In today’s competitive market, the transition from prospect to customer does not usually occurs at the first point of contact. However, too many salespeople throw in the towel too early and lose business opportunities that just needed a little more nurturing. Persistence has always paid off in sales, with most sellers needing to follow up five times or more before they get a deal. However, most salespeople give up after two tries and fail to capitalize on that huge potential income. With such a gap between what gets results and what is typically done, there is a tremendous competitive advantage for anyone who learns how to be great at strategic follow-ups. In this article, we consider sales sequences and how to create, deploy and refine them to generate significantly better engagement and response rates to soften the chill of cold prospects and premature approaches, conduct discretionary treatment with thoughtful, persistent outreach, respect the prospects’s time and add value at every hostname you contact them in.
The Importance of Follow-Ups When It Comes to Sales
The numbers make a strong case for the crucial role of follow-ups in today’s sales process. A study from RAIN Group discovered that 80% of prospects/leads/vendors say “no” four times before they say “yes,” and still, 44% of salespeople give up after refusing calls for the first time. More on that: A Brevet Group study discovered that 60% of customers have to say “no” four times before they agree to buy something while 92% of salespeople give up after hearing “no” four times. This persistence deficiency creates a huge opportunity for those sales reps willing to grind it to the end. Then there’s also the psychology behind delayed responses, which also is reinforcing this point of, “Rising Number of Other Priorities” – As buyers are bombarded, they are more and more likely to not get back to you, the faster you reach out to them. Furthermore, B2B decision-making has grown more complex, with 6.8 stakeholders included in B2B purchase decisions on average, as per Gartner research, lengthening sales cycles and requiring numerous touchpoints to touch and influence all decision makers. The cost of giving up early is high – in fact, companies that have formalized follow up sequences convert 25-35% better rate than ones that take an ad-hoc approach – which translates directly into revenue growth and competitive differentiation in competitive markets where attention is arguably the scarcest resource of all.
What a High-Performing Sales Sequence Looks Like
A sales sequence can be defined as a sequence of touches across multiple channels programmed with timing, messaging and objectives to move your prospects along through your sales pipeline. Good sequences commonly have three stages that align with the buyer’s journey. The first touch is about getting your foot in the door and grabbing attention – the message must be very personalized, brief and be about the likely challenges your prospect faces rather than the features of your solution. This is then made up by value ads follow ups which increasingly engage them, with insights, case studies or good practice that is directly related to the prospects situation showing not only do you have an understanding of their need, but you have the capability to service that need. And, last, a break-up email that does so in a respectful manner and not only acknowledges the non-response but also leaves that line of communication open if anyone wants to reconnect, a powerful psychological principle that often elicits a surprising increase in responses known as loss aversion. There’s a perfect length of the sales cycle As for the length of the sales cycle – the ideal length of that is 8-12 touchpoints across several channels over 4-6 weeks and a 16-day sales cycle performs 112% higher in response rates according to the data we have in Woodpecker. This staged process caters equal doses of persistence and gives-prospect-space to offer plenty of time-to-interact without appearing over eager or bothersome in a way that could negatively affect future opportunities.
Personalization Tactics to Increase Engagement
Good personalization doesn’t just start and stop with slapping a prospect’s name on a canned message – something that savvy buyers can instantly sniff out and ignore. After all – compelling personalization proves that you’ve made the time to learn about the recipient’s world, making you immediately relevant and interesting in the sea of other inboxes. Begin with news stories, press releases any annual reports looking for possible triggers such as expanding operations, leadership changes, or new projects that your solution would help. From there, add insights relevant to the donor based on their activity on LinkedIn, what they’ve published, or their professional background, so that the connection comes across as organic and inquisitive above and beyond simply transactional. For industry-specific personalisation, consider mentioning industry-specific pain points or any legislative changes to their industry so your outreach feels timely and in context. Although in-depth customization takes more initial investment, you can use technology to scale these with tools such as Outreach, SalesLoft or HubSpot Sales Hub allowing dynamic content insertion based on the buyer profile, tracking activity to see signs of engagement and receiving AI recommendations for best messaging based on imported successful patterns. The data backs this investment up: personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates according to Experian, and Sales Hacker research reveals personalizing subject lines increases open rates by practically fifty percent and custom call-to-actions convert 202% higher than one-size-fits-all – helping make personalization more than a nicety, but rather a competitive must-have in today’s selling landscape.
Perfecting Your Follow-Up Timing and Cadence
The timing and separation of follow-ups also have a big effect on your success, and you can use this research to get crystal clear on what to do for your optimal cadence. They should start with a series of touchpoints that are closer and space out as the sequence advances — reach back out two or three days later, then four or five days later, and then after that every seven to 10 days. This increasing cadence respects the prospect’s time and keeps you top-of-mind without being overbearing your in the inbox too frequently. You should also consider industry-specific factors in figuring out how long your sequences need to be — enterprise B2B sales will require longer ones (12-15 touches over 60-90 days) than SMBs or B2C: in these cases, short, punchy sequences (6-8 touches over 14-21 days) are often more effective. The time-of-day to send is also important–Yesware data shows that Tuesday through Thursday mornings (8-10 am) and late afternoons (4-5 pm) consistently perform better than other sending times, but testing and analyzing your own audience’s habits should guide these decisions. The right amount of contact is vital When optimising cadence, it needs to walk a fine line between two hazards: Too much contact becomes annoying and costly for your brand Too little contact dissipates momentum, loses its relevance and risk competitors selling to the prospect during you’re the contact dampening period. The best strategy involves a mixture of both consistency and some level of persistent follow-up and ongoing automation to stick to the task and create the right opportunities, but still enable you to gracefully fold a losing hand if the recipient of your messages makes it obvious that they really don’t want you constantly harassing them, so that your targeting altogether demonstrates professionalism and positive persistence in contrast with distasteful desperation that makes you sound like a pusher who’s begging for their business and is clearly hopelessly insecure about your value and your ability to earn their trust and get the job done!
