users or SMB companies. 

Most touchpoints will be automated emails, with some calls, voicemails, and social touchpoints. Although personalization in emails will help, because of the small potential sale, it’s better to focus on converting a higher volume of leads through the funnel.

4.  Strategic enterprise accounts sales cadence

This sales cadence focuses on the quality of touchpoints instead of the volume.

Due to the size and complexity of enterprise organizations, you’ll want to multi-thread your cadence and connect with multiple stakeholders. 

Enterprise sales require account planning and mapping to identify the organization’s most critical stakeholders and the best way to engage them.

Frequently, enterprise companies mean larger sales can be the result of it. It’s why enterprise decisions-maker are more likely to have prospected. You’ll need to be deliberate with your sales cadence content, channels, and messaging to get a meeting or a response.

Most of your touchpoints will require more research before starting a sales cadence. It’ll ensure you maximize relevance within your content and message.

Since you’ll need to multi-thread, your content and messaging will vary based on each buyer persona involved. For example, executive decision-makers are more likely to respond to products or solutions that solve high-level strategic challenges. At the same time, an individual contributor will resonate with a tactical product or service.

5. Webinar follow-up sales cadence

With webinar leads, your touchpoints happen more frequently and happen faster. 

If they’ve already attended your webinar, they’re familiar with your product or service. They are more qualified and have shown interest, making them more likely to attend a meeting.  

You can mix automated and personalized emails within your sales cadence to show more effort to your prospect.

6. Post-conference follow-up

Conference leads are a great source of sales opportunities because you’ve built rapport and a relationship in person. 

Prospects are more likely to remember you, so your cadence can focus less on selling your product and more on continuing the conversation.

Immediately follow up with leads after a conference because the conversation will still be fresh in their minds. Personalize the first few touchpoints and utilize LinkedIn as well. A sales cadence best practice is to mention about the conference and the topics discussed. 

More importantly, you should ask the prospect during the conference if you can follow up with them. If you’ve done so, they are expecting to hear from you.

7. Cross-sell customer expansion

Selling to an existing customer is much easier than selling to a new one. 

This cross-selling sales cadence emphasizes the existing relationship and the value your product has delivered. It aims to educate customers about different product or service offers they aren’t currently using.

Since you’ve already established a relationship with your customers, the sale cadence will be shorter, and personalized messages will be the focus.

8. Delighting prospects by sending direct mail

By including direct mail in your sales cadence, you can build rapport faster while standing out from the crowd of emails.

In this sales cadence, you’ll incorporate direct mail through the various touchpoints across email, voicemail, and calls. Research your prospect before sending direct mail to ensure it’s relevant.

While this is an entirely new approach for some sellers, it can yield great results. 

Sales cadence tools

Salesloft

Salesloft is a sales engagement platform that helps sellers streamline their sales prospecting. They are best known for their sales cadence, allowing sellers to execute different sales tasks such as personalized and automated emails, cold calls, voicemails, LinkedIn connections, InMail, etc. 

They are a leading solution for anyone that needs to build or scale their sales cadence strategy.

Within the platform, you can access in-depth reporting and dashboards, which gives you insight into which emails are performing well and what times and dates are the best time to call.

The platform also provides various integrations, including video email, direct mail, and business intelligence tools.

Features

• Automated emails
• Email templates
• Calendar
• Dialer and Messenger

Outreach

Outreach is a sales execution platform that helps increase sellers’ productivity and engagement. It offers numerous solutions, but it’s best known for its sales engagement platform, which helps sellers automate their sales cadence. 

The solutions provide machine-learning-driven A/B testing and sequence insights which help sellers understand what sales touchpoints perform based on the platform’s unique sales data.

They help sellers take a data-driven approach to ensure results are based on playbooks and predictability instead of gut instinct.

Features

• Integrated A/B testing
• Sentiment analysis
• Automated emails
• Dialer and Messenger

HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub is built on HubSpot’s CRM platform, which includes sales cadence tools to help streamline a seller’s sales cadence and outreach. It is a robust platform that is seamless and easy to use for sellers.

It is a pretty robust sales platform with many features. The sales engagement functionality provides many tools sellers need, including automated sales cadences, email templates, dialers, and tracking.

The benefit of HubSpot Sales HubSpot is that it sits on top of the CRM platform, which provides in-depth insight and data to help with prospecting and sales cadences.

Features:

• Email Templates
• Email Tracking
• Call Tracking
• Sales Automation

Reply

Reply is an all-in-one sales engagement platform that helps sellers streamline their sales cadence and prospecting process.

Known for its AI algorithm, Reply helps sellers generate unique email templates and messaging based on valuable sales insights. Along with Reply’s sales cadence and engagement functionality, it provides unique tools to help sellers.

One of them is their Sales Email Assistant, an AI-powered tool that helps automate email writing while making it sound human. As you send emails, they also provide an email warm-up feature to ensure your cold emails are delivered.

Features:

• Email warm-up
• Sales automation
• Email writing assistant
• LinkedIn prospecting

Zoominfo SalesOS

ZoomInfo SalesOS is a robust sales engagement platform that provides multi-channel prospecting campaigns that include automated emails, calls, SMS messages, and social connections. Their sales cadence and engagement platform are just one of Zoominfo’s solutions.

Zoominfo is best known for having the largest B2B database. When its sales engagement platform is used with its database tool, you can get valuable sales intelligence about your prospects, such as funding events, buyer intent, and technographic data.

Features:

• Email Automation
• SMs Messaging
• Dialer
• Prospect Database

Start your sales cadence

Using a sales cadence will help you stay productive, save time and build pipeline more efficiently.

With the sales cadence best practices above, you should. be able to build a sales cadence that matches your buyers.

Whether it’s enterprise companies or free trial users, ensure your cadence has the right mix of touchpoints and relevant messaging. Then as you scale your outreach strategy, use a sales engagement tool to accelerate your sales cadence.