B2B prospecting cadence: how to build one for your team

A prospecting cadence is the planned sequence of touches an SDR makes with an account that did not ask to be contacted, combining email, phone and LinkedIn on set days, until the SDR gets a reply or closes the attempt. The cadence that books meetings starts with the list: accounts that fit the ideal customer profile, contacts chosen by their role in the decision and a concrete reason to talk to them now. The number of touches and the interval between them come later, and they are the decisions that move the result the least. If you lead pre-sales, sales or marketing, your job is to guarantee the list, the message standard and the measurement, because an SDR cannot fix a bad list by sending more emails.

When the reply rate drops, leadership tends to ask me for a longer cadence, from eight to fourteen touches. In the CRM of those operations, I find a list mixing companies of every size, contacts chosen because their title says “director” and the same message for everyone, talking about the company that sells. The longer cadence multiplies that pattern and burns the email domain along the way.

What is a prospecting cadence?

The cadence organizes B2B outbound prospecting: the company chooses the accounts, takes the initiative and defines how many times and through which channels it will try. With a lead that came from the website, the contact asked for the conversation, and the response time belongs in the SLA between marketing, sales and post-sale. In outbound, nobody is waiting for your call, and each touch has to earn the attention that inbound receives ready-made. The prospecting sequence, the series of emails and tasks configured in the tool, is one piece of the cadence, which also includes the list, the roles to reach, the message by layer and the closing rule.

Why does the cadence start with the ICP and the right list?

The same cadence produces opposite results on two different lists. In accounts that resemble your best customers, the problem the message describes exists, and part of the contacts reply. On a list built by a size and title filter, the message reaches people who don’t have the problem, and no subject line tweak fixes that. The first decision of the cadence is the list, built from the ICP, the ideal customer profile that sales, marketing and CS approved together.

For each account on the list I ask for its ICP tier, which decides whether it gets the full cadence or a lighter version, and two or three contacts chosen by role, such as the person who feels the problem day to day and the person accountable for the area’s results. I also ask for the trigger, a recent fact such as an announced expansion, a new director or open positions in the area you serve, which gives the SDR a reason to reach out now. Batch size is a leadership decision: an SDR who receives five hundred accounts on Monday skips the research. I start with 20 to 40 new accounts per week per SDR and review after two cycles.

Which channels belong in a B2B prospecting cadence?

Email

Email carries the problem hypothesis in writing and lets the contact forward it to whoever decides. It goes out from the SDR’s own mailbox, at a volume one person would send, with domain authentication set up by IT, and follow-up emails stay in the same thread as the first one.

Phone and cold calling

The call speeds up the cadence, because in thirty seconds the SDR finds out whether the problem exists and who owns it. It is also the channel the team avoids most, and the manager sees this in the ratio of emails to calls logged in the CRM.

LinkedIn with a personal profile, no automation

The SDR uses their own profile, sends a connection request with a short note or no note and writes the message by hand after the request is accepted. I don’t recommend tools that automate invitations and messages, nor profile extraction: the LinkedIn User Agreement prohibits bots to add contacts and send messages and prohibits software that copies profiles, and the salesperson’s account is exposed to restriction.

WhatsApp, only with consent

The WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy, updated in 2026, conditions contact on two things: the person has given the business their number and has given permission to receive messages or calls from it. A mobile number found on a website or in a purchased database does not meet that rule. WhatsApp comes in when the contact opens that channel, for example to confirm the meeting they booked.

How many touches and what interval between them?

I work with ten to twelve touches over three business weeks, with half of them in the first week, while the trigger is fresh, and longer intervals at the end. Each touch in the table has a purpose, and the SDR who writes “just checking whether you saw my email” spends the touch without giving the contact a new reason to reply.

Business day	Channel	Purpose of the message
1	LinkedIn	Visit the profile and send a connection request, with no sales message
1	Email 1	Present the trigger and the problem hypothesis, with one question
2	Phone	Confirm whether the problem exists and who owns it; voicemail referring to the email
4	Email 2	Bring an industry data point or an example from a company with the same profile
5	Phone	Second attempt, at a different time
7	LinkedIn	Short message if the connection was accepted, tied to the company or to something the contact posted
8	Phone and email	Reach the second contact at the account, with the message for that role
10	Email 3	Offer useful material on the problem, without asking for a meeting
12	Phone	Third attempt with the first contact
15	Closing email	Ask whether the topic has dropped in priority, ask who owns it and agree on when to come back

How do you personalize the message by industry, role and trigger?

The personalization I teach works in layers. Leadership and marketing prepare the first two once a quarter, and the SDR handles the third account by account, in five minutes of research.

Layer	What changes in the message	Where the information comes from	Who prepares it
Industry	The problem in the industry’s vocabulary and an example of a similar customer	Won deals in the CRM, success stories, ICP	Marketing with sales leadership
Role	The consequence that role feels: predictability for the director, rework for the operations manager	Buying committees mapped in won and lost deals	Product marketing with account executives
Trigger	The reason to talk now, in the first sentence	News, open positions, website, the contact’s posts	SDR, account by account

How to write a short message centered on the customer’s problem

The prospecting email fits on a phone screen, under one hundred words. It opens with the trigger, describes the problem companies with that profile tend to have at that moment, asks one question and asks for little. The company presentation and customer logos wait until there is interest. An example, for a company that sells maintenance software to manufacturers:

Subject: maintenance at the new plant

[Name], I saw that [company] announced a second plant in [city] for next year. In packaging manufacturers your size, expansion tends to expose a problem the first plant solved with the team’s memory: maintenance work orders without equipment history, which end in unplanned downtime. How are you planning to organize this at the new plant? If it makes sense, a 20-minute conversation is enough. If someone else owns this topic, tell me who and I’ll reach out.

The question in the email already prepares the discovery meeting that comes next.

How do you close a prospecting cadence?

With a positive reply, the SDR qualifies and books the meeting; with a referral to someone else, the SDR opens a cadence for that person, mentioning who referred them. With no reply, the closing email says this is the last message in the series, and the account goes back to the queue after an agreed period, which I usually set at 90 days, with a new trigger and preferably a different contact. Anyone who asked not to be contacted leaves every cadence and marketing list, and the CRM blocks new sends.

The closing reason goes into a closed list in the CRM: “no reply”, “doesn’t have the problem”, “not a priority now”, “already has a vendor”, “wrong contact” and “asked not to be contacted”. With that list, leadership learns from the cadence. Many “doesn’t have the problem” accounts point to the list, many “not a priority” point to the trigger, and “wrong contact” points to role mapping.

LGPD in B2B outbound: what does leadership need to know?

The lines below describe the text of Brazil’s data protection law (LGPD) and the practice I recommend, and they are not a legal opinion; your company’s legal team or data protection officer defines the legal basis for each processing activity. In B2B prospecting, the company’s tax ID and size fall outside the law, while the contact’s name, title, corporate email and phone number are personal data. Law 13,709/2018 lists the legal bases for processing in art. 7, and prospecting without consent usually relies on the legitimate interest in item IX. Art. 10 accepts legitimate interest for “support and promotion of the controller’s activities”, limits processing to the “personal data strictly necessary” (§1) and requires transparency measures (§2). Art. 18, §2, gives the data subject the right to object to processing carried out without consent in case of non-compliance with the law.

In the SDR’s routine, the list keeps only the professional contact data the cadence uses, with the source of each contact recorded in the CRM. The first message identifies who is writing and why they reached out to that person, and any opt-out request applies to the whole team on the same day.

Which prospecting cadence metrics should you track?

Calls and emails sent are the manager’s day-to-day concern. Leadership tracks the conversion metrics in sequence, by SDR, ICP tier, role and channel.

Metric	How to calculate	What usually explains a drop	Who acts
Reply rate	Contacts who replied over contacts who completed the cadence	List outside the ICP, generic message, email landing in spam	SDR manager and marketing
Meetings booked	Meetings scheduled over accounts worked	Asking for a meeting before building interest, too few calls	SDR manager
Meetings held	Meetings that took place over meetings booked	Invitation without an agenda, no confirmation	SDR
Accepted opportunity	Meetings accepted by the account executive over meetings held	Different qualification criteria between SDR and executive	SDR and sales managers
Opt-out requests	Requests not to be contacted over contacts reached	Wrong contact, high frequency	SDR manager and legal

The accepted opportunity closes the loop, because it stops the SDR from hitting quota with meetings the executive discards. The acceptance criterion has to be written down and apply to both teams, in the format I describe in lead qualification.

A roadmap for leadership to build the team’s cadence

The roadmap takes about two weeks until the first cadence runs, and the review happens after two full cycles.

1. Write the list before the message. Define which ICP tiers enter the cadence, the roles to reach per account and the triggers, with marketing and sales in the same meeting.
2. Build the industry and role layers. Marketing writes the problem paragraphs and the executives review them based on won deals.
3. Design the cadence in the CRM. Set up touches, intervals and tasks, with closing reasons in a closed list and the source and block fields.
4. Agree on the acceptance criterion. SDR and sales managers write down what a meeting needs in order to become an opportunity.
5. Practice before calling. The team writes emails for real accounts and rehearses the call opening and the first objection in pairs, with the manager present.
6. Follow up every week. The manager listens to three calls per SDR, reads a sample of emails and brings one adjustment to the 1:1.
7. Review after two cycles. Compare the metrics by tier, role and channel and change one variable at a time, starting with the list.

Why do writing, calling and handling the first objection need training?

The CRM defines when the SDR makes each touch, and the quality of the touch depends on practice. Writing a hundred-word email the contact recognizes as their own requires turning account research into a problem hypothesis. The call opening asks the SDR to say who they are, give the reason in one sentence tied to the trigger and ask a question before the contact hangs up.

The first objections in prospecting repeat from market to market. “Send me an email” calls for an answer that accepts the request and asks what to send. “We already have a vendor” opens room to ask what the contact would change, and “that’s not me” is the chance to ask for the name of the person who owns the topic. The answers follow the logic I detail in objections in B2B sales, and the SDR only has them ready after saying them out loud a few dozen times. In an in-company training, I use the company’s own list and recordings: the team writes the messages for next week’s accounts and role-plays the objections of its market, and the manager leaves with a scorecard to listen to calls and hold the team in the CRM to what it practiced.

What changes for sales, marketing and post-sale?

The sales executive starts receiving meetings with context, including the trigger, the confirmed problem and who else takes part in the decision, and the forecast gains a traceable origin. Marketing uses the closing reasons to see the industries without the problem and the positive replies to see the triggers that work, and with that adjusts the list and rewrites the layers. In post-sale, active customers come off the list and the CRM blocks outreach to accounts under contract, because a customer who gets a cold email from their own vendor concludes the company doesn’t know who they are; former customers go through CS before entering a cadence.

Prospecting training: what HR and L&D need to assess

How to recognize the need

The signs show up in pre-sales numbers: SDRs hit their activity quota and miss their meeting quota, meetings held drop because of no-shows and executives reject a large share of meetings. High SDR turnover also counts, and sales onboarding without a written cadence repeats the problem with each hire.

Who takes part

The core group is the SDRs and the pre-sales manager, who runs the practice in the following weeks. Executives who prospect or receive the meetings join because they define the acceptance criterion, marketing takes part in the list and message work, and the operations or CRM person configures the cadence.

How to measure

Pull from the CRM the previous quarter’s baseline, per SDR, for the four conversion metrics, and compare after two or three cadence cycles. For behavior, a scorecard applied to recorded calls and to a sample of emails, before and after, shows whether the team changed the way it opens the conversation.

If your leadership wants prospecting that books meetings the executive accepts, the in-company training on consultative selling works on the cadence using your operation’s list, accounts and recordings, with SDRs, managers and executives in the same group. The company leaves with the consultative selling playbook, which includes the cadence, the messages by layer and the acceptance criterion, and with the needs discovery framework the SDR uses on the call and the executive deepens in the first meeting.

Frequently asked questions

What is a prospecting cadence?

It is the planned sequence of email, phone and LinkedIn touches an SDR makes with an account, on set days, until getting a reply or closing the attempt. It includes the account list, the roles to reach, the messages by layer and the closing rule.

How many touches should a B2B prospecting cadence have?

I start with ten to twelve touches over three business weeks, with more of them in the first week. The right number for your market comes from the metrics by touch and by channel after two cycles.

Can I use WhatsApp for outbound prospecting?

The WhatsApp Business policy requires that the person has given the business their number and agreed to receive messages from it. The channel comes in after the contact opens it, for example to confirm a booked meeting.

Does the LGPD prohibit B2B outbound prospecting?

The law allows processing personal data based on legitimate interest, as long as the company uses only the necessary data, is transparent and respects the data subject’s objection. Record the source of each contact, block anyone who opted out and leave the legal basis to your legal team or data protection officer.

How do you train an SDR team to prospect better?

Train with the real accounts on the list: the team writes next week’s messages and role-plays the call opening and the first objections, with the manager present. Afterwards, the manager listens to calls and reads emails every week using the same scorecard used in the classroom.

What is the most important prospecting cadence metric?

The opportunity accepted by the executive, because it shows whether the booked meeting had substance. Track the reply rate and meetings held alongside it to see where the cadence loses contacts.