Except for AI and intent data, cadence management is one of the hottest topics in B2B marketing today. In this blog, the tenth in this series, I ‘ll cover why cadence management is necessary and why it works.

Two important notes:

1.       There is already plenty of coverage of what task (call, voicemail, email) gets done on which day. I won’t go into that here (but I am happy to talk to you about your situation if that would help you).

2.       Success with cadence management is dependent on nine prospect-experience transformation steps  before this one as you will see by clicking here.

For years we referred to cadence management as managing multi-touch, multi-media and multi-cycle campaigns to multiply results.

My firm developed this methodology more than 20-years ago. As an example, we know that a program targeting certain mid-level management decision-makers at mid-sized manufacturing companies requires six dials, three voicemails and three emails (we don’t count the dials and voicemails separately) for a total of nine touches delivered on certain days at certain times over a 10 business-day period optimizes results.

The alternative is over-investing and wasting touches which costs you money and can damage your reputation (I just wrote a LinkedIn post on the subject – I got “touched” 28 times in 19 days with terrible messaging by a young rep at a large, well-known ERP company – what a waste.)

I also ran a program a few years ago that required up to 45 touches in the first cycle of contact. On this program, on the 42nd touch, the CFO of the nation’s 4th largest utility asked us to call him back the following week. That lead closed for $1 billion five months later. Scouts honor. We knew, from testing and analysis, that that’s what it would take.

The point is that no two companies should use identical cadences. Once you find a cadence that  works for you, then test more touches (you will complete or disposition fewer companies or contacts but the lead rate might be positively impacted to offset fewer completions) or fewer touches (where you might find that the lead rate degradation is nominal and the number of leads increases due to being  able to get through more companies faster.  Again, no two companies will use the exact same cadence. And every company needs to test every element of the cadence (including voicemail scripts, emails and the number of touches) on an ongoing basis.

Sales Building Blocks

To understand why cadence management is necessary and why it works you must first refresh your memory (or learn from the beginning) a few sales basics that have never changed and never will.

First, there are conditions of need that dictate why anybody buys anything (for themselves or for their company). The three conditions of need are:

1.       Fear of loss in your current situation

2.       Perceived risk of deterioration of your current situation

3.       Opportunity to improve your current situation

Many salespeople don’t know what their prospects’ condition of need is. As a result, they sell the same way to all three conditions which is a waste of time and effort.

Let’s break it down:

1.       The good news is that fear of loss is the best condition of need to sell into. The bad news is that in a B2B sales situation with any complexity only about 3% – 7% of the marketplace is in this condition at any given point of time (that percentage goes up, say, if you are selling fast-food lunches on morning drive time radio). An example of this is years ago Digital (DEC) had a $2.5 billion cash cow business selling maintenance and training to their clients. AT&T recognized that decisions about these purchases had been relegated to purchasing or commodity acquisition people who mostly bought on price. By undercutting Digital, AT&T was taking more and more of Digital’s business every year. Among other things we created a program called MARS (Maximum Account Revenue Systems) that helped Digital retain more customers.

2.       Perceived risk of deterioration is the condition at about the same number of accounts as fear of loss (about 3% – 7%). The difference between the two is that with perceived risk the sky has not yet fallen (regards to “Chicken Little”). An example is “my competitors are talking about offering real-time GPS and automated alerts on deliveries (or for trade arrival times). If we don’t investigate this now, we are going to lose business to more agile competitors.”

3.       Opportunity to improve your current situation is what I call selling into the rainbow. Sure, you will find a few self-actualized (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) who just want to do the right thing but selling into this condition is going to be rare. An example is “I don’t care how much money it costs, if we cut one accident per year it will be worth it.” Noble, but acted on, unfortunately, not very often.

The condition of need ties back to cadence as you may find prospects moving from one condition to the next as you contact them over multiple cycles over time. When a prospect moves from the condition of perceived risk to fear of loss there will be more urgency to act and the fact that you have been on the radar screen over this time helps your cause.

A second sales basic is to remember the five steps in the sales process (which require multiple touches using multiple media):

I know I will get a bunch of objections that I am wrong in my thinking because the zeitgeist says that it is a buying process, not a sales process. I disagree. Somebody still must sell something for someone else to buy (note that I am talking about more complex sales, not commodity sales). Even if the buyer guides themselves through some of the following steps, good salespeople facilitate and nudge the buyer(s) along the way:

1.       Find a pain or need.

2.       Get agreement that there is a pain or need.

3.       Agree to do something about the pain or need.

4.       Agree to a generic solution.

5.       Agree to a customized, specific, solution (yours hopefully).

It is a subject for another day, but a major problem is that many salespeople find a pain or need (#1) and then move straight to selling their solution (#5). Steps 2 – 4 are crucial.

Multiple cycles of contact (an integral part of the cadence) helps you monitor a prospects movement through the stages. An objective of a call should be to assist the prospect in moving from one stage to the next, not from #1 to #5 in one step.

The third sales basic is recalling the reason people buy things for their company and why they buy for themselves. The buy for the company to:

• Save money

• Save time

• Improve a product or service

• Save lives

These are called ultimate benefits. These benefits are ultimately why anyone buys something for their company.

The key to using ultimate benefits, though, lies in linking differentiators to the most significant ultimate benefit so that the prospect sees why buying from your company will provide a benefit and why your company is different.

People also buy things on their own behalf (WIIFM - what’s in it for me):

• It's their job, they want to keep it

• Recognition

• Security

• Compensation

• Self-actualization

The personal reasons people buy are the most powerful motivators. When marketing and selling to a buyer, you should understand not only why they might buy on behalf of the company but also what might motivate them to buy for personal reasons.

Following a rigid cadence helps you as a sales executive check off where the prospect is regarding the reasons for a purchase at every step along the way. Until they have clearly stated the business and personal reason for making a purchase, they are not ready to close:   

The Right Target

• Fear of loss

• Agreed to do something about the pain

• Identified Ultimate Benefit

• Identified personal reason to buy

The Wrong Target

• Opportunity to improve

• Unknown stage

• Unknown Ultimate Benefit

• Unknown personal benefit

There is an old expression in sales: you can’t push rope. Selling into an unknown or wrong condition of need, not understanding the stage the buyer is in and not understanding the business and personal reasons why a buyer buys plague sales today.

Process, Persistence, Professionalism

Left to their own devices, inside sales teams will under- or over-touch prospects. That is why a process for the number of touches per contact and a defined cadence is so important. Under-touching contacts leads to moving through a list too quickly and ends up yielding a higher percentage of low-value dispositions.

Over-touching contacts leads to fewer total completions and will likely impact the lead rate. Lower lead-rate segments of lists may be eliminated based on how they were touched, not based on their real potential, which again is a waste of time and money.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken with a prospect when they’ve said that they had received a voicemail that sounded interesting, but they were too busy to call back right then. Their thinking, “I am sure they will call me back.” Guess what? They didn’t. That was because of a lack of process and persistence. Unlike what you sometimes read from the “cold calling is dead” contingent, prospects appreciate persistence, if it is professional.

How do you determine the right cadence for your offer(s)? Test, Test, Test.

Why does a cadence include multiple touch cycles? Because buyers are moving in and out of your sales window frequently. And, because only a small fraction of them are ready at any given point in time.

This is the tenth in a twelve-part series on the 12-Point Prospect-Experience Transformation. Next up: Multi-cycle Nurture Processes.