How To Build a Sales Workflow That Lands Deals Every Time

What is a Sales Workflow?

A sales workflow enables you to systematically target individuals and organizations to generate leads and close deals.

It is interchangeable with outreach workflow, and just like its counterpart, it is essential in B2B sales and outreach because it allows you to target the right people with the right message at the perfect time.

So let’s start by clarifying what a sales workflow isn’t: 

• Quantity over quality
  • The more outreach messages you send, the better your chances of success — this is simply not true. Focusing solely on quantity without considering quality can be counterproductive. Outreach is a highly-personalized and targeted project to embark on. Sending one generic message to hundreds of people won’t get you anywhere.

• Automation over personalization
  • Just because you automate communication doesn’t mean it can’t still be personalized. We’re all about embracing automation to improve processes and productivity.

• Same approach for everyone 
  • You can never meet all your prospects’ needs with the same standardized approach and messaging. Tailoring your messages and overall approach to their specific pain points significantly improves your chances of success.

• Immediate results
  • This is the case for anything but especially outreach; you can’t expect immediate results. It’s possible to witness quick wins such as a lead replying after your first LinkedIn message. however, building relationships and closing deals take time. A lead answer is only the first step, you haven’t made the sale yet.

Here’s a sample workflow with two different scenarios that we, at LaunchMappers, follow to enable our clients to succeed in their sales process:

We have previously leveraged this workflow for various clients because it highlights how a sales workflow not only can, but needs to be part of your marketing strategy.

We strategically focus on specific sales leads (SQLs), nurturing them gradually (MQLs) until we successfully close the deals.

Why do you need a sales workflow?

A sales workflow allows you to increase efficiency by automating core processes, from lead generation to closing deals.

At Launch Mappers, we’ve supported our clients in meeting the following objectives:

Generate more leads

One of the primary benefits of having a well-defined workflow is that it’s easier to identify and target leads.

By having a framework in place, you can use sales segmentation to narrow down your prospects and create highly targeted campaigns that will help you generate more qualified leads.

Improve follow-ups

A sales workflow allows you to set up automated follow-up sequences for all of your campaigns.

If you’re in sales, marketing, or even growth, you know the importance of follow-up emails.

Increase sales

Sales workflows also help you close more deals through proper lead nurturing and guiding them through the sales funnel.

Through personalized communication, you can address their pain points, highlight how your offering solves their pain points, overcome objections, provide additional information, and eventually build trust in order to close the deal.

Having a well-defined workflow also allows you to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and refine them as needed.

This way, you can optimize your sales process and better align it with your goals.

How to create a Sales Workflow? Essential steps for Growth:

Now that you know why a sales workflow is important,’s look at the key steps you should take when creating one.

Pre-launch

Ahead of launching anything, there are a few projects that you should take your time executing to ensure the best results. 

Define your sales goals

Start by setting them clearly:

What do you want to achieve through this project? Do you want to increase revenue by acquiring new customers, for example? Or are you looking to enter an entirely new market?

Regardless, you should start small and achievable but stay ambitious.

To help you draft initial goals, you can follow the SMART framework: 

• Specific: Pinpoint what you what to accomplish 
• Measurable: Set measurable goals 
• Achievable: Break down large goals into smaller, achievable ones.
• Relevant: Make sure your goals align with your long-term business objectives.
• Timely: Establish a timeline and deadline for your goal

Ahead of researching and launching campaigns, it’s essential to collaborate with other teams in your company.

Indeed, your marketing and sales teams provide many insights to help you build a successful workflow. Regular communication and feedback-sharing will help you continuously refine and optimize your target audience definition for better outcomes.

So ensure everyone’s aligned on messaging and offer across all customers’ touchpoints.

Map your sales approach 

Map out your approach to meet your goals, considering product nature, industry, and target audience. You know your audience better than we do:

• What will trigger their interest when discovering your solution?
• What approach would you like to first experiment with?
• Booking a demo directly or inviting them to a webinar? 

Once you’ve defined your approach, it’s time to choose the most suitable platforms.

• Do you know how your ideal customers like to be contacted?
• Is it through LinkedIn messages or emails, or both? For instance, if you’re in the B2B sector, 70-80% of your leads come from LinkedIn alone, so be active with quality content. 

