The Right Cadence Creates a New Lead with a $1 Billion Healthcare System

One of PointClear’s business development representatives, working on behalf of a global software company, made 11 touches (calls, voicemails and emails) and his persistence paid off. He landed a huge lead for our client (with a $1 billion company).

The timing and number and type of touches makes up what is called a cadence, which must be carefully orchestrated. A typical B2B cadence includes five dials, three voicemails and three emails over a 10-day period (in this case it was nine days). This is, in fact, the cadence designed for the client in this example. 

Following is how we build a cadence for a client:

Execution Strategy

As an example, PointClear targets two contacts within each account location. These contacts are worked until completed or until the contact cycle is exhausted. We call that state of completion a disposition.

There are six dispositions that we assign a prospect: Lead, Pipeline, Nurture, No-response, Not Qualified and Bad. Obviously our objective is to deliver Leads, which are ready to be turned over to sales now. However, it is important to come to an informed conclusion about all targets to help us determine how marketing and sales resources are prioritized in future contact cycles.

Cadence

We start the cadence once a contact is validated, and we work it to arrive at a disposition. Here’s what a cadence might look like, depending on the market and offer:

Productivity

While the table above shows the cadence used to disposition a particular contact, the table below shows the production estimation of a PointClear business development associate. Our professionals complete an average of eight dispositions a day. It takes 80 dials a day to get there. Assuming a 5% lead rate, client can expect approximately eight Leads per month, not counting the longer-term opportunities (Pipeline and Nurture) that also result from the effort.

More About How Our Cadence Works

After navigating to ensure that we have the right contact(s), we deliver a story to prospects we don’t reach live using voicemail and email. The voicemails and emails build on one another. This approach takes discipline and persistence, but it works. Approximately 20% to 30% of leads generated are as the result of a call back or email reply. In this case the prospect called us back after Email #3. Let me explain.

Over a period of time we make multiple dials and deliver voicemails and emails to follow up on our calls. In the case of the client I referenced at the beginning of this post, Voicemail #3 says “I am not going to call you again” followed by Email #3 that says, “I am not going to send you another email.” That is a moment of truth for the prospect. If they are the right contact(s) at the right company, and the timing is right, then it’s likely that they will want to talk to us. If they want to talk to us now, they’re a Lead. If they want to talk to us in two weeks, or after their upcoming conference or vacation, or some other reason, they’re a Pipeline.

Alternatively, if the timing is off (we don’t reach the prospect(s) and they don’t reach back out to us), assuming it is a qualified company and contact(s), we then consider them a Nurture, rest them for six-to-eight weeks before re-segmenting the various list segments containing Nurture prospects (based on knowledge gained during the first touch cycle/cadence). Then we schedule execution of touch cycle #2. The voicemails are carefully crafted and the emails carefully written. Voicemails and emails are tested frequently and constantly tweaked.

Cadence Involves Analysis, Automation

Cadence is a rhythmic flow of activity—with an important analytical component. We continually test the timing, the number and the type of touches so that we can optimize the process. PointClear also automates management of the process to keep associates as productive as possible, and our clients well served.

As always, we invite your comments.