The trick with the multichannel approach is to understand how different channels work, but also have them work as a team.
Today you'll discover a sales sequence that consists of cold emails and cold calls. Together, they work as a dynamic sales duo and we all know how powerful the right duo can be...
Remember, you don't need to choose between cold calling and cold emailing. You can use both.
For this article to accomplish its goal, Ilya and I decided to walk you through every step of the process.
We'll give you actual examples so you can see how it works in real life.
Let's get rolling and see if we can do this.
Cold emailing and calling every lead on the planet is a recipe for failure. Simply, it will do you no good.
Even though it sounds like a tactic that can be executed in a few hours, you should never jeopardize your brand like this. It's a corrupt outreach model that won't work.
Instead, you have to figure out who's your ideal client and what are their pain points. Here are a few questions you'll need to answer.
👉 Here is how to find your ideal client with a template
You can also think about localizing. You’re going to have to figure out a good localization strategy to find out the preferences of your ideal clients based on region, culture, and language. Finding your ideal client, whoever they are, can be made easier by finding out where they are. Don’t just expect them to know your brand on the outset.
Two pieces of info we can't email or call without. As the matter of fact, we wrote two huge guides on how to find contact information about prospects:
Traditionally, finding phone numbers would be a time-consuming process, and often, phone numbers would turn out to be incorrect.
Not anymore:
With lemlist’s Find phone number feature, you can find accurate phone numbers at a low price.
No need for third-party tools; you can find the phone numbers straight from within lemlist.
lemlist uses ContactOut’s phone number database to ensure the accuracy of the phone numbers.
Finding phone numbers in lemlist is a breeze.
You can search for them:
If numbers are found, they’ll appear in your leads’ phone number column.
Alternatively, you can search for a phone number directly from any LinkedIn profile:
Pricing
Each lemlist plan comes with several free phone numbers. If you need more, they only cost $0.20 per number and you only pay on successfully finding a number. Even with lemlist’s freemium version, you get 25 phone numbers for free.
A certain percentage of the contact details you find will inevitably be invalid or old.
The situation with phones and emails is uniquely different here. When dialing a wrong number, your loss is measured in minutes wasted. However, when emailing an invalid address, the stakes are doubled as it's both your time and email reputation that's at stake.
Meaning, if you send messages to invalid emails, you increase your chances to be trapped by SPAM triggers, damage your deliverability, and, one day, ruin your reputation as a result.
How to stop that from happening? Email and phone verification.
Validate phone numbers
There are many tools that get the job done. The one that caught our eye is Phone Validator from Textmagic. All you do is input the number and push the button.
Validate email addresses
We've written a lot about email verification tools. We've even made an experiment with the top 7 email verifiers and found a winner!
Tons of tools to pick from in these two departments too. When you start shopping, we'd recommend keeping the following factor in the back of your brain.
Is it possible to integrate them in a painless way?
If the answer is yes, I guess you won't break ya neck switching between the two of them... as Busta Rhymes would say. (if you need a song when reading this article, go old-school).
It's time for selection. Here's ours...
Connecting the two is a piece of cake.
Go to the Settings -> Integrations -> and connect your Aircall.io account.
That's it. Now we can get rolling on adding calls to your outbound sales sequence.
Step #1: Add a new step to your sequence - "Phone Call":
Step #2: Once it's time to call the prospect, go to your Tasks section. Find the prospect in question and press the dial button.
Step #3: Based on the outcome of your call, assign the right status to your lead to keep track of things.
If you need a video to walk you through, we got you.
Here you go...
We have our target audience, their contact details are safely stored in a CSV file, everything was verified, and our tools are properly integrated.
It's time to connect the dots and start the magic!
You're about to see a cold email sequence that Simon, our sales rep, uses to bring new users to lemlist. Here are his results...
When it comes to the step in his sequence, it's made out of two cold emails, split by a cold call in the middle.
Keep in mind that we've translated it from French, so some things might sound better in Simon's native language.
