In this article:

1. Give Your Sales Team the Right Tools
2. What Is a Sales Cadence and Why Do You Need it?
3. How Software Can Help Your Sales Cadence Strategy
4. Optimize Lead Scoring and Lead Prioritization
5. Call the Right Leads with Phone Prospecting Cadence
6. Get Visibility into Your Pipeline with Email Cadence
7. Sales Cadence Timing
8. Sales Cadence Frequency

Sales Cadence Tools | Use Predictive Analytics to Increase Preciseness, Efficiency, and Productivity

Give Your Sales Team the Right Tools

Finding the right sales cadence and then having sales representatives flawlessly execute it is a complex process.

Your sales reps can misrepresent their activities. They can commit deal-breaking mistakes when it comes to their sales strategy.

Sales cadence tools can help you automate your workflow. It can also increase productivity and generate more leads.

Sales acceleration software is a marketing automation tool that can shorten the sales cycle. You can also use it to drive revenue growth.

We designed the technology to help create faster, more efficient sales teams with improved performance.

What Is a Sales Cadence and Why Do You Need it?

Sales cadence is a sequence of activities to improve contact and qualification rates. This is according to Gabe Larsen, director of Inside Sales Labs.

It has five elements. These are:

• Attempts
• Media
• Duration
• Spacing
• Content

Ideally, your sales cadence should be specific to your company, your prospective clients, and your industry.

All these factors add a degree of complexity when creating an optimal sales sequence. Sales leaders around the world, though, need to put in the time to perfect their cadence strategy.

Optimizing your cadence when doing sales prospecting helps produce predictable revenue growth.

It’s not only one of the goals of an organization — it is the holy grail, and this is where sales acceleration software can come in handy.

How Software Can Help Your Sales Cadence Strategy

It’s very common for sales reps to be cadencing at random.

They will pick a sequence of sales activities comfortable for them. They do so without any regard for what works for the customer.

Sales acceleration software can take the guesswork out of prospecting cadence. At the same time, it makes sure your sales team is efficient and productive with winning sales.

Optimize Lead Scoring and Lead Prioritization

Automated sales acceleration technologies can help with lead scoring and lead prioritization. It will help you answer an essential question for your sales development reps: “Am I contacting the right people?”

Achieving targets doesn’t rest on making more calls. It also doesn’t depend on increasing engagement on social media.

It’s all about making the right calls at the right time — when your prospect is more likely to respond. Revenue acceleration technologies powered by Real Data can show you:

• Who is more likely to respond out of all your contacts
• Which medium they are more likely to prefer when you have multiple channels (email, phone calls, voicemail)
• What strategies are best for each stage of the sales funnel

Call the Right Leads with Phone Prospecting Cadence

Sales representatives prefer to email rather than call. We know this for a fact.

This doesn’t change the fact that telephone calls are the most effective prospecting tool.

Sales cadence tools and software like Playbooks from XANT can help you determine the best time to call. It ensures your prospects can answer the phone.

The software will prioritize lists. This way, reps focus their time on the prospects who are most likely to pick up the phone and begin their buyer’s journey.

You can measure prioritization in two ways:

• Likelihood to contact
• Likelihood to close

Sales acceleration software will analyze trillions of external data points according to the sales process. It will also assign a score to each lead, ranging from 1 to 100, based on this analysis.

The higher the score, the higher your likelihood to close a deal.

You can now make cold calls a thing of the past.

This software can also increase sales enablement. Most of all, it can empower your sales team to contact the right leads.

Sales Enablement Definition: It’s the process involving providing the best-quality data, content, and tools to help sales teams become more effective.

RELATED: Secrets of Phone Prospecting with Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy

Get Visibility into Your Pipeline with Email Cadence

Email is currently one of the preferred tools of salespeople to contact customers or prospects.

Experts will tell you, though, it’s not the better option. It has lower contact rates than phone calls.

In the battle between phone versus email, the phone call definitely wins.

