Outbound Sales Cadence: A 15-Day Multichannel Template

An outbound sales cadence is the schedule of touches your team uses to reach a new prospect: which channel, on which day, with what message, and when to stop. For most B2B teams, a good starting cadence is 8 to 12 touches over about 15 business days, mixing email, phone calls and LinkedIn. Below is a full 15-day template you can copy, plus the rules that decide whether it books meetings or just creates activity.

What is an outbound sales cadence?

A cadence (also called a sequence) turns "follow up with this lead" into a plan someone can run every day without guessing. It answers four questions for each prospect:

• Channel: email, phone, LinkedIn, or occasionally video or SMS.
• Timing: which business day each touch happens.
• Message: what each touch says and why it is different from the last one.
• Exit: what ends the cadence, whether that is a reply, a booked meeting, an opt-out or the final step.

Email-only sequences are easy to automate but easy to ignore. Phone-only outreach reaches fewer people per hour. A multichannel cadence uses each channel for what it does well: email carries detail, the phone gets a real conversation, and LinkedIn puts a face to the name.

How many touches should a sales cadence have?

There is no magic number, but there is a useful range. Too few touches and you give up on prospects who were simply busy. Too many and you burn your list and your sending domains.

Smartlead's benchmark of cold email sequences found reply rates fall with every extra email, and the median sequence in its data was three emails long. That supports a simple rule: cap email at three or four steps and add reach through other channels instead of more email.

Prospect type	Touches	Length	Channel mix
Broad list, low-priced offer	5–7	10 business days	Mostly email, one or two LinkedIn touches
Standard B2B target account	8–12	15 business days	3–4 emails, 3–4 calls, 2–3 LinkedIn
High-value account with a trigger	12–15	20 business days	Heavier on calls and personalised LinkedIn
Inbound lead or demo request	6–8	5–7 business days	Calls first, then email and SMS if allowed

Match effort to value. A prospect who could become your largest customer deserves more research and more touches than one pulled from a broad list.

The 15-day multichannel cadence template

This is a starting template for a standard B2B target account. Days are business days in the prospect's time zone.

Day	Channel	Touch	Goal
1	LinkedIn	View profile, follow the company	Light, warm signal before outreach
1	Email	Email 1: specific observation and one question	Start the conversation
2	LinkedIn	Connection request, no pitch	Become a familiar name
3	Phone	Call 1, voicemail that points to the email	First live conversation attempt
5	Email	Email 2: new angle on the same problem	A second, standalone reason to reply
6	Phone	Call 2, different time of day	Catch them at a better moment
7	LinkedIn	Short message if connected, or comment on a recent post	Add a human touch
9	Email	Email 3: proof, such as an example or result	Show it works for companies like theirs
10	Phone	Call 3, no voicemail	Another live attempt
12	Phone	Call 4, voicemail referencing the proof	Final call attempt
15	Email	Email 4: low-pressure close	Get a yes, a no or a referral

That is 11 touches across three channels with only four emails, which keeps your daily send volume per inbox in a safe range. Remember that every prospect in an active cadence adds to the daily send volume of the inbox sending to them.

What to say at each step

• Email 1: one sentence about something specific to them (a hire, a launch, a job post), one sentence on the problem you solve, and one easy question. Under 100 words. Our guide on how to write a cold email breaks this structure down with examples.
• Email 2: do not write "just following up." Make it readable on its own with a different angle, such as cost, speed or risk.
• Email 3: a short proof point. Name the type of company, the problem and what changed. Only use results you can stand behind.
• Email 4: ask whether the topic is a priority this quarter, or who owns it. A clear "no" is useful too.

For ready-to-use wording, see our cold email follow-up templates for the email steps and the B2B cold call script for the calls and voicemails. The LinkedIn steps follow the same approach as our guide on how to prospect on LinkedIn: connect first, then add value before you ask for anything.

Sales cadence examples for other situations

The template above is not the only shape a cadence can take. Three variations worth keeping:

Inbound lead cadence (5 days)

Inbound leads raised their hand, so speed matters more than spacing. Call within minutes of the form fill, send an email with a booking link straight after, call again later the same day, then once a day for the next three days with a final email on day 5.

Event or trigger cadence (10 days)

Use this when something just changed at the account: funding, a new leader or a relevant job post. Lead with the trigger in email 1, connect on LinkedIn the same day, and call on day 2 while the news is fresh. Shorter windows work because the reason to talk is timely.

Re-engagement cadence (3 touches over 3 weeks)

For prospects who went quiet after a meeting or said "not now" last quarter. One email with something new, one call a week later, and one final email. Do not restart the full cadence.

Rules that keep your cadence effective and compliant

• Stop on any reply. A reply, a booked meeting, an out-of-office with a new contact or an opt-out ends the cadence for that person. Your tool should do this automatically.
• Honour opt-outs fast. In the US, the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide requires a working way to opt out and a valid postal address in commercial email. Check the rules in each country you prospect into.
• Protect your domains. Follow Google's email sender guidelines: authenticate your domain, keep spam complaints low and make unsubscribing easy.
• Spread touches across the day. Calls at different times reach different people; batching every email at 9am hurts deliverability.
• One prospect, one owner. If two reps run cadences into the same account without knowing it, the prospect notices.

How to tell if your sales cadence is working

Activity metrics such as emails sent and dials made show effort, not results. Track these instead, per 100 prospects who finish the cadence:

1. Contact rate: how many you actually reached, by any channel.
2. Positive reply rate: how many showed interest, not total replies.
3. Meetings booked: the number your cadence exists to produce.
4. Meetings held: booked meetings that actually happened.
5. Step attribution: which touch came right before each positive reply.

If most positive replies come from calls, add a call and drop an email. If nothing ever happens after day 10, shorten the cadence. Change one variable at a time and give each version a few hundred prospects before you judge it.

Common sales cadence mistakes

• Every touch says the same thing. If email 3 could be swapped with email 1, it is not adding anything.
• Too much automation. LinkedIn messages and calls lose their value when they read like a template.
• No research before day 1. One relevant detail in the first email does more than three extra follow-ups.
• Running the cadence in bursts. A cadence only works when someone works it every day, at the scheduled step, for every prospect.
• Measuring opens. Privacy features make open tracking unreliable. Measure replies and meetings.

Who should run your outbound cadence?

A cadence is a daily routine. Every morning someone has to work the calls due today, send the scheduled emails, reply to responses, update the CRM and add fresh prospects so the pipeline does not dry up. When the founder or an account executive does this between other work, steps get skipped and the cadence quietly stops working.

A dedicated remote SDR through Zenstack runs your cadence full-time, in your hours, inside your CRM and sequencing tool, with your messaging. If you also want the system behind it automated, such as enrichment, routing and auto-stop rules, a GTM engineer can build that layer so your SDR spends the day talking to prospects.

Rates start at $12 an hour, about $1,920 a month for a full-time hire, and we handle recruiting, contracts and payroll. See pricing or book a call to talk through the cadence you want running.