At the first glance, this is a pretty straightforward cold email template. But what's the secret behind the 40% reply rate?
If you manage to connect with your prospect on LinkedIn first or engage on each other's content, the chances of getting a reply increase drastically.
In this example, Simon segmented prospects who didn't respond and leveraged this sentence as a light intro.
He didn't send all 220 connection requests or emails on the same day though. It was spread across a week. Because sending fewer emails gives you more time to do research properly and ramp up your reply rate.
Although it's a pretty straightforward email, the second paragraph includes something that's unique to the prospect. That way, Simon demonstrates he invested time in getting to know the prospect before landing in their inbox.
Then, his call-to-action feels like a cool invitation to talk sales and their plans, rather than Simon asking for a demo meeting where he would talk about lemlist.
Once a prospect replies and shares information around their objectives, Simon can personalize his approach further.
A beautiful move Simon did here was to go to Welcome To The Jungle job board and understand what prospects are currently expanding their sales teams and what were the objectives they listed.
Knowing that, it didn't matter if Simon was exchanging emails or talking on the phone. He already had the framework through which he can navigate the conversation.
The second step is to call a prospect if they don't reply to the first email.
And thanks to the smooth lemlist<>Aircall.io integration, Simon cold calls the prospects in just a few clicks.
Everything is organized in one clean interface, along with how many times did this specific person opened an email or what links did they click on.
Had a cool chat with Simon around his cold calling game and he shared some fire advice I'm gonna pass to you.
"I totally understand you're busy, all I need is 24 seconds to explain my point. Do you have 24 seconds?"
Any useful info Simon digs up on this call (e.g. overview of their process), he inputs it fast in Notes section in lemlist.
This intel is later used to prepare Zoom meetings and to improve sales operations overall.
Aircall also has a solid article around 6 best practices for cold calling.
The final step is the follow-up email in case Simon didn't reach the person by cold calling. It gets delivered if a prospect didn't reply on LinkedIn, first email, or cold call. Here's the template.
As you can see, it's a reminder with a twist that references the previous step.
The goal is to squeeze in additional replies from people who were just too busy and forgot to reply before, among other reasons.
The email itself starts off with an {{icebreaker}} tag.
What the hell is that?
It's a unique sentence that's customized for every lead individually. What happens is, in your CSV file, you add a column called icebreaker. For every prospect, you write a unique intro.
I call this Tiramisu strategy. With just a little bit of research, you'll be amazed by how many details you can pick that you can later leverage here.
Finally, Simon's twist comes in the form of a personalized video thumbnail. It consists of multiple things:
If you need a quick tutorial on how to create this, we got you.
It's just an irresistible offer to click + a cool way for Simon to introduce himself and deliver the ask in the video form.
Once prospects click, they get taken to the twist number two - dynamic landing page.
Personalization doesn't stop, because now the prospect lands on a custom page that's tailored for him. No other person will see a page like this.
Here's an example...
This page consists of:
This is one of the finest ways to book meetings and be different in a very noisy world of cold email outreach.
Besides Simon being the man, this is a great outbound sales sequence because it shows you how multichannel approach can make a big difference on your conversion rate.
51% of replies brought in hot leads. Meaning, 51 people were highly interested in what Simon had to show to them.
Also, if you "multichannel" like this, all the steps in your sales cadence are working together.
In Simon's case, LinkedIn helps segment users into buckets: 1) Relationships established and 2) No connection yet. This helps you write personalized cold call emails addressing each segment accordingly.
The research stage reveals sales ambitions of different prospects which helps Simon prepare every step.
Overview of their process he gets on a cold call helps identify the focus point for the Zoom meeting.
Connecting the dots is what this is about. And the sooner you start, the more data you'll have to optimize your process. It won't be perfect from day one, but it will become unstoppable as you go.
Release the Kraken!
