Sales cadence
A sales cadence (or sequence) is a structured, time-based series of outreach touches — emails, calls, LinkedIn actions, texts — designed to reach a prospect across multiple channels and attempts before disqualifying or moving on. It defines what to send, on which channel, and when.
How it works
Each step specifies a channel, a delay, and often a condition (e.g. skip if replied). Reps or automation execute the steps; replies route the prospect out of the cadence into a conversation.
Why it matters
Most replies come after several touches across channels, yet most reps stop too early on one channel. A defined cadence enforces consistent, multi-touch follow-up at scale.
What does a realistic two-week B2B cadence look like day by day?
One workable pattern for a mid-market buyer: day 1, a short email plus a LinkedIn profile view; day 3, a call attempt and a voicemail only if the first call was not answered; day 5, a follow-up email that adds one new piece of evidence; day 8, a LinkedIn connection request with no pitch; day 10, a second call; day 14, a short closing email that says you will stop. That is eight touches on three channels, and every one of them has a different job.
The spacing matters as much as the count. Clustering four touches in three days feels like pressure, while spreading two touches over three weeks lets the prospect forget the first. Most teams settle on a touch every two to three business days for the first two weeks. Sales cadence best practices compares longer enterprise patterns with short SMB ones.
How do you know which step in a cadence is doing the work?
Measure replies per step, not per cadence. If a 10-step cadence produces 40 replies from 1,000 prospects, the blended 4% hides the fact that step 1 may have produced 18 of them and step 7 produced none. Tag each reply with the step that preceded it, then look at the marginal replies each step adds against the unsubscribes and spam complaints it causes.
A step that adds almost no replies but a visible number of opt-outs is costing you reputation. Cut it or change its channel. A step with a high reply rate but mostly negative replies may be too aggressive. The sales metrics and KPIs guide lists which ratios are worth tracking, and a sales sequence builder that records the step on every reply makes this analysis possible without spreadsheets.
Should the cadence change for different segments?
Yes, mainly in channel mix and length. An owner of a 10-person agency may answer a phone call on the first try and dislike a sixth email. A procurement-led enterprise account may need a longer cadence with more research per touch and more stakeholders. Building two or three cadences for your main segments, rather than one cadence for everyone, is usually worth the setup time.
In Autocloz each cadence is a sequence in one builder, so a segment can get a call-heavy variant and another an email-first variant, with the same compliance gate and quiet hours applied to both. The multichannel sequence templates post has starting points you can copy.
What should happen when a cadence ends without a reply?
Three outcomes are reasonable, and choosing one on purpose is better than letting the contact sit. If the fit was strong, move them to a light nurture (a useful email every four to six weeks) and set a reminder to restart outreach in a quarter, ideally when something changes at their company. If the fit turned out weak, disqualify with a reason so the same contact is not re-enrolled next month by a different rep. If the contact bounced or changed jobs, update or remove the record. A closing email that says you will stop tends to draw more replies than a sixth follow-up, because it asks for nothing.
How Autocloz handles it
Autocloz's sequence builder runs cadences across all five channels with per-channel pacing, a compliance gate, and reply detection that federates every response into one Unibox.
Free tools for this
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FAQ
How many touches should a sales cadence have?
A common B2B cadence runs 8-12 touches over 2-4 weeks across 2-3 channels. The right number depends on segment and offer; track reply rate by step to tune it.
Related terms
Multichannel sequencing is automating a coordinated outreach cadence across more than one channel — for example email, then a LinkedIn touch, then a call, then a WhatsApp follow-up — from a single sequence, with per-channel timing and safety rules.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a B2B go-to-market strategy that treats individual high-value accounts as markets of one — coordinating marketing and sales to target a defined list of named accounts with personalized, multichannel outreach, rather than casting a wide net for individual leads.
Cold email is an unsolicited but permission-conscious, personalized outreach email sent to a prospect you have no prior relationship with, for a business purpose. Done well it is targeted and relevant (not bulk spam) and complies with laws like CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
A sales sequence is an automated, pre-defined series of outreach steps — emails, calls, LinkedIn touches, texts — that fire on a schedule to move a prospect from cold to a conversation. Each step specifies a channel, a delay and often a branching condition (like skip if the prospect already replied), so follow-up happens consistently without a rep remembering every touch.
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