On the other hand, research showed the most efficient sales cadences include multiple communication options for sales outreach. These are telephone calls, voicemails, and emails.

It’s not worth ignoring any of these communication channels. Instead, it pays to be smart about how you use each of them.

With email, it’s best to contact leads as soon as they open your email or download whatever collateral or presentation you sent them.

The XANT Vision application will show you in real time:

• When someone opened an email
• Which of your contacts clicked a link
• When a prospect visits their website and how long prospects viewed specific pages
• Which attachments are most successful based on downloads
• If they forwarded an email and to whom
• Which content is most effective

This sales software will help you swiftly respond to buying signals. It will also increase your conversion by using immediacy to wow your prospects.

Strong sales cadence tools can easily increase productivity and efficiency for a sales organization. It promotes velocity sales.

Velocity Sales Definition: It is a measurement on the speed prospective customers purchased a product or used a service.

Don’t miss any sales opportunity from now on.

Sales Cadence Timing

Timing is almost everything when creating the perfect sales cadence. How do you know if you’re being too spammy? This can mean you get ignored, or worse, marked as spam. You don’t want to get written off by a prospect prior to even speaking with them.

Timing is critical to ensure you don’t wait too long between contact attempts. You don’t want to be forgotten about, but you don’t want to be too pushy.

Optimal sales cadence should mean:

• Leaving one day at least between contact, and no more than four
• Increasing the number of days between contact after each attempt  

If you use your CRM to consistently time your contact attempts and align these with your existing plans.

The ideal duration should be no longer than four weeks, but two weeks should be the minimum you try to make contact.

So be persistent and not too clingy.

Sales Cadence Frequency

Making contact through various channels will get the best results. Your content needs to be high quality and you need to aim for up to 15 touches per prospect.

If you only try once to contact a client that’s a lot of missed sales opportunities.

The Online Marketing Institute reports that it takes seven to 13 touches to deliver a qualified sales lead.

Twelve or more contacts boost performance by nearly 20% compared to co-workers who stop at eight.

Quality and quantity are important when it comes to sales cadencing.

Learn more about using a sales cadence tool to generate more leads and achieve predictable growth using A.I.-powered sales technology. Check out the XANT platform.

It will amaze you at what it can do!

Teams using sales acceleration software experienced revenue growth of over 30% in as little as 90 days.

What are your challenges with sales cadence? Share your experiences in the comments section below!

Up Next: How To Build The Ultimate Outbound Sales Cadence

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on August 23, 2017, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

Text in sales may not be the most popular communication method out there, especially for B2B sales, but its power and presence is hard to ignore. In this episode of Sales Secrets, I share why it’s worth looking into including texting in your sales strategy and how to do it successfully, so read on to find out more.

RELATED: Email Prospecting vs Cold Calling: What’s Best?

In this article:

1. Does Cold Texting Work? 
2. Should You Send a Cold Text to Prospects?
3. How Often Should You Text a Prospecting Customer?
4. Best Ways for Using Text in Sales
   1. The Reach Out
   2. The Big News
   3. Appointment Reminders
   4. Follow-Up Reminders
   5. The Break-Up Text
5. When Should I Text My Prospect?
6. Biggest Texting Mistakes in Sales
   1. How to Use Text
7. Should I Worry About Sending Texts in Marketing and Sales Communication?

Why Use Use Text in Sales

Does Cold Texting Work? 

Texting is practically nonexistent in the B2B sales world. It’s the lowest adopted technology by sales reps, who reported only 0.7 SMS messages sent per cadence.

This is the lowest rate for every communication method we studied. This doesn’t mean, however, that you should ignore sending text messages.

Why is that?

• Using text messaging at work has increased by 62%, from 26% to 42%, since 2014.
• At a 58% increase, 61% of people recommend they be contacted through text messaging at work.
• 95% of text messages are read within three minutes.
• The average response time for a single text is 90 seconds.

