Built for sales teams whose follow-up falls off after touch three
A sales follow-up process that survives the fourth day, the fifth call, and the sixth prospect email that never comes back.
Every sales leader has written a follow-up process. Most reps run the first two steps clean, miss step three, forget step four, and the prospect goes dark. Strkr runs the follow-up process as live cadence: ordered touches, due dates, templated content, and the exceptions that need a human stay human. The ones that can run automatic do.
Teams write a sales follow-up process. The reps read it. The first week looks good. The second week the exceptions start piling up: the prospect went on vacation, the hand-off to the AE did not happen, the template did not match the industry, the manager wanted a judgment call on step four. By week three the process has drifted and the leader is back to tracking follow-up in a Google Sheet. The six pains below are the places follow-up processes fall apart.
The cadence lives in a Google Doc
Reps copy from the doc into their inbox every morning.
The follow-up process typically starts life as a Google Doc with the touches listed as bullets: day 1 email, day 3 call, day 5 LinkedIn, day 8 email, day 12 call, day 17 email. Reps print it, bookmark it, screenshot it, forget it. The doc does not know what step a prospect is on. The rep has to manually track which prospects got which touches when, which turns into a side spreadsheet, which falls out of date, which means the fifth touch never happens. Strkr runs the cadence as live state: each prospect carries their current step, the next due date, and the exact content template.
The templates drift
Rep A sends version 1 of the template; rep B sends version 4.
Follow-up templates get updated: the pricing page URL changed, the case study swapped, the subject line that was testing well in Q2 got replaced in Q3. Reps have the old version saved in their drafts. The leader updated the master doc but did not tell every rep. The result is template drift: three versions of the same follow-up email in flight across the team, the pricing page link broken on half of them. Strkr templates live in one admin surface; the rep picks from the live template library and the leader can retire old versions in one place.
The hand-off breaks between SDR and AE
The SDR booked the demo; the AE never got the context.
The follow-up process spans roles: the SDR runs the first 4 to 6 touches, the AE picks up after the demo books, the CS lead picks up after the deal closes. Each hand-off is a place where context drops. The SDR's notes on the prospect's pain, the exact phrasing from the discovery call, the objection the prospect raised, the follow-up commitments made all commonly fail to transfer. The AE walks into the demo cold and starts the follow-up over. Strkr's cadence state transfers on hand-off; the AE sees the full touch history, the SDR notes, the commitments made.
The exceptions eat the process
Prospect went on vacation; the cadence paused and never restarted.
Real prospects have real lives: out of office, parental leave, maternity leave, re-org, job change, promotion. The cadence pauses, which is correct behavior. The problem is the pause never ends. Three weeks later the prospect is back and the rep forgot to restart the cadence. The deal goes dark. Strkr's cadence handles pauses with a restart date; when the pause ends the next touch due date computes automatically and the rep sees the resumed cadence in their task list.
The data on what works is unknowable
We cannot tell if touch 4 or touch 7 is the one that actually books.
Follow-up cadence design is a data question: which touch converts the meeting, which channel outperforms, which subject line opens, which message length responds. Teams running the cadence in a Google Doc with reps freelancing on content have no reliable answer. The meetings that book get attributed to the latest touch but the full attribution story is lost. Strkr tracks every touch sent, every open, every click, every reply, every meeting booked, with the full chain attributable. Teams know which touches drive revenue and which are filler.
The manager cannot see where follow-up is failing
Which reps run the cadence; which reps skip touches 4 and 5.
Manager coaching requires visibility: which reps complete the full cadence, which reps consistently skip the middle touches, which reps execute step 1 clean but drop step 4. The Google Doc cadence does not surface this. The manager asks the rep in the 1:1 and gets a self-report. Strkr renders the cadence completion rate per rep: 100 percent step 1, 92 percent step 2, 71 percent step 4, 45 percent step 7. The manager sees exactly where to coach and the rep sees their own completion stats before the 1:1.
The 11 capabilities of a working sales follow-up process
What the cadence actually needs to ship.
A sales follow-up process that reps run end to end has specific operating requirements. The cards below are the capabilities Strkr's cadence encodes to make the process survive contact with real prospects, real holidays, and real role turnover.
Ordered touches with due dates
Each touch has a day offset and a channel.
The cadence defines a sequence: day 1 email, day 3 call, day 5 LinkedIn, day 8 email, day 12 call, day 17 email, day 24 call, day 30 breakup email. Each touch is one row in the cadence definition with the day offset, channel, template reference, and completion criteria. The rep sees the next due touch inline on the prospect record with the exact day it is due.
Template library with versioning
One place for every follow-up email.
Templates live in the admin template library with version history. When the pricing URL changes, the leader updates the template in one place and every future touch pulls the new version. Reps cannot send a stale template because the cadence always pulls from live. Legacy versions remain accessible for audit but cannot be newly sent.
Branching logic for responses
Prospect replied interested; cadence routes to the AE path.
Cadence branches on prospect behavior: no reply after 3 touches goes to the breakup path, interested reply routes to the AE for discovery scheduling, unsubscribe exits the cadence, out-of-office pauses until the return date. The branching is admin-configurable with the standard patterns pre-built and custom branches available for specific motions.
Pause and resume handling
Out of office until July 15 resumes July 16.
When a prospect responds with an auto-reply or an explicit "back next week" message, the cadence pauses and the resume date sets automatically from the parsed response. On the resume date the next touch due date computes and the rep sees it in their task list. No forgotten pauses, no dropped cadences after vacation.
Hand-off with context transfer
SDR to AE transfer carries the full touch history.
When the cadence hands off from SDR to AE (typically after the demo books), the AE inherits the full touch history, the SDR notes, the commitments made, the open objections, and the proposed next step. The hand-off happens inside Strkr with no email forwarding or Slack dumps required. The AE walks into the demo with full context.
Reply detection and routing
Prospect replied; cadence pauses and alerts the rep.
Reply detection runs on the inbound email stream. When the prospect replies the cadence auto-pauses, the rep sees the reply in their task queue with the full prior touch context, and the next action routes based on reply sentiment: positive reply to AE scheduling, neutral reply to manual rep handling, out-of-office to pause-and-resume.
Completion tracking per step
Reps see their step completion rates.
Each rep sees their own completion rate per cadence step: step 1 100 percent, step 2 95 percent, step 4 72 percent, step 7 48 percent. The visibility creates self-awareness. Reps that systematically skip step 4 see it before the manager raises it. The manager sees the same data for coaching conversations grounded in facts not impressions.
Attribution per touch
Which touch booked the meeting is now a datapoint.
When a meeting books, Strkr records which cadence step was the last touch before the meeting (and which touches in the chain opened or clicked). Teams see over 500 or 1000 booked meetings which touch was the one that converted. The data informs cadence design: delete the touches that never convert, double the touches that work.
Channel mix per cadence
Email plus call plus LinkedIn plus video.
Each cadence defines its channel mix: 60 percent email, 25 percent call, 10 percent LinkedIn, 5 percent video. Reps execute each channel inline: calls dial from the record, LinkedIn opens the prospect profile, video records in-browser. The rep does not swap tools 11 times during the cadence; the cadence stays in Strkr.
A/B testing on templates
Subject line variant A versus variant B.
Templates support A/B variants with automatic traffic split: 50 percent of sends get variant A, 50 percent get variant B, open rates and reply rates track separately. After 100 or 200 sends per variant the winner is clear and the cadence auto-promotes it. The next test variant replaces the loser and the cycle repeats.
AI-drafted content inline
Strkr AI drafts the personalization sentence.
For personalized touches (reference the prospect's recent LinkedIn post, their company funding announcement, their new role title), Strkr AI drafts the personalization sentence inline. The rep reviews and sends. The personalization that commonly takes 3 to 5 minutes per prospect drops to 20 to 30 seconds. The cadence scales without sacrificing personalization.
The 7-step follow-up template that works for most B2B motions
A proven cadence to start with and tune.
Teams asking "what should the cadence look like" need a starting point. The 7-step cadence below works for most B2B outbound and inbound SDR motions. Teams tune from this baseline based on their data.
Day 1: intro email
Short, specific, one-sentence ask.
The first email runs 60 to 90 words. Opens with a reference to the prospect's role, company, or trigger event. States the hypothesis for why they would care. Closes with a one-sentence ask: 15 minutes next week to validate the fit. Subject line references the trigger, not a generic value prop.
Day 3: call
Voice connect with a hook.
The day 3 call is the first voice touch. The rep opens with the trigger event, the hypothesis, and a question. If voicemail lands, the rep leaves a 20-second message referencing the sent email and promising a follow-up email summarizing the question. The follow-up email sends same day.
