# Sales Follow-Up Cadence > Designs a post-meeting follow-up cadence for active deals - recap within 2 hours, value-add touches on a day 0/2/5/7 rhythm, channel switches when a deal goes quiet, and a clean breakup after 5-7 touches. Use when someone says "the prospect went dark after the demo", "how do I follow up without being annoying", "what should I send after the call", or a deal has stalled between meetings. Do NOT use for cold-prospect sequences before any meeting has happened - use outreach-sequence-designer instead; do NOT use for writing the cold email itself - use cold-email-craft instead; do NOT use for structuring the close with shared milestones - use mutual-action-plan instead. - Skill: `skillmedev/sales-follow-up-cadence` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add skillmedev/sales-follow-up-cadence` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/skillmedev/sales-follow-up-cadence/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Productivity - Author: SkillMedev (https://skillmd.com/u/skillmedev) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/skillmedev/sales-follow-up-cadence --- # Sales Follow-Up Cadence Follow-up is where most deals are won or lost after the meeting ends. The rep who follows up with something useful every time earns the right to stay in the conversation; the rep who sends "just checking in" trains the buyer to ignore them, and the costly version of that mistake is continuing past a polite close and burning the account for the whole company. Every touch needs a reason to exist, and the cadence needs a defined end. ## Operating procedure Order matters: the Day 0 recap creates the shared record that every later touch references - skip it and every follow-up becomes a cold restart. 1. Gather the inputs below immediately after the meeting, while memory is fresh. 2. Send the Day 0 recap within 2 hours of the meeting. 3. Schedule the warm cadence (Days 2, 5, 7) in the CRM now, each touch pre-assigned a value-add - do not improvise touches on the day. 4. Before sending any touch, test it against the core rule: does it add new information, move an action item forward, or give the buyer something genuinely useful for their job? "Touching base" and "circling back" fail this test - rewrite or skip. 5. If silence continues past Day 7, shift to the cold-deal track (Days 10, 17, 25) with a channel switch. 6. Send the breakup at touch 7 (Day 25). Then stop. Park the contact in a 90-day re-engagement drip if the product remains a fit. ### Step 1: gather inputs - What was discussed and what the buyer named as their top priority (their words, not the pitch's words). - Agreed next steps with owners and dates - including the action item the buyer owns. - Open questions left unanswered in the meeting. - Deal cycle