Last Updated on November 18, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta

Salesforce’s State of Sales report contained the following findings: (1) the number of Inside Sales Reps, around the world, increased by 7% since 2015; (2) Sales Reps are spending significantly more time in front of a screen; and (3) yet, they only spend 32% of their daily time selling – the rest of their time is spent on (A) looking up information; (B) planning which leads to contact next; or, (C) closing tasks by wading through multiple systems. Ouch!! On average, the report finds that Inside Sales Reps use six different tools to do their job thereby, negatively impacting their ability to close new businesses. This has to change!!

High Velocity Sales

Salesforce High Velocity Sales at the rescue! It is a set of tools that automatically prioritize leads, based on the probability of its conversion, using Einstein lead scoring. The High Velocity Sales includes tools such as Einstein Lead Scoring, Sales Cadences, Work Queues, Lightning Email and Sales Dialer (at an extra cost). Each of the above features makes the Inside Sales Reps more productive and efficient thereby, helping them to reach out to more leads in less amount of time.

Advantages of using High Velocity Sales, as an outreach tool, includes:

Speedy conversions by removing potential choke points or leakages.
Consistency set of specific and common procedures for reps to follow.
Monitoring and tracking the best activities for each lead.
Reviewing real-time rep progress on important KPIs.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of different prospecting initiatives.

Before going ahead, let us discuss the Sales Cadence.

What is Sales Cadence?

Acquiring leads is an important step in any marketing effort. Once Inside Sales Teams have a list of leads, they are ready to undertake outreach. But, wait! Let us take a step back and ponder following questions as a preamble to understanding Sales Cadence: (1) How often do you want your reps to reach out to leads? (2) How would you like them to reach out to lead – using call or email? (2) How do you want to capture call disposition? (3) etcetera.

Sales cadence is a timeline of sales activities and methods that sales reps follow to engage leads. The purpose of a cadence is to make it easy for the Inside Sales Rep to stay on schedule and ensure that prospects aren’t forgotten – i.e., nothing falls through the cracks. For example, if you offer a free consultation on your website and someone fills out a form, the cadence would include a list of things you do to schedule the first meeting.

A Sales Cadence typically includes three different touchpoints: Email, Social Media and, Calls/Voicemails. A cadence, for different sales funnel, may differ but, it should always include a combination of the mentioned three forms of communications.

A Sales Cadence looks something like this:

In other words, Sales Cadences differ from one type of sales process to the next, but the basic idea remains the same: consistent, sequential touches.

Why does one need a Sales Cadence?

An organization needs a robust Sales Cadence because, as per different surveys, the average prospect needs between six and thirteen touches before they are ready to become a customer. If you want to expand your business then, having effective outreach system in place for Inside Sales Reps is key. Similar to the way products are built, and services delivered, it would behoove Inside Sales Reps to follow consistent methods or processes. Having a cadence does two very important things:

Creates predictable revenue: Having a Sales Cadence will enable sales reps to pursue promising leads systematically.
Provides a stable framework for sales reps to follow: A Sales Cadence in place eliminates the temptation to embrace a free-for-all approach. When Inside Sales Rep follows a proven cadence, it (A) increases their probability of closing more deals; (B) improves their ability to earn higher commission; and, last but not least, (C) helps reps to gain, and maintain, momentum during slow seasons thereby, mitigating the impact of lost revenue.

How Does one Create and Activate a Promising Sales Cadence?

Thus far, we established that Salesforce High Velocity Sales starts with Sales Cadence. Furthermore, that Sales Cadence allows sales managers to build their own cadence (based on sales strategy) and add pre-built activity sequences to successfully guide Inside Sales Reps through the prospecting process.

To create and activate a Sales Cadence perform the following steps:

Navigate to Sales Cadences (Tab) | New and then fill the pop-up form, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once you’re done, click on the Save button.
The next step is to create a Sales Cadence. Follow the steps as shown in the video:
When you are finished adding steps, and are ready to start assigning prospects to the sales cadence, click Activate.

If you leave Sales Cadence Builder without activating, you can continue editing later by clicking Modify Steps on the Sales Cadence detail page.

Adding prospects to a Sales Cadence

You can add lead, contact, and person account records to a Sales Cadence. A prospect can be in only one sales cadence at a time. There are few ways to add prospects to a Sales Cadence as shown below:

Sales managers, or reps, can add prospects manually (one-by-one) to a Sales Cadence right from the record detail page, using the button Add to Sales Cadence from the action menu.
Sales managers, or reps, can add prospects manually (in bulk) to a Sales Cadence using list view.
System Administrators can automate adding prospects (leads, contacts, or person accounts) to Sales Cadence using Flow and Process Builder. So that, when the records are created, they will be automatically added to the Sales Cadence.

How Can Reps Use High Velocity Sales?

Once it is set up, Sales Cadence populates a rep’s Work Queue- a prioritized task list inside the Lightning Sales Console. As a result, reps exactly know what next steps to take, and with which customer(s), in order to build a strong pipeline. By leveraging Lightning Dialer (the native Salesforce click-to-call solution), sales reps can place a call with a single click. With High Velocity Sales, every next step is just a few simple clicks away, with no time wasted.

When Salesforce Administrators add Sales Cadence Steps component to lead, contact, and person account page layouts, sales reps, and managers, can see where their prospects are within the Sales Cadence. Sales reps can then act on the next sales steps right from the record detail page.

The Takeaway

A Sales Cadence helps your team navigate the often-choppy waters of revenue generation. It keeps your reps’ momentum more consistent and their performance more measurable. Remember these key points about High Velocity Sales: