Salesloft Multi-Touch Cadence Steps enable your sellers to efficiently engage buyers across multiple channels by seamlessly executing back-to-back sales activities based on channel, prospect, or account.
The Era of Account-Based sales
If you’ve ever sold to large enterprise organizations, then you know how excruciating it can be to break into new accounts. It can often feel like you must be a detective, a teacher, a psychologist, and a project manager all at once.
These accounts require a high-touch sales approach, where sellers must identify and engage multiple buyers from across the account, educate them on their solution, and help them believe in the value. The biggest challenge of all is often booking the first meeting.
Sellers must execute relevant and timely communications in the channels the buyer prefers: email, LinkedIn, phone call, chat, video, and text. And above all, they must be pleasantly persistent and personal.
Now, this enterprise-style sales motion doesn’t only apply to large, named accounts. A recent survey by Drift found that 54% of all B2B buyers are frustrated by irrelevant ads, emails, and content. A similar study by Salesforce found that 73% of customers expect brands to understand their needs and expectations.
These insights signal that an account-based sales motion is also important for mid-market and commercial accounts.
As the need for personalization increases, so too does the need for scalability.
A recent McKinsey survey found that 75% of B2B decision-makers believe the new model is as effective or more than before COVID-19. This means the proverbial budget belt has been permanently tightened for many revenue teams leaving digital sellers to handle more accounts than before.
So, what’s a seller to do?
Determine your Engagement Strategy
In this era of digital selling, sellers must rethink the way they engage buyers. If you’re in the midst of refreshing your sales plays for 2021, consider incorporating these three engagement strategies:
1. Multi-channel:
Sellers must be present in the inbox their prospect is reading and on the phone they are answering and anywhere else their prospect is.
In the “Sales Development Touch Report” from August 2017, TOPO shared that “successful touch patterns include bursts of touches, like the ‘triple touch’ (phone, email, and LinkedIn).’”
2. Multi-day:
Short sales plays don’t work. If your reps give up after two or three sales activities, then they’re missing opportunities. TOPO’s “Sales Development Touch Report” also found that “successful touch patterns require multiple touches over multiple days. The number of touches averages 16 over a two-to-four-week period, depending on the market.”
Our own analysis of high performing Cadences found the optimal number of days to engage with a prospect is between 24-26 days.
It takes time to connect with your prospects, so don’t give up too quickly.
3. Multi-buyer:
There is more budget oversight than ever. In their 2019 “Account Based Benchmark Report,” TOPO found that “top-performing account based organizations target 33% more contacts in each account.” The same report uncovered that even for accounts with less than $25k ACV, top performing companies engaged an average of 5 contacts per account.
Sellers must engage more than their traditional champion at an account. Non-traditional buyers from functions such as marketing and finance need to be included in the sales cycles to win a deal.
Now the decision to purchase is made by a committee, not just a small team.
Then Codify the Process
If you know Salesloft, you know Cadences: the toolbox in our platform that allows sellers to engage multiple prospects through a buying cycle, using multiple channels across multiple days.
The Salesloft Cadence engine helps you codify a multi-touch, multi-channel sales play and personalize it for various buyer personas, industries, and roles.
Multi-Touch Cadence Steps enable your reps to easily execute back-to-back sales activities on the same day. For example, sellers can complete a research step, a call step, and a LinkedIn step for the same prospect in one seamless sales motion. This helps your reps maintain context and momentum on the accounts they are working on.
Get Started with Multi-Touch Cadence Steps
1. Edit Existing Cadences
Multi-touch functionality can be added to existing Cadences by editing the step and checking the ‘Due Immediately’ check box.
2. Create New Multi-Touch Cadences
Multi-touch Cadences can be created just as you would create your Cadences before. When creating a Cadence step, select the ‘Due Immediately’ check box to enable the rep to execute that step directly after the previous step on the same day.
3. Incorporate Best Practices
Check-out the Salesloft Big Book of Cadences which contains best practice guidance for each stage of the customer lifecycle. This Cadence playbook contains:
- Frameworks backed by Data Science and proven by Salesloft customers
- Benchmarks and execution tips for each Cadence
- Step by step explanations for every action across all engagement channels