To improve prospecting outcomes, savvy sales professionals create prospecting sequences and pursuit plans that cross-leverage virtual communication channels.
When prospects don’t know you, it’s much harder to get a return call. However, you can build familiarity over time with sequenced and repeated prospecting touches. This is the focus on sales engagement campaigns.
The more a prospect hears and sees your name, the more familiar you become to them and the more likely they are to engage. This is one of the core reasons why prospecting sequences work.
A prospecting sequence (sometime called a cadence) is a series of prospecting touches, arranged in an intentional sequence, to improve the probability that you engage your prospect.
There are Seven-steps to planning and building an effective prospecting sequences:
- Targeted List: Start with a targeted list of 10 to 25 prospects.
- Channels: Identify which channels you will include in your sequence: voicemail, email, social media, direct messaging, video messaging, text messaging, snail mail, in-person
- Cadence: Plan the order of your prospecting touches by channel. For example: Voicemail > Email > LinkedIn > Video Message > Snail Mail > Direct Message
- Touches: Plan the number of touches for each channel. For Example a 4-3-2-1 sequence might be Four Voicemails, Three Emails, Two LinkedIn Touches, One Video Message.
- Duration: Plan for the length of time over which your sequence of touches will run: 10 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days
- Pace: Plan for the pace, time of day, and intervals of your prospecting touches: Daily, every other day, once a week, on certain days of the week etc.
- Messaging: Develop strategic and interconnected messaging for each touch. Messaging should be relevant to the prospect, designed to tell your story, and compelling enough to motivate your prospect to engage.
Tools
Developing and running effective prospecting sequences is complex. It can certainly be managed with a spreadsheet but it is much easier with an automated platform designed for this purpose.
There are a number of these “sales engagement platforms” on the market that take much of the work out of running and measuring prospecting sequences. We’ve tried them all and our top two recommendations are:
