Follow-ups are essential for sales success. However, with overwhelming processes, tools, and quotas, this crucial step is oftentimes pushed aside. Salespeople focus more on reaching out to new leads, avoiding the ‘awkward follow-up’.
A lot are forgetting the inner workings of what a good sales strategy should be. Typically, there’s only a 2% chance that sales are made during the first point of contact. Unfortunately, only 8% of salespeople follow up diligently, letting the other 98% of potential leads slip away.
Your sales processes should be moving at a pace where engagements are consistent, fast, and planned. This is why it’s necessary to build a set of timely and well-crafted follow-up sequences, also referred to as ‘sales cadences’.
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What’s a sales cadence?
A sales cadence is a series of touchpoints that are planned and set in ways that would keep your engagements and follow-ups consistent with a defined set of prospects.
These planned touchpoints help salespeople establish a strong connection with a prospect for proper consideration and conversion.
A sales cadence leverages different channels and typically includes calls, emails, and texts. Each interaction is scheduled, facilitating close communication between the agent and the prospect. Each touchpoint’s goal is simple: to follow up and nurture a prospect.
Planning is one thing, execution is another. This is why automating your sales cadence is essential to manage your time spent on each. At the same time, automation also helps track sales activities better, facilitating systematic optimization.
Applying automation by sales channel
Automating an entire sales cadence would mean working on different modes of communication. This means that you would need tools that can support automating emails, texts, phone calls (and all the other channels you’re leveraging). That could be a set of different tools, but an omnichannel solution can also be an option.
Email automation
Nowadays, emails are something digital consumers are highly in favor of. In fact, 49% of customers prefer to receive marketing offers from emails. They also expect businesses to reply or send them emails in less than an hour, with 15 minutes as the best standard.
This goes to show that automating your emails is the only way to keep up with the demanding industry standards. With consumers preferring this channel the most, sending an automated email as the first point of contact with leads is probably the best way to begin your sales cadence plan.
Your email content should vary all throughout your SaaS sales cadence. Tracking engagements, click-throughs, and open rates will help you determine what type of content you should be sending your prospects. Additionally, you can use this channel to send content that will help your customers, like customer guides, case studies, and or business-related tips. However, because of the passive nature of emails, 65% of sent email messages are usually ignored. This proves that you will need more than one channel to continue engaging with your prospects.
Call automation
Yes, you can automate your calls, and no, we’re not talking about robocalls. Call automation for outbound can be done by automating your dials to boost your productivity.
Unlike inbound calling, outbound calling poses greater risks because of automated dialing. However, getting tools that will help you simplify processes while automating your dials is a sure-fire way to make your cadences work systematically and efficiently.
One study found out that 60% of consumers prefer to keep in touch with a business through phone calls. Calling your customers keep your business aware of your customers’ needs, at the same time giving them the opportunity to reach you easily. It promotes faster communication for SaaS transactions that need direct responses like booking appointments, checking out your client’s concerns, or getting their feedback.
Calls are the next most important communication channel to plan in your SaaS sales cadence. It’s important to engage with a prospect after a series of email transactions to know about their behavior and perception about your products and services.
Text automation
SMS is the easiest channel to automate, at the same time, one of the most preferred channels by consumers.
Compared to emails, SMS reigns at an average of 99% open rate, with 97% of SMS read in more or less 15 minutes upon receipt. This is why including this channel as part of your touchpoints is crucial for your sales cadence success.
Text messages in your SaaS sales cadence should function to prompt your prospects quick reminders or short messages that need immediate attention. Text messaging also provides SaaS customers an extra layer of protection through functions like OTP access or two-step authentication when performing activities in their accounts.
Sound planning is crucial in building your first SaaS sales cadence. In order to keep up with customers’ changing needs, automating each channel can help. Automation also helps your team to be mindful of the importance of each sequence, while making sure they follow each step accordingly.
Automate your sales cadence channels with the best contact center solution! Aloware is a complete contact center software that hooks you up with call and text automation that is perfect for your sales campaigns. Send us a message to know more!