When it comes to building your pipeline, different can be good. Texting can be a powerful tool to fill up your sales funnel.

Here are some common questions sales managers may have if you want to start using text in sales.

Should You Send a Cold Text to Prospects?

The short answer is no. Wading through your contact list and cold texting prospects isn’t the way to go. Sending text messages to a sales prospect prior to other means of contact, such as phone or email, reduces the likelihood of overall contact by 39%.

On the flipside, texting after prior contact increases conversion rates (or the rate of transformation from prospect to paying customer) by up to 100%.

How Often Should You Text a Prospecting Customer?

The bottom line is to start moving the conversation with your prospective customer to text messages as soon as you can. The beauty of text messages is that you can send them any time and they will immediately receive it.

Try to move away from calls and emails as much as you can (except for communication that needs to be done formally). You want to be where they are.

Did you know that sending three or more purposeful texts after making prior contact increase conversion rate to 328%? A significant jump!

Best Ways for Using Text in Sales

It’s a little awkward to text someone you don’t know, and even if you know the person very well, things can still backfire. Here are ways you can text someone to sell more:

The Reach Out

Giving gifts to establish a good relationship with prospects

If you want to reach out to someone you’re not already actively talking to, be careful, and make sure you have a good reason for doing so.

Here’s an example of how to do this:

• You sent a gift to your prospect the week before.
• Text them to ask them if they received it, and maybe schedule a quick chat to explain why you did just that.

The Big News

This is especially effective for people you’ve been in contact with at some point since texting is very personal and informal compared to other communication methods. Text them personal information like articles they’d love, relevant company news, big promotions, and any other events relevant to both you and your sales prospect.

Appointment Reminders

This is one of the most common use cases for sending texts to someone.

For this to work, you can send an invite via email, then text your sales prospect afterward. Ask them if they want text reminders when it gets closer to the agreed-upon day.

Follow-Up Reminders

After the appointment, it’s a good idea to send a follow-up message to your prospect. Make sure you have a good call to action with next steps clearly lined up to make your communication more effective.

You can also send a sales document about your product, or a meeting invitation via email and text the other person a reminder that you did just that.

The Break-Up Text

This strategy works well with a prospect who tapered off their communication with you at one point. A quick message asking how things are and scheduling a quick catch-up to discuss the next steps will work wonders here.

RELATED: Cold Calling Still Works – If You Do It Right

When Should I Text My Prospect?

Timing texts perfectly for the best response

Be a little more careful during the start since texting is quite personal. As the relationship progresses, text more often during business hours, then start pushing boundaries (but only a little bit) once you’ve established the foundation of your relationship.

Biggest Texting Mistakes in Sales

Texting isn’t a foolproof method. Some of the most common mistakes when sending text messages include:

• Inappropriate timing (too early or too late in the game)
• Using abbreviations and jargon
• Going for the GIFs and emojis too soon
• Using too many characters (Aim for 160 characters or less. The shorter, the better.)

How to Use Text

Texting is best used in combination with other communication tools like ZANT’ sales engagement platform Playbooks. Not only can you send and receive text messages, but you can even have things recorded so you don’t miss any communication with prospects or customers.

Should I Worry About Sending Texts in Marketing and Sales Communication?

Texting can be more worrisome than calls and emails due to the many laws and restrictions that surround it. It’s in your best interest to consult your legal team before pursuing text-based sales and marketing strategies.

Just because you, as a salesperson, don’t use text in sales often doesn’t mean you have to completely avoid it. We challenge you to find a way to use this communication tool in your sales and marketing campaign to see your conversion rates soar.

Have you tried using text in sales? If not, what’s holding you back? Let us know in the comments section below.

Up Next:

• 11 Secrets Of Successful Business Sales Development Leaders [INFOGRAPHIC]
• 9 Essential B2B Marketing Trends That Will Pick Up Steam In 2018
• Grant Cardone’s 7 Simple Tips To Improve Sales Follow-Up

We spoke to Derek Boggs, Demand Generation Manager, to see how he uses direct mail as part of a multi channel Account Based Marketing Campaign.