Day 5: LinkedIn note
Short connection request with context.
LinkedIn connection request includes a 2-sentence context note referencing the prospect's recent post or role transition. The ask is light: open to a conversation if the hypothesis resonates. If the connection accepts, send one follow-up DM 24 to 48 hours later with the question.
Day 8: value email
Share a case or data point.
The day 8 email shares a peer case or data point: a similar company (same size, same vertical, same role) that solved the hypothesized problem with a outcome. Length 80 to 120 words. Links the case study. The ask: does the pattern look familiar to the prospect's situation.
Day 12: call
Second voice attempt with new angle.
The day 12 call tries a different angle: not the original hypothesis but an adjacent question (what the team is prioritizing this quarter, what budget cycle looks like, who else is involved in the decision). Voicemail follow-up email same day referencing the new angle.
Day 17: direct ask
A short email with the explicit ask.
Day 17 is the direct ask: "I have reached out a few times about X. Would 15 minutes next week help clarify the fit? If this is not a priority right now, happy to pause and reconnect in a quarter." Short, direct, respectful. 40 to 60 words. This touch commonly converts because the pattern is familiar and the ask is explicit.
Day 24: breakup
The clean exit email.
Day 24 is the breakup: "Not hearing back, I am going to pause this thread. If priorities change on X, feel free to reach back. All the best." The breakup touch has one of the highest reply rates in the cadence because the pattern triggers the loss-aversion response. If no reply, the prospect exits the cadence and moves to a nurture track for a quarterly re-touch.
What the cadence engine does not do
Scope boundaries so expectations stay grounded.
Strkr's cadence engine replaces the Google Doc cadence process for most B2B sales teams. There are specific use cases where additional tools still fit. The cards below are the scope boundaries.
Not a full marketing automation platform
Marketo and HubSpot own the full nurture-to-MQL flow.
Strkr's cadence runs the sales follow-up: outbound SDR cadences, inbound SDR cadences, hand-off cadences, re-engagement cadences. The full marketing automation flow (long-horizon nurture across 6 to 12 months, lead scoring across hundreds of behaviors, webinar registration flows, event follow-up at scale across thousands of attendees) typically belongs in Marketo, HubSpot Marketing Hub, or Pardot. Strkr integrates with each.
Not a cold-email outbound tool at mass scale
Apollo, Outreach, Salesloft specialize at mass outbound.
For teams running 50-plus SDRs with mass outbound at 10,000-plus sends per month, dedicated outbound tools (Apollo, Outreach, Salesloft) ship specialized infrastructure for deliverability, warm-up pools, and sender rotation. Strkr's cadence works for teams running up to roughly 20 SDRs; past that scale the dedicated tools pay back. Teams commonly run Outreach for outbound and Strkr for the CRM-side follow-up.
Not a call-coaching platform
Gong, Chorus own the conversation intelligence.
Strkr records which calls happened on the cadence. For deep call coaching (full call recordings, talk-ratio analysis, keyword tracking across hundreds of calls, deal-level signals from conversation patterns), Gong and Chorus ship specialized surfaces. Strkr integrates: the Gong recording links from the Strkr call activity so the manager jumps from the cadence view to the recording for coaching.
Not a replacement for prospecting data
ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit provide the contact list.
Strkr runs the cadence against prospects that already exist in the CRM. The source of prospect data (contact enrichment, email verification, intent signals, company firmographics) belongs in prospecting tools (ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit, Cognism). Strkr integrates with each so enriched prospects flow into the CRM and the cadence runs from there.
Not a replacement for the human judgment call
The rep decides when to override the cadence.
The cadence is a default behavior that scales the follow-up process. For specific prospects (strategic account, warm referral, exec-sponsor commitment, trade-show hot lead), the rep overrides the cadence with a judgment call. Strkr makes the override easy: pause the cadence, log the rationale, run the touches, resume when appropriate. The cadence is the default, not a straight-jacket.
Head-to-head
Strkr cadence versus the Google Doc follow-up process.
Most teams run their follow-up process as a Google Doc or a shared Notion page. Here is the head-to-head between that approach and Strkr's native cadence engine.
Feature
Strkr
Google Doc follow-up process
Where the cadence lives
Live state per prospect in the CRM
Static bullets in a shared doc
Next-touch due date
Auto-calculated per prospect
Rep tracks manually in a side sheet
Template version control
Admin library with versioning
Reps copy from their old drafts
Pause and resume
Native with auto-resume date
Rep remembers to restart (or does not)
Reply detection
Auto-pause on reply
Rep manually marks the thread
Hand-off context
Full touch history transfers
SDR writes a Slack summary (or does not)
Completion rate per rep per step
Rendered in the manager dashboard
Guesswork at the 1:1
Attribution per touch
Which touch booked the meeting
Attribution to the latest touch at best
A/B testing on templates
Native variant split with auto-promote
Not possible
AI-drafted personalization
Native inline personalization
Rep writes from scratch or skips
How teams use Strkr
How teams stood up a working follow-up process on Strkr.
The pattern across teams that moved from Google Doc cadences to Strkr: completion rates jumped, hand-offs stopped dropping context, and the manager finally had visibility to coach specific skipped steps. The playbooks below are motions live on customer accounts.
B2B SaaS SDR team, 12 reps
Step-4 completion rate went from 48 percent to 91 percent in 6 weeks.
A B2B SaaS SDR team had a documented 7-touch cadence that reps ran out of a Google Doc and a side spreadsheet. Manager analysis estimated step 4 completion at 50 to 60 percent based on self-report. After moving to Strkr the actual data showed step 4 completion at 48 percent, step 5 at 32 percent, step 7 at 14 percent. The manager built a weekly cadence-completion review with each rep seeing their own stats. By week 6 step 4 completion was 91 percent, step 5 was 78 percent, step 7 was 62 percent. The team's SQL conversion rate from the cadence rose from 2.3 percent to 3.8 percent in the same window.
Enterprise AE team, 24 reps
The SDR-to-AE hand-off dropped context on 42 percent of demos before the move.
An enterprise AE team ran discovery demos where 42 percent of the time the AE walked in without the SDR's discovery notes, specific pain phrasing, or exact commitments made. Post-demo surveys from AEs rated hand-off quality at 2.1 out of 5. After moving the cadence to Strkr with native hand-off, the next touch and prior context transferred by default. The AE walked into the demo with the full touch history, SDR notes, and open commitments visible on the opportunity record. Hand-off quality rating rose to 4.4 out of 5 within one quarter. Demo-to-opportunity conversion rate rose from 61 percent to 73 percent.
Mid-market inbound SDR team, 8 reps
A/B tested the first-touch subject line and lifted open rate from 22 to 41 percent.
A mid-market inbound SDR team ran a 5-touch cadence on inbound demo requests. The team suspected the subject line was weak but had no way to test. After moving to Strkr the team set up an A/B variant on the first-touch subject line: variant A was the existing "Quick question about {{company}}" variant B was "{{firstName}}, here is what I noticed about {{company}}". After 200 sends per variant, variant B opened at 41 percent versus variant A at 22 percent. Variant B auto-promoted. The team ran the same pattern on 3 more touches over the next quarter and lifted the overall meeting-book rate from 3.1 percent to 5.6 percent.
B2B services, 6-rep team, VP of sales
The exceptions path for warm referrals finally worked.
A B2B services VP of sales had a pattern: warm referrals from existing clients deserved a different cadence than cold outbound. The Google Doc cadence had no way to express the exception; reps ran the cold cadence on warm referrals and the hit rate dropped. After moving to Strkr the VP configured a 4-touch warm-referral cadence (shorter, more personal, references the referral source by name). Reps route warm referrals to the warm cadence from the referral intake. Meeting-book rate on warm referrals rose from 34 percent to 61 percent. The referral channel became the strongest-performing source for the quarter.
Startup, 3 SDR, 1 AE
The founder stopped running sales ops because the system did it.
A Series A startup founder ran sales ops on the side: tracked cadence completion in a side spreadsheet, chased reps on missed touches, updated the Google Doc template monthly, built the weekly report for the exec team. The job ate 4 to 6 hours a week. After moving to Strkr the founder stopped running sales ops. The cadence enforced itself. The templates updated once in Strkr. The completion report rendered automatically. The founder redirected the 4 to 6 hours to recruiting the first head of RevOps, which hired 3 months earlier than planned.
A sales follow-up process that reps actually complete.
Start a 14-day Strkr trial with the native cadence engine: ordered touches, template versioning, reply detection, pause and resume, hand-off context transfer, and attribution per touch ready to configure.
How many touches should a B2B sales follow-up process actually have?
