5 Winning Sales Cadence Examples (and Lessons to Draw from Them)

If you have leads coming in, you may be wondering what to do next. Which leads should you contact first? Do you email or call them? How many times should you try to contact them? When should you make a call or send an email? If a prospect does something specific, what should you do? And what’s the next step?

If you’re not sure how to answer these questions, it’s probably time to develop a good sales cadence for your sales team. A sales cadence provides a structure for how your team communicates with leads, which can increase productivity and performance.

Advantages of Sales Cadence

Did you know that by implementing a well-defined sales cadence, you can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your client prospecting process? So, whether you’re a solo marketer or part of a larger team, here are the key advantages of integrating sales cadence that you must take note of:

Sales Cadence Example

If you’re looking to create your own sales cadence (or looking to tweak your current one), there are plenty of ideas to borrow from the following proven examples.

Example 1

Our first sales cadence example comes to us from Sales Hub CEO Max Altschuler. This is a widely cited sales cadence and works great as a starting reference.

Day 1: Email/InMail
Day 3: Email in the morning, Call in the afternoon
Day 5: Call in the morning, Call with a voicemail in the afternoon
Day 7: Email in the morning, Call in the afternoon with a voicemail
Day 10: Email and call in the morning

As you can see, this sales cadence consists of 10 touchpoints spread over 10 days. Other than its simplicity, this sales cadence also has the following strengths:

• Makes use of all three key channels (email, phone, and social)
• Leverages the law of immediacy (i.e., touches aren’t spaced too far apart)
• Uses both live phone calls and voicemails

On the other hand, this sales cadence needs some improvement in the following areas:

• Uses too few touchpoints (keep in mind that most studies say it may take up to 13 touches to generate a valid lead)
• Waits until day 3 to place a call (if this were an inbound lead, calling on day 1 would work well)

Related: 5 Actionable Email Marketing Templates you can Use to Follow Up

Example 2

The next example works well for lengthier sales processes. It’s used by one of InsideSales.com’s clients:

1. Day 1: Email 1
2. Day 2: Call 1, Voice mail 1, Email 2
3. Day 7: Call 2, Voice mail 2, Email 3
4. Day 14: Call 3, Voice mail 3, Email 4
5. Day 21: Call 4, Voice mail 4, Email 5
6. Day 35: Call 5, Voice mail 5, Email 6
7. Day 49: Call 6, Voice mail 6, Email 7
8. Day 63: Call 7, Voice mail 7, Email 8
9. Day 77: Call 8, Voice mail 8, Email 9

This sales cadence uses up to 25 touch points spread over 77 days (a little over two-and-a-half months). Its strengths include:

• Starts off strong with email on day 1 and follows it up with a call the next day
• Combines live phone conversations with voice mail messages

While this cadence fits in with an outbound sales strategy for longer sales cycles, it does have a couple of weaknesses that need attention:

• Lacks a social media component
• Schedules successive touch points too far apart from each other
• Relies on the repetitive and almost predictable mix of channels

Example 3

Once again, we’re using a working outbound sales cadence developed by one of InsideSales.com’s customers as an example:

1. Day 1: Emails 1 and 2
2. Day 2: Email 3
3. Day 3: Call 1, Voice Mail 1
4. Day 4: Social Media 1, Email 4
5. Day 5: Call 2, Email 5, Social Media 2

This sales cadence packs a lot of touches in such a short time period (5 days) and works because of it:

• Leverages all three key channels (email, phone, and social)
• Uses emails extensively throughout the whole process
• Varies the mix of touch points from one day to another

However, there’s still some room for improvement, particularly since the cadence:

• Squeezes so much activity in so short a time and risks overwhelming the prospect
• Waits until day 3 to follow the opening email with a call

Continue reading the guide and create an effective sales cadence.