After targeting hundreds of enterprise accounts with multi-channel ABM plays, he found that  sending a direct mail piece is incredibly effective. Whether it is a simple letter, a handwritten card, or a package with a gift card or a small gift, you are bound to get through to your prospect.

Direct Mail as Part of a Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign

Account-based Marketing is the best way to leverage multi-channel marketing, added Derek. You can pair your direct mail with email, phone calls or other communication channels.

“Direct mail is great for an ABM strategy because you’re targeting one account. You can personalize it, and you can target a few key contacts at that account. It allows you to break through the noise of emails, PPC ads, and display ads that follow these key contacts at these accounts all across the web. But when you send a personalized direct mail touch followed up with a phone call, it separates yourself and your messaging from your competitors, ” explained Derek.

ABM: Researching Your Target Accounts

The most time-consuming and the hardest part of ABM though, is not sending the campaign deliverables. It starts with market research and identifying target accounts, adds Derek. 

“You need to figure out the target accounts, contacts at that account and what’s their pain point? Is it similar across all these accounts? Or do we need to customize the messaging for each individualized account?,” recounts Derek. Based on industry or role, you might have a hard time reaching the right contacts in your account, he adds.

“Certain industries have barriers to direct mail (…). Let’s say you’re sending to an exec-level contact. That direct mail piece is going to reach the admin, but not necessarily your decision-maker. (…) It’s really something that we’ve learned here through trial-and-error. We’ve done a good job at tailoring our messaging and efforts towards directors and VPs, so that we don’t have to deal with an executive assistant,” adds Derek.

Reaching Decision-makers With Account Based Marketing

As long as you’re willing to put the time in, you can reach C-levels, say Derek. Validating contact information for leads is generally the most time-consuming piece of an account-based marketing campaign, he adds.

“These large accounts that you target for account-based marketing may have multiple office locations across the country. Across the globe. You’re targeting one specific person at that company that has 10,000+ employees, so it can get a little tricky. Are they working from home? You really have no idea. So you have to put your best private investigator hat on and be willing to do the dirty work to make it effective,” adds Derek.

Keeping the Message Consistent Across Communication Media

Combining phone calls with emails and direct mail yields improved response rates compared to just using one communication medium. The most important aspect of the campaign is keeping the messaging consistent across mediums.

“It really doesn’t matter what’s in the box. The most important questions to ask yourself are, do you have a timely follow-up? Is your messaging consistent across your digital touches, and your direct touch? And does your messaging speak to their pain point,” added Derek.

Just sending a direct mail with a letter or a small gift is not enough, he adds. “It could be the coolest gift they’ve ever received, but if you don’t follow it up with a timely phone call and email it will sit on their desk and collect dust. It’s all about having a sales rep follow-up and having that rep reach out in a timely fashion within 24 hours of this gift landing on their desk and opening up the conversation.” adds Derek.

Most Effective Direct Mail Types

The State of Direct Mailers research from XANT shows that while some types of direct mail are more effective than others, there is one common point to all successful direct mail campaigns. The messaging needs to be consistent across communication channels/media.

“I don’t think there is one type of email or one type of image that works better than others. You just need to be consistent across across all communication channels. The email or web experience for your targets has to tie in to your direct mailer. It also has to tie in with messaging that your reps are using to follow up. If you have different messages with each channel, this will confuse your prospect and they won’t know what it is that you provide,” added Derek.

How Companies Use Direct Mail in Their Campaigns

Recent research from XANT shows that only 38.5% of companies report using direct mail as part of their business. Moreover, only 30% of these will use direct mail for the purpose of prospecting. The main reasons companies do not use mailers is cost (44.3%) and time (22.9%). However, when direct mail is used within a multi-channel marketing campaign, response rates are significantly increased.