Multichannel Outreach: Email, Phone, LinkedIn & More
Multichannel outreach is significantly more effective than single-channel because it reaches prospects where they are most receptive and provides multiple touchpoints to connect. TOPO research reveals that sequences incorporating three or more channels yield 8x higher engagement rates than single-channel efforts, particularly when channels are strategically sequenced to complement each other rather than simply duplicating the same message across platforms. They each have pros and cons that you’ll need to consider as you plan your deployment message flow. Email is a leader when it comes to initial outreach and providing value, and performs best with customization and a focus on value, not features. Phone is the fastest way to create immediate human connection and provide real time objection handling, and will be most effective as a 2nd or 3rd touch after an introduction by email. LinkedIn engagement provides social proof and professional context in the form of connection requests, content engagement and in mails which feel less sales-y than traditional outreach. Video messages skyrocket engagement Personalized screen recordings or short intros-humanize the interaction and show effort beyond templated outreach. For example, a well-conducted multichannel sequence might start with an email sent from an actual sender to the recipient (One – personalize), a follow up invite to connect on LinkedIn two days later (Two – vary your message), make a call on day four, where you can reference something very specific about them from their profile on LinkedIn (Three – engage), and responsible members of your team being thoughtful when engaging with the prospect on LinkedIn, and creating a full, but not too overbearing, presence that significantly increases the chances of breaking through the noise and actually having a great, meaningful conversation, which can then be transformed into a sales opportunity.
Testing & Tuning Your Messaging
Testing, testing and more testing is what makes a mediocre series the number one series that always converts better. Start by creating clear baseline measurements for your existing sequences, which include standard open rates, reply rates, meetings booked, and finally conversion to opportunities and closes. With benchmarks set, roll out structured A/B testing first — starting with those subject lines which decide if your message is opened at all. Experiment with personalized vs. benefit-driven, question format vs. statement format, shorter length vs. longer length, but only ever test out one variable at a time if you want meaningful results. Take your testing to email body content, testing various value propositions, length of content, formatting styles, and placement and language of CTAs. To maximize your reach and influence, order tests in the funnel – working on open rates will affect all other metrics, optimizing your CTA language is of use to fewer prospects but will have a larger impact on the people who are engaged. Fortunately, for Icebergs not these old fashioned tech companies, modern sales engagement platforms like Outreach, SalesLoft and HubSpot make this process easier and easier with built-in testing, automatic tracking, and statistical analysis that will confirm winning variations with a high degree of confidence. The top teams? They cultivate a culture of ongoing improvement Testing is not a project, and it is certainly not one and done; instead, they incorporate regular reviews of performance data sharing of insights across team members, and the systematic use of winning approaches to create a compound effect in which even small improvements start to add up into meaningful competitive advantage.
Automating the Follow-Up Without Losing Authenticity
The era of automation technology has revolutionized the follow-up process for selling, so that it can be executed at an optimal level of rigor and veracity, unburdening salespeople to have more meaningful, higher level conversations and less data-entry work. Outreach, SalesLoft, HubSpot Sales Hub and Reply are some of the prominent platforms serving this space. io, which provide powerful sequene management, multichannel functionality, and in-depth analytics. These tools are very efficient but the issue of authenticity must also be considered when implementing these. The first thing you should do is personalize what’s in the most visible parts of the communication (things like subject line, opening paragraph and certain references are great to personalize while keeping the base of the message static). Build in time-based triggers that interrupt or adjust follow-up sequences based on prospect activity, for example, pausing outreach if they land on the pricing pages or downloading XYZ resources, and moving to a more cohesive follow-up based on their expressed interests. Show consideration towards the time zones by sending on a scheduled time when the prospect is doing business, and apply some neat finalizing conditions to get rid of the unresponsive prospects after a useful number of calls has been wasted not indefinitely(Please). The best automation practices strike the right balance of technology leverage with human judgment (leverage automation for consistent execution of a sequence of well-thought out touches, but with regular breaking points where sales people inspect progress and use relationship-based judgment to decide whether to continue, pause or further customize outreach to an individual lead, based on their situation and phase in the potential value range of that opportunity).
The Break-Up Email Done Right
The last message in your chain — the breakup email, if you will, is usually more effective than you’d imagine, with response rates for saying goodbye 2-3 times higher than earlier messages according to Yesware data. This works because change Management – change management theories argues that, when used together, the following 16 psychological principles lead to successful change, such as the psychological principle of loss aversion (people are motivated by the possibility of losing a rather than gaining something new) and pattern interruption (the tonal change within the content is different enough compared to the previous message). A good break-up demarche email includes several components: a direct subject line, close the loop or take a step back, a recognition that no response isn’t what you were looking for, a brief reiteration of what you thought was worthwhile, a clear sign that you’re going to stop reaching out and a simple, low-pressure call to action that makes it easy to respond if on the off chance they want to. You need to keep it professional and above all not sound sarcastic or hinting something in a cowardly way, thus saving face and leaving the possibilities open for the future in case something changes in the meantime. Timing is a big deal — send too soon and you leave play on the table for your sequence; send too late and you risk annoying the prospect with an overdraft of outreach. Testing reveals that optimal placement is usually the 8th – 1oth touch ( somewhere after youve made a genuine attempt at a connection but before you hit thge point of diminishing returns ( the sweet spot, if you will).
