Three winning sequences formulas you can implement today

How Many Times Should You Cold Email Someone?

It's the proverbial cold contact question: what is the perfect balance between personalization and volume? You want to accelerate the pace of contact, but without sacrificing that critical meaningful human connection. In other words, you don't want cold to equal frozen and impersonal. Even an email to someone you don’t know should be warmed up with personalized, relevant prospect information.

Of course, nobody has the time these days to go through a laborious analysis and then personalization process for every single prospect. The key is personalizing at scale. Technology is part of the puzzle, but the other piece is being smart about how you segment your sequences.

We separate those prospects into three tiers:

Tier 1: Sales Sequences for Marquee Accounts

Winning sales sequence formula: 20 emails, 12 calls, 10 LinkedIn Touches over 90 days

This tier applies to companies that:

• Use complementary products (Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook)
• Stay competitive with some of our most successful customers
• Have a Sales Development team
• Operate in target industries: software, IT & services, internet, marketing/advertising, financial services, staffing/recruiting
• Use a title like VP of Sales, Sales Development Manager, Sales Enablement, Sales Operations, Marketing Manager, etc.

That’s not to say you should restrict yourself to email, especially for these important, Tier 1 prospects. You will also strategically deploy touches on other channels throughout the month.

If your prospect responds positively through a different channel, be flexible enough to shift your attention there, whether it’s a social network, on LinkedIn, on the phone or even in the comments section of your blog. These are guidelines. Always defer to the prospect's preferred communication channel and preferred time to be contacted. Remember, it's not just about number of touches, but about making a meaningful human connection.

Tier 2: Call Heavy

Winning sales sequence formula: 10 emails, 6 calls, 5 LinkedIn Touches over 33 days

This tier applies to companies that:

• One of the Tier 1 criteria may be missing, but we’re still confident it’s a good account
• Might not have confirmed if they’re using Salesforce
• Might have full cycle reps (not SDR’s)
• Company is a great fit, but not sure if that person is the decision-maker

You may find that more of your prospects fall into Tier 2 and that’s okay. During this process, you could move the prospect to another tier. In terms of the day-by-day contacts, it is identical to the sequence at the end of this blog, except that it does not automatically trigger a new sequence on day 48. Instead, re-frame and devote your resources to the next prospect.

Tier 3: Automated Emails

Winning sales sequence formula: 6 emails, 1 call, back to marketing over 20 days

This tier applies to companies that:

• Company is in a vertical that you are exploring, but not established
• Prospect may be influencer, but not a decision-maker

In line with the exploratory nature of this category, you should limit the time you spend here but not to the point that you are neglecting future pipeline. The personalized content you send out is basically the same as in Tier 1 and Tier 2 persona-based messaging, with one big difference. The goal is to get a referral or learn more about the company to determine if it needs to be DQ’d or moved up to a higher priority.

Did you know? sales engagement platforms automatically trigger a phone call when a recipient views an email more than once. This allows you to engage with prospects that are showing interest while not spending too much time on prospects that may be outside of our target audience.

Your goal is to demonstrate that you understand the client’s business, you are eager to collaborate and that the relationship is important to you. There are so many contacts to be made. Personalizing at scale is the secret to a winning sequence.

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