Download the “State of Direct Mail” research to see what the most effective tactics are when using direct mail.

Gabe discussed the “Sales Cadence” research from XANT Labs, that shows the average sales cadence numbers for nearly 9,000 companies. The study details how companies are using a sequence of sales activities (cadence) to reach their leads, qualify and nurture them to reach closed deals.

XANT research shows sales cadences have five main attributes: attempts, media, duration, spacing and content.

Understanding Sales Reps Biases and Boasts

The surprising results of the study highlighted the gap between what sales reps ‘think’ they are doing and what they are doing in reality.

“When you ask sales reps how many times, that’s attempts, that they follow up on inbound leads, one study says 15.5, another study says 12.1. When we actually audited the data and looked at what people really did, the number was at 4.05,” said Gabe Larsen, on the show.

Study Reveals Sales Cadence for Thousands of Companies

Know What the Benchmarks are for Your Industry

So, how do sales leaders overcome the issue of reps overestimating their results? It’s not a simple equation. They need to understand the benchmark results that are applicable to each industry. They should also judge their rep’s performance and their sales cadence against that, preferrably by an external auditor, adds Gabe Larsen.

“It’s difficult to take a general study and say ‘this is what is happening and this is what best practice is.’ The biggest differentiator you see is that of industry. For example, duration of a cadence was very long in the software industry, of almost to 60 days. Whereas in transportation, it was in the single digit. Spacing was really tight in the finance industry, meanwhile in healthcare it jumped to five or six days,” added Gabe.

See What Cadences Fortune 100 Companies Use

Testing Your Sales Cadence

If you want to find out if you have the right sales cadence, XANT has created the perfect tool for you. Enter your company information in the sales cadence assessment tool at cadenceassessment.acceleratewww.xant.ai. You will receive a score for your cadence, based on the research and industry averages.

“A lot of people have a hard time measuring their cadence. They get into their CRM and they talk to their people, and people tell them they’re doing great. At times they can’t pull all relevant data out of the CRM, and so they’re like, “Oh, where should we be?” This is probably the best first step. Go to our tool and see what your score is,” added Gabe.

This is why I’ve come up with a game plan on how to fit social selling into your sales cadence strategy. It’s tricky, but not impossible, so watch the video to understand how you can include social in your daily sales routine.

How to Include Social Selling in Your Sales Cadence

I’ve chosen a sales cadence template that we regularly use with the XANT Playbooks software. I’ve modified it to include social elements and followed through every step of the cadence to show you how it works.

Attempts:

My sales cadence includes 13 total sales activities (attempts to engage with the lead), and it’s broken down into different types of activities.

Media:

On the sales media, this cadence includes: 3 phone calls, 2 voicemails, 0 texts, 4 emails, 4 social and 0 high impact mailers.

That’s overall 13 touches. This cadence is designed for someone who is working in a relational sales model, focused on bigger deals.

The sales rep will start out a bit passive, with a social interaction and with an email, and then they will follow up with phone calls, emails, and then move to calls, voicemails and social.

Spacing:

You should leave around 2 days in between interactions with your prospect, but not much more than that. The passive communication like following the lead, comments on social or email make it possible to engage with your lead often, without being too aggressive.

Duration

The sales activities span out over a duration of 12 days. It’s a little bit short on the duration, but not too bad. In some cases you will want to extend that.

Show Your Lead some ‘LUV’

One of the concepts we use with Playbooks to increase our social activities is the ‘LUV’ concept – leaving unsolicited validation. That means either following your lead or the company on social media, connecting with them without engaging further. This shows your lead some social love, without looking too sales’y or intrusive.

You should certainly include this in your social selling strategy as much as you can. The Playbooks sales software makes it easy to follow through your cadence and connect with your lead through all these different mediums, without skipping a step!

Follow a Social Selling Sales Cadence With Playbooks

Playbooks will show you all the activities you can take with your contact, in the sequence of the cadence we selected – and allow you to do actions straight from the CRM interface. Just add your contact, select your cadence and GO!

