The Most Effective Sales Cadence for Technology Companies in APAC


B2B tech selling is a hyper competitive market space with many players and sometimes, longer sales cycles.

However, a lot of companies have been finding success with proper ABM and the right sales cadence.

Today, we examine the most effective sales cadence for tech selling, and what marketers can do to improve their conversion rates.

The Three Key Ingredients of Sales Cadence

Personalization

Account-based marketing stresses on the importance of personalization, and it’s helpful in building good sales cadence.

By personalization, rapport can be built quicker and, as a result of that, a more personal connection.

However, personalization requires an initial bout of research and continuous tracking of the prospect’s behavior.

Spacing

The second most critical part of cadence is spacing.

This deals with how long you should send a follow up or a nurturing email.

What’s important is that a salesperson gets to follow up with a prospect without oversaturating their space or pushing for a hard sell.

The worst that could happen is for a prospect to get sick of the constant barrage of reminders and phone calls.

Following up every couple of days is alright, but if negative responses are being recorded all throughout, there should be an option to slow down the follow up rate.

On the flip side, is setting the spacing to wide and causing the prospect to lose interest in the offering.

Options

Sales cadence should always be planned while taking to account the buyer’s journey and mapping out possible objections or actions that they can take.

When sales can predict how a prospect can react and how they can reply to the reaction, it allows for more personalized campaigns that make for more efficient lead generation.

Sales should have different cadence flows depending on prospect reactions at every step of the main sales pipeline.

Related: Not Your Grandma’s Sales Cadence: Selling in 202x

First Touchpoint (Day 1)

There are several ways to plan out the first touchpoint.

  • An outreach email
  • A phone call
  • A LinkedIn InMail or connection request

Alternatively, you can use brand awareness as the first touchpoint so that you can take advantage of pre-suasion, which essentially means starting the move to persuade the prospect without directly reaching out to them.

The effect of this is that a prospect will already be familiar with what a seller has to offer and make it easier to get one foot through the door.

Second Touchpoint (Day 3)

Now if a prospect responds to the first touchpoint, that’s essentially good news and a sales rep can move onwards to more frequent touchpoints and reminders afterwards.

The goal is to get the prospect into a sales discovery as quick as possible, so they can schedule on the second touchpoint.

If the prospect fails to respond on the first touchpoint, this is a good time to do a follow up using the same medium. Sales teams can also opt to try and follow up using a different medium, e.g. if they started on email, they can now try LinkedIn.

This creates more “spread” in the campaign and allows for an omnipresent experience.

Third Touchpoint (Day 5)

If the first or second touch points were successful in getting the attention of the prospect, then a call should take place on the third touchpoint.

Sales teams can also add a voice message in the afternoon thanking the prospect for the call or send an email within the minutes of their meeting.

In the first week, sending a piece of valuable content along the prospect’s way is a great way to enrich the experience of the prospect. This should create value or help solve a challenge that they are facing.

If the campaign is still a failure, then it’s advised to widen the spacing a little bit more – say a four-day gap – and then hit up the prospect with another reminder or follow-up message.

However, if the sales rep feels that a reminder message is too pushy, they can forego this and go straight to sending out a piece of content.

Fourth Touchpoint (Day 7)

This can be another piece of content or an email.

For prospect’s that still haven’t responded at this point, it would make sense to try and call them up or send them an offer.

Fifth Touchpoint (Day 10)

This is the point where a sales rep has to continue the relationship with the prospect, they can like or engage with their posts on LinkedIn, make a phone call to touch base, or even send a quick voicemail.

Other Touchpoints

There are touchpoints that reach 10-15 different steps with different variations at each stage. This just serves as a general guide at the most effective way to plan out sales cadence, especially for technology companies.

Takeaways

For a lot of companies, this can be a lot of work, but it does pay off in the long run. By planning out an extensive sales cadence, B2B tech companies will be able to leverage their resources and create more effective campaigns. Alternatively, they can reach out to lead generation specialists with readymade sales cadence steps that they can personalize for their industry. In this way, there is no need for them to stray away from product development while an agency takes care of the sales pipeline.