Much love,
G2 Rating | Price | Best for | Standout feature | Con | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.9 star star star star star | $30/mo $75/mo $2,999/mo | Large, distributed sales teams | AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs | Lack of tracking system | |
4.6 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Sales operations and finance teams | Powerful configurability | Limited training resources and complex to navigate | |
4.4 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Mid-market and enterprise businesses | Comprehensive incentive management | Potentially high cost and steep learning curve | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | $15/user/mo $40/user/mo Enterprise: custom price | Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes | Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes | Steep learning curve | |
4.6 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Collaborative teams | Connected planning | Complexity and steep learning curve | |
4.6 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies with complex sales structures | Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy | Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts | Simplicity and ease of use | Lack of features like redirection | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | $30/user/mo $35/user/mo Custom: upon request | Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software | Ease of use and adoption | Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs | |
4.8 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights | A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility | Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow | |
4.9 star star star star star | $30/user/mo $50/user/mo | Smaller sales teams | Powerful automation | Lesser user base and average user interface | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies with scalable needs | Automated Commission Calculations | Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app |
PRM Tool | Rating | Feature | Pro | Con | Mobile App | Integrations | Free Plan | Pricing |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.65 star star star star star-half | Org-wide alignment | User-friendly layout and database | Suboptimal as a personal CRM | square-check | Lack of tracking system | square-check | Team: $20/month Business: $45/month | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Social Media Integration | Easy contact data collection | No marketing/sales features | square-check | Lack of tracking system | square-xmark 7-day trial | $12/month | |
4.75 star star star star star-half | Block Functions | High customization capability | Not a dedicated CRM | square-check | Limited | square-check | Plus: €7.50/month Business: €14/month | |
N/A | Open-source | Open-source flexibility | Requires extensive manual input | square-xmark | Limited | square-check Self-hosted | $9/month or $90/year | |
3.1 star star star | Simple iOS app | Ideal for non-tech-savvy users | iPhone only | square-check iOS only | Limited | square-xmark 1-month trial | $1.49/month or $14.99/month | |
3.6 star star star star-half | Smart Contact Management | Feature-rich and flexible | Reported bugs | square-check | Rich | square-xmark 7-day trial | Premium: $13.99/month Teams: $17.99/month | |
4.4 star star star star star-half | Customizable Interface | Customizable for teamwork | Pricey for personal use | square-check | Rich | square-xmark | Standard: $24/member Premium: $39/member | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Integrated Calling | Integrated Calling | Too sales-oriented & pricey | square-check | Rich | square-xmark 14-day trial | Startup: $59/user/month Professional: $329/user/month | |
4.8 star star star star star | Business Card Scanning | Business Card Scanning | Mobile only | square-check | Limited | square-check | $9.99/month | |
4.45 star star star star star-half | 160+ app integrations | Comprehensive integrations | No free app version | square-check | Rich | square-xmark 14-day trial | $29.90/month or $24.90/month (billed annually) |
Capterra Rating | Free Trial | Free Plan | Starting Price (excluding the free plan) | Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan) | Best for | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.5 star star star star star-half | square-check 14-day | square-check | €15/month/seat billed annually | €792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat | Versatility and free plan | |
4.2 star star star star | square-check 30-day | square-xmark But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations | €25/user/month | €500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI) | Best overall operational CRM | |
4.3 star star star star star-half | square-xmark | square-check Limited to 3 users | Comprehensive incentive management | €52/user/month billed annually | Small-medium businesses and automation | |
4.5 star star star star star-half | square-check 14-day | square-xmark | €14/seat/month billed annually | €99/seat/month billed annually | Sales teams and ease of use | |
4.1 star star star star | square-xmark | square-check Limited 10 users | $9.99/user/month billed annually | $64.99/user/month billed annually | Free plan for very small teams up to 10 |
CRM goal | Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months. | ||||
SMART Breakdown | 1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation). | 2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking. | 3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements. | 4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives. | 5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date. |
Actions | Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation. | Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior. | Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads. | Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up. | Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization. |
Outcomes | Increased sales and revenue | Improved marketing automation ROI | Marketing and sales alignment | Data-driven marketing optimization |