Watch the video to see how you can include social selling into your sales cadence!

We’ve compiled this list using tried and tested tips from sales pros. The XANT Labs course on sales cadence should work to complement your training on sales cadence and make sure you apply this knowledge in your every-day routines.

Talking to Your Leads Only Once

The Sales Cadence Report 2017 from XANT shows that sales representatives are not being diligent about contacting their leads. This is surprising and disappointing to see. Past research has shown that following up on leads frequently leads to the best contact rates and sales performance.

While sales reps ‘think’ they are making an average of 15 touches per leads (according to TOPO research), XANT’s report shows the number is, in fact, around 6.

Contacting a lead only once before giving up is a sure fire way to miss out on excellent business opportunities. Sadly, sales reps make this mistake all too often.

Talking to Your Leads Too Many Times

It so happened that I recently purchased a course from a vendor which had a practice of introducing every customer to multiple emailing list. The madness was so that I ended up receiving emails every 12 hours, every single day.

I’m the good kind of customer – I only spent a few minutes unsubscribing from each of their newsletters.

Other customers might actually take some more time to leave a negative review online for your company.

It’s always a good idea to show respect for your prospect’s time. There is more noise out there than ever, and any potential customer does not appreciate spam mail.

Take into account sales cycles: some deals will only close after 90 days, no matter how many emails you send. There is a possibility of ending up on block lists if you contact people too often.

Using Only One Communication Channel

A lot of sales representatives will choose one communication channel and use it as their preferred method for outreach. The most common outreach practice is email (32 percent of sales reps use this method, according to recent findings). However, it’s been proven that using diverse communication channels yields the best results.

Phone calls, texting, voicemails, emails and social media communication – all play a role towards getting you to the final goal of closing a deal.

A lot of sales reps forget that social media is just as good as any other sales communication channel. Some say it’s even better: the average person will spend around two hours on social media every day.

Yikes! That’s more than some people spend talking to their kids!

Given the popularity of social networks, they make a great communication channel – and the rise of the social selling phenomena is no surprise.

Including social media in your cadence strategy will up your chances of connecting with prospects.

Not Accounting for Industry and Product

The software-as-a-service industry will have a different sales cadence than say, mattress selling or the financial industry. Each professional and persona within these industries will also have a preference for how and when to have a conversation. The sales cycle will also be different for each product, depending on price and other factors.

Not taking into account all these variables when building your sales cadence will set you up to fail.

Granted, it takes either years of experience – or a solid investment in marketing research to know the ins and outs of your prospect’s day.

Sales acceleration technologies can help here, by offering sales reps real-time information about their leads, and offering predictive analysis on which leads are more likely to respond or close a deal.

T leads us to the final error that sales reps make with their prospects – lack of interest when it comes to testing sales cadence strategies.

Not Testing Sales Cadences

Another very common mistake that sales team make when contacting leads is repetition. Some sales and marketing teams will do the same thing day in and day out, without regard as to what works and what doesn’t.

Repetitive sales cadences mean that you’re missing out on the opportunity to test new options and find out what really gets your prospects engaged.

So, put on your scientist hat and find out which of your strategies had the best results. You may be surprised of the results.

Build a Cadence For Your Business: Game Plan Course

This is only a short-list of errors that might come up in sales representative’s plan for sales cadence. If you’re interested in learning more, XANT has created a course on sales cadence building and implementation.

Learn how to set an ideal sales cadence for your business and how to make sure no lead escapes your sales funnel!

Texting is here to stay. Busy decision makers are using texting to respond to people in and out of the work place and sales reps are starting to see the benefits of getting mobile numbers. How will this continue to play out? In this episode, Mike Vandenbos, Entrepreneur in Residence at Zipwhip, talks about the state of sales and discusses where texting is being best utilized. In addition, Mike points out some of the rules and regulations regarding texting and advises on how people should start thinking about brining texting into their day-to-day sales activities.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

• History of texting in business?
• What is going on with texting in general?
• What is going on with texting in the sales space?
• How can sales reps get more mobile numbers?
• What are best practices for texting?