For most B2B outbound SDR motions, 6 to 8 touches across 20 to 30 days is the standard range that works. Teams with fewer than 5 touches commonly leave meetings on the table because the data shows the 4th through 7th touch is where many meetings book. Teams with more than 10 touches commonly see diminishing returns per touch and risk prospect frustration. The 7-step cadence above (day 1 email, day 3 call, day 5 LinkedIn, day 8 email, day 12 call, day 17 email, day 24 breakup) is a solid baseline to start with and tune based on team data. Inbound SDR cadences run shorter (3 to 5 touches, faster cadence) because inbound prospects have higher intent. Enterprise AE cadences for cold outbound to named accounts run longer (10 to 14 touches across 60 to 90 days) because the stakes justify the investment. Strkr supports all these shapes with admin-configurable cadence definitions.
How does Strkr handle multiple cadences for different motions on the same team?
Each cadence is a separate admin configuration with its own ordered touches, templates, branching logic, and hand-off rules. A team commonly runs 4 to 8 cadences in parallel: cold outbound, inbound SDR, warm referral, event follow-up, re-engagement for closed-lost deals, CS-to-AE expansion motion. Each prospect enters one cadence based on their source and status. The cadence selection is admin-configurable with rules (if source is "demo request" enter inbound SDR cadence; if source is "referral" enter warm referral cadence). Prospects can transition between cadences on specific events (demo books: SDR cadence exits, AE discovery cadence begins). The multi-cadence design is native to Strkr; teams do not need to pick one cadence and force every prospect through it.
What happens when a prospect replies to a cadence touch?
Reply detection runs on the inbound email stream and triggers an auto-pause on the cadence. The rep sees the reply in their task queue with the full prior touch context inline (what was sent, when, through what channel, with what template). The next action routes based on reply sentiment: a positive reply (interested in talking, booking a meeting) routes to the AE for scheduling or directly to the calendar link; a neutral reply (ask for more info, question about pricing, request to reconnect later) routes to the rep for manual handling; an out-of-office auto-reply pauses the cadence and sets a resume date from the parsed out-of-office end date; an unsubscribe exits the cadence entirely and flags the prospect for the opt-out list. The automation handles the straightforward cases and the rep handles the judgment calls.
Can managers see cadence completion rates per rep and coach on them?
Yes. The manager dashboard renders cadence completion per rep per step: Rep A completes step 1 at 100 percent, step 2 at 95 percent, step 4 at 72 percent, step 7 at 48 percent. The data is live, not a monthly report. Managers run weekly 1:1s with the rep seeing their own stats before the meeting; the conversation grounds in specific completion gaps instead of impression-based coaching. Managers can filter by cadence (completion on the cold outbound cadence versus the warm referral cadence), by date range (last 7 days, last 30 days, quarter to date), and by cohort (reps hired in the last 90 days versus tenured reps). Trend data shows whether rep completion is improving or declining over time, which surfaces coaching priorities before the quarter closes with a miss.
How does Strkr prevent the templates from drifting into stale versions?
Templates live in a single admin template library with version history. When the content changes (pricing URL updates, case study swaps, subject line tested variant promotes), the leader updates the template in one place. Every future cadence touch pulls from the live template; stale versions cannot be sent. Legacy versions remain accessible for audit purposes (if a prospect references content from an older touch, the leader can look up what was sent and when) but are not newly selectable in the cadence. The admin surface shows template usage: which cadences reference each template, how many touches have sent using each version, and when the template was last modified. Teams running 40 or 60 templates across 6 or 8 cadences see the full inventory in one view, which prevents the "orphan template" problem where a template exists but is not referenced in any live cadence.
What is the setup time to move a Google Doc cadence to Strkr?
For a team with the cadence already defined in a Google Doc, setup typically runs 2 to 4 hours of admin time. The steps: define the cadence shell with the number of steps and the day offsets, import each template into the template library (copy-paste from the existing docs), define the branching rules (reply routes to AE, out-of-office pauses, unsubscribe exits), set up the cadence entry criteria (which prospect sources trigger which cadence), configure the hand-off rules (SDR cadence exits on demo book, AE discovery cadence begins), and set up the completion-tracking dashboards. For teams migrating from a dedicated outbound tool (Outreach, Salesloft) that export their cadences, Strkr accepts the cadence export file and imports the full definition in minutes. Reps see the new cadence in their task queue the day after setup; the first full week of data accumulates and the manager dashboard renders completion stats by week two.
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