How to Create your Most Successful Sales Sequence using Apollo

You have a lot to consider when it comes to building out a perfect sales sequence. 

It may feel daunting, but establishing a clear and comprehensive sales process for your marketing and sales teams has never been more important. 

According to a study from Vantage Point Performance, B2B companies that have a well-defined sales process experience 18% more revenue growth than companies that don’t have one. 

Above all, you need a sales sequence that gives you results. You want to close deals.

And Apollo helps you do just that. 

Let’s look at how you can use Apollo to create a successful sales sequence that accommodates the needs of your ideal buyers, guides your sales reps through important accounts, and takes your return on investment to new heights.

What is Sales Sequencing?

We should cover the basics.

Sales sequences are all about standardization. 

They are a scheduled series of sales touchpoints with prospects. They include email campaigns, phone calls, social messaging and/or posts, SMS messaging, and any other tasks for your salespeople to carry out over the course of the sales cycle.

It’s important to note that a good sales sequence isn’t vague and interpretive. Sales sequences should eliminate all guesswork. They should include specific and pre-defined intervals between steps and the salespeople using them should know exactly what to do and when to do it - all without missing a beat.

The best sales sequences have the perfect combination of automation and personalization and utilize the strengths of both to their advantage.

At Apollo, we understand the importance of a well-structured sales process. That’s why we provide you with an entire feature dedicated to helping you build out those sales sequences

Keep on reading to learn how to use it!

Apollo Sequences Overview

As we’ve learned, sequences are customized outreach campaigns, designed to personally communicate and engage with your target audiences at scale.

As you use Apollo to create and hone in on your ideal customer profiles, you can create Sequences to match each type of outbound and/or inbound prospect that you're targeting with automatic and manual messages, calls, and action items that speak directly to the value propositions they're looking for. 

Your Apollo Sequences ensure that your team delivers the ideal communications and completes the right task at the right time.

Steps to Create a Sequence

Steps are the building blocks of your new sequence in Apollo.

They are the individual messages and activities that you design for your team to successfully engage the prospects you’re targeting (this offers you a high level of personalization!). The sequences themselves are made up of as many steps as you choose with as much spacing between them as you want!

Here are the four types of steps:

1. Automatic Email: Use any of your Apollo email templates and/or create new ones to craft personalized, targeted messaging to be delivered automatically based on the parameters you set

2. Manual Email: A clearly defined and scheduled task to edit and deliver follow-up emails that you want fully customized to individual prospects, even if most the content is pre-defined in a template

3. Phone Call: Add notes, tips, scripts, and any other helpful collateral within a clear reminder to call (use our Dialer to have your team call directly from their dashboard and automatically capture call recordings and additional insights)

 4. Action Item: A completely customizable task to perform any number of necessary internal communications or processes along the way to a successful sale

Creating a Sequence in Apollo

Now, we’ll walk through how to use these steps to build a winning sequence, from start to finish.

First, navigate to Campaigns > Sequences.  You’ll have the option to start a new one from scratch or use one of our many sequence templates.

For the sake of this demo, let’s start a new sequence together!

Name and schedule your new sequence on the next pop-up window.

Once you click + Create, you’ll find your sequence dashboard. Click + Add Step. 

This is where you’ll choose one of four-step types (Pst! The ones that we went over above!), as well as the time and wait time you desire between each step, the priority level, and any notes you want to give your SDRs.

It’ll look something like this:

When you’re done click Add, and you’ll be taken back to your new and improved Sequence Dashboard. Repeat the process and add as many steps as you desire to create your most personalized and detailed sales sequence yet.

It’s as simple as that!

You can now add contacts to your sequence using the contacts you already have saved, the Apollo LinkedIn Extension, your CRM, and more.

Create as many of these sequences as you want and craft personalized sales experiences for each one of your ideal buyer profiles.

Looking at the navigation bar at the top, you can see that salespeople can manage contacts, emails, and phone calls, see the activity log, AND get reports, all within the same dashboard.

Sales and marketing teams are now given a system that works for them and actually saves them time and energy while maximizing conversion rates.

Tips and Tricks for a Great Sales Sequence

Before we send you off to champion the sales world, here are some additional tips to consider when creating sales sequences in Apollo:

• Don’t mention all of your value in the first email! Use the sequencing format to expose what values you offer and what value is most important to each separate persona. Mention this specific value in the first touchpoint, and use the rest of the values to support your proposal to schedule more touch points.
• Use Case Studies in your sequence! Construct separate emails (using separate sequence steps) for every metric in your case study. This gives you the perfect format to create the need and advertise your solution.
• Prove your expertise. Communicate what you know about specific technologies, markets, titles, verticals, etc, and make clear what is unique about your product and level of service.
• Don’t make them rely solely on your word. Share content! Give them evidence, links, documents, and provide them with two to three clear and concise reasons why they should check them out. 
• Personalize your subject line. Personalized email subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened. Take advantage of the personalization opportunities Apollo’s Sequences offers you and leverage that into your subject line.

For more sequencing inspiration, you can check out our team’s sales email content best practices.

If you’ve made it this far and still don’t have an Apollo account, what are you waiting for? Try us for free today and start building the sales sequence of your dreams.