Links and Resources Related to This Episode:

• Zipwhip
• Mike Vandenbos
• How to Build a Winning Cadence Game Plan
• XANT Labs 
• Playmaker Podcast

Subscribe to the Playmaker podcast here:

Sales cadence is the MOTHER of all buzzwords. ‘Cadence this’ and ‘cadence that’ but I’m feeling like nobody even knows what a cadence is. Well, I’ve got a definition for you:

Cadence is a sequence of activities to improve contact and qualification rates.

Most sales reps have a cadence. It’s something they make up, and try, and if it doesn’t work they move on to the next thing. There is no rhyme or reason just gut and intuition.

Let me give you an example:

This is a real cadence from a real company. I didn’t want to revel the name but next time I might just to make it more interesting. Want do you think? Is it good or is it bad? Well let’s break it down.

Hmmm, how the hell do you break it down? This has been the problem for a long time. There is no way to break it down because we have no had no blueprint on how to do that, until now. InsideSales Labs did a study analyzing 14,000+ cadences, made up of 144,000+ total activities, across nearly 9,000 companies. The study uncovered the five key elements of a cadence:

1.   Attempts: The total number of touch points made

2.   Media: The type of communication methods used

3.   Duration: The time between the first and last attempt

4.   Spacing: The time gap between contact attempts

5.   Content: The messaging used

These elements are how you build an analyze a cadence. So let’s do it, let’s analyze the above cadence:

1.   Attempts: It has a total of 7 touches. The industry average is (according to our study) 4.05. That is made up 1.73 phone calls and 2.32 emails. Did you hear that? The average lead is only called 1.73 times. That’s sucks and it’s definitely not getting the ‘most’ out of your leads. 7 is okay but it’s not great for marketing leads. Grade C

2.   Media: The media pattern used in the above cadence is a call + call + email. This is good as the industry standard is a single email. Why no voicemail? Grade C+

*Our data didn’t include social touches. I know, I wanted it to but it’s a little more complicated to get social data and we didn’t have access to it.

3.   Duration: The typical duration across the 9K companies was 4.89 days so 17 days doesn’t look bad. The problem is the duration with the number of touches makes it messy. B+

4.   Spacing: In the above cadence the spacing is 1D 20Hrs on average. The industry average is 4.23 days. The problem with the average is it can be misleading. Look at the above cadence and you have some real anomalies. In one instance you have a whole week gap and that’s messy. Grade C

5.   Content: I didn’t post any of the emails from this company but I can tell you the average email sent from this organization had 76 words and the average voicemail was over 30 seconds. The industry average on this is 362 words per email and the typical voicemail was 23 seconds long. Shorter emails are still performing better so we’ll give them a plus there but their voicemails over 30 seconds have to stop. Grade B+

There you have it. Your sales cadence may suck, it may not suck but at least you have a strategy to start breaking it down and figuring out why it’s good or why it’s bad.

You want to learn more about what the study revealed and what best practices cadence look like? Check out our Game Plan:

• How many times should I attempt contact?
• How long should I wait between attempts?
• What methods are most likely to result in a conversation?
• What messaging will resonate with my potential buyer?
• When I should I give up?

These are only a few of the many questions sales reps consider when creating their optimal cadence. Because these cadences are built purely on intuition, the answers to the above questions introduce a variety of answers – many of which limit a sales rep’s ability to effectively turn prospects into potential buyers.

Place one call too many, and you tick off your lead.

Give up too soon on someone, and you will turn up short on quota.

So, what is the right cadence and how should companies begin building them?

Sales Cadence, Defined

I asked our Labs team — the research and best practice arm of XANT to see if they could crack the code. In analyzing 14,000+ cadences, made up of 144,000+ total activities, across nearly 9,000 companies, the team determined a more clear definition of sales cadence and uncovered five critical components for a successful cadence.

Their research revealed that an optimal sales cadence is a sequence of activities that increases contact and qualification rates. When cadences are performed correctly, they not only increase a rep’s ability to engage with a prospect, but they also educate them on how to become potential buyers.

Key Elements of an Optimal Cadence

Most sales leaders measure their sales teams’ productivity by the number of contact attempts per lead. While volume is an important part to a sales rep’s success, when it comes to effective cadence, the number of attempts is only one piece of the puzzle. Here are the five key elements:

1. Attempts: The total number of touch points made
2. Media: The type of communication methods used
3. Duration: The time between the first and last attempt
4. Spacing: The time gap between contact attempts
5. Content: The messaging used

For organizations to build optimal cadences, all five elements need to be studied and implemented. Unfortunately, this is where most sales teams go wrong. Oftentimes, reps think they have a strong sales cadence when in fact, the numbers tell a different story.

According to a research report by TOPO(1), sales development representatives believe they perform:

• An average of 15.5 touches per lead
• An average of a 20-day duration for their cadence

When we examined the actual data, we compared the TOPO averages versus our medians to eliminate the effect of outliers and the numbers were significantly different(2).

• 4.05 total attempts(3) – 26.1% versus the actual number
• 4.89-day duration(4) – 24.5% versus the actual number

Is it a wonder they’re all missing their numbers?

Surprised? I’m not. Most of us think we’re better than we are and more often than not, we judge ourselves as better than average in most traits.

What’s the best way to overcome this attitude? Have a professional point out that you suck. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m calling your sales teams’ bluff and telling you not to believe everything you hear.

XANT’s Sales Cadence Audit Report

The “Cadence Audit – 2017” research report from XANT also showed that:

• The most common outreach practice is a single email (32 percent of respondents use this method)
• 61 percent of first contacts happen via email
• The second most utilized cadence is a single call and a voicemail (6 percent)

When cadences are performed correctly, they increase a rep’s ability to interact with a prospect, educate them to become a potential buyer and prevent deals from falling through, the research report shows.

Perfecting cadence is a core component of both the art and science of effective inside sales. When sales reps lead with an unstructured cadence, they put potential sales at risk. Optimal cadences can boost results by up to 110 percent. These are not trivial improvements.

It’s crucial not to leave your sales cadence to chance.

Email Prospecting vs Cold Calling

Most commonly, sales cadence is picked subjectively by sales representatives in companies. They will simply cherry pick the method they find most convenient for contacting their leads or prospects.

And right now, the preferred method of sales communication is email.

However, much is lost in an email exchange –  a pause on the phone, or a subtle sigh, can offer you valuable input into a prospect’s situation.

Furthermore, in the later stages of the sales cycle, phone calls are much more valuable then emails for progressing a deal.

First, sales leaders need to establish the winning sales cadence strategy that works for their company. They also need to educate sales representatives to make sure sales cadence best practices are implemented.

XANT Sales Cadence Strategy

Building your sales cadence purely on intuition can limit a sales rep’s ability to effectively turn prospects into potential buyers. This is why we’ve created a research study. Using this research, you will be able to figure out how sales representatives contact their leads and how they follow up, and determine what are the best ways to improve your organization’s performance.

Download the executive summary of the Sales Cadence Audit to learn more.

· The five components of a cadence
· What are the baselines and benchmarks by industry for each component
· How to successfully implement cadence best practices in your organization

(1) TOPO’s 2016 Sales Development Benchmark Report. A summary can be found at https://blog.topohq.com/emergence-strategic-sales-development-2016-topo-sales-development-benchmark-report/

(2) The average attempts per lead was 6.60, still significantly lower than the TOPO data

(3) 4.05 represents the median and only includes calls and emails not social touches

(4) 4.89 is the median