There are many ways to incorporate both platforms into your workflow; you could start with LinkedIn and use emails as a fallback if you cannot get through to your audience. 

Here’s an example of how you could bring both platforms together beautifully on LaGrowthMachine, a powerful multi-channel prospecting tool that we’ve fully integrated as part of our tech stack for outreach projects for our clients. 

In this case, we’ve created two options to get to our lead:

1. We start with LinkedIn.
2. If this person isn’t accepting our LinkedIn request to connect, and we’ve found their work email address thanks to LGM’s lead enrichment features, we will communicate through email.
3. If this person accepts our invitation, the campaign will continue on LinkedIn. 

Create hyper-personalized outreach sequences

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In this case, we ensure that we can send them our introduction message. We can’t send them anything if they don’t accept our invitation. We always use a connection request message on a LinkedIn path because we’re already getting the lead to take action.

By adopting this multi-channel approach between LinkedIn and Email, we’ve been able to have a 33.8% reply for now (as this campaign is still running).

We’ve received answers through both channels, and we’ve been able to qualify our leads accordingly on LaGrowthMachine.

Gather your target audience

Let’s start broad and narrow it down to the person you’ll send messages or emails to. As a company, you most likely have identified your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). They are the people that fit specific characteristics you’ve defined as the most valuable customers. 

Once you have your list of companies, it’s time to create the list of the people you’ll actually talk to.

You want to focus on decision-makers and understand their roles, responsibilities, pain points, motivations, buying behaviors, etc.

This information will help you tailor your messaging and outreach efforts to resonate with each persona. This in-depth research into your accounts will guide your content creation, messaging, and how you’ll personalize your approach within the workflow you’re building.

LinkedIn is your best friend here; from a simple LinkedIn URL, you can find all their contact details. Having a Sales Navigator account can make things easier for you since you’ll be able to save a lot of time in your research and create a list.

Here are the platforms we recommend using: 

Get Creative

If you’ve followed the steps mentioned above, it’s now time to get cracking with your messaging and the sales copy for each of your messages.

Regardless of the platform, here’s a recommended structure for each message. The only difference you need to bear in mind is that a LinkedIn message and an email can’t have the same length; LinkedIn calls for conciseness, while you can get much more in-depth with your copy in your emails.

Introduction: 

• Introduce yourself and why you’re reaching out to them briefly. Establish credibility and context, so state relevant credentials and establish rapport.
• Personalize the message by mentioning something specific about their work, achievements, or recent activity. 
• Clearly communicate your value proposition. Highlight how your product or service can help solve pain points. This can also demonstrate you’ve done your research well.
• Prompt the recipient to take a specific action with an enticing CTA. This could go from scheduling a meeting to simply asking for their thoughts. Make the call to action clear, concise, and easy to follow.

(You can set up your signature in LGM with your position/role, company, and best contact information.)

Follow-Ups: 

Follow-ups are all about balance, whether it’s the level of information you share throughout your messages or the frequency in which you send them.

Depending on the client’s goals, we usually aim for 3-4 follow-ups, the last being a “last resort message,” where we tell the receiver this is the last time we contact them.

Overall, remember that nobody likes a spammer, so don’t be one! 

Here’s a structure to inspire the follow-up section of your sequence: 

• A reminder of the previous contact: Jog their memory by recalling previous interactions. 
• Express interest: Remind them why your offer or request would be valuable to them based on your previous communication.
• Value reinforcement: Reiterate how beneficial your proposition is. 
• Additional Information: If you have any new information, updates, or relevant resources to share, include them in this section. This is really helpful when you’re announcing a new feature for instance!

• Call-to-Action: Clearly state your call-to-action. Regardless of the actual CTA, consider potentially including a time frame to create a sense of urgency. If you ask them to inform you about their upcoming availability, be more specific: “this week or the beginning of the next one, before the end of the month.”

For your follow-ups, we urge you to experiment with the value reinforcement section and additional information.

Not all your USPs will resonate and impact your entire target audience the same way, hence the importance of learning which messaging resonates with which segment.

That said, the whole process doesn’t start and end with you automatically sending a few LinkedIn messages or emails.

Draft a few reply templates according to the lead’s response. If you’re using LaGrowthMachine, they can all be saved on the platform directly, making it easier for anyone in your team to follow up.

Here are two categories of messages we consider the most important ones to focus on; the positive replies and the neutral ones: 

• Positive replies include: 
  • Answering your message with additional questions: Answer their questions, and continue to offer a call; nothing beats that live interaction vs. a written one. 
  • Confirming that they took the desired action: Show excitement by welcoming and reminding them that you’re still here for them, you can also offer them additional resources for them to check out before the meeting.

• Neutral replies include: 
  • The “Not right now” message: Highlight your availability for them whenever they’ll be ready.
  • The “I will check this out” message: Tell them to contact you whenever they will. 

Launch

Yes, launching the first campaign as part of your sales workflow is relatively straightforward.

By using a platform like LaGrowthMachine, you’ll have everything you need centralized into one platform, which will save you time and helps avoid many mistakes that humans can naturally make. 

When creating a campaign, the platform already features a step-by-step structure to help you.

So you’ll start with building the workflow (how many messages, from which platform etc.). You can then select your audience next and from whom the messages will be sent.

Finally, add your copy in the different messages, and then you can set up the goal in the CRM & Exit Settings before launching the campaign.

However, here are a few additional tips to make sure it all goes smoothly: 

• Create a draft version of the campaign where you’ll add all your personalized copy and add variables such as the lead’s first name and company name.
• Import the targets you got from earlier (you can go old school and use CSV. files, or import them directly into LaGrowthMachine from your LinkedIn or Sales Navigator accounts once they’re linked)
• Make sure to add them in a unique audience name (to stay organized)
• Most importantly, review and/or (ideally) test it with internal profiles before launching
• Once everything looks good, launch your campaign!

Post-Launch

Now that you’ve launched your sales workflow, the real fun can begin — gathering data!

It is essential to monitor its progress, evaluate its effectiveness, and make necessary adjustments to optimize your results. 

Here are our tips and tricks: 

Track and Analyze Metrics: 

Keeping in mind the size of your audience, how are your open rate and reply rates looking?

Over time, you can gather which channels and messaging provide the best results.

This analysis is critical to identify areas of strength and opportunities for refinement. You’ll be able to collect all this data detailed directly from LaGrowthMachine, perfect for helping your sales team take over those leads. 

Determining the performance of campaigns relies on multiple factors:

• Industry
• Target audience
• Type of outreach campaign you’re running
• etc.

Here’s an example of a sales campaign outreaching for a specific aspect of our client’s solution, and the goal is to book a call.

If the channels you’ve been experimenting with provide promising results compared to your historical data, continue to focus on those.

Keep optimizing your strategy. Once you’ve successfully maintained these channels, you can expand onto other potential outreach channels.

We always encourage diversifying user acquisition by not relying on a single channel. But continue prioritizing the best channels and messages while experimenting with new ones.

Refine and Iterate: 

Regularly refine your sales workflow based on the insights gathered from data analysis and feedback.

Assessing its overall effectiveness and optimizing is a continuous effort. So optimize your messaging, targeting strategies, and follow-up processes. Experiment with new subject lines or new connection messages on LinkedIn.

Read what people are answering. If 50% of your answers feature a negative response, depending on the answer itself, you might not have contacted the right person. This means you need to rethink your sales segmentation.

Maybe your audiences are too big. Here’s what can give it away: lack of deliverability and personalization. As a result, you’ll be met with a lower reply rate. 

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Your copy might not be resonating with your audience on the chosen channel. For example, some people would rather receive content in an outreach project on LinkedIn and directly receive sales-focused messages by email. 

Finally, the timing with which you send your messages might not be ideal. So experiment with different days and times to find when your target audience is most responsive. Have you taken into account the time zone they might be in, for example?

Overall, there aren’t hundreds of variables that you need to understand in depth. If you’re not getting the results you’d like, a good place to start is either in your segmentation or your copy.

Final Thoughts

Building a sales workflow holds significant potential for business growth and success. By implementing a well-defined one, you can achieve various benefits, including generating more leads, increasing sales, boosting brand awareness, and building valuable relationships.

Remember that this is an ongoing process. Continuously evaluate and refine your approach based on data, feedback, and market dynamics.

By staying proactive and focused on building meaningful connections with prospects, you can consistently drive business growth and achieve your sales goals.

Ready to create and execute a sales workflow that lands deals every time? Sign up for LaGrowthMachine for free today and automate your sales outreach, manage your leads, and optimize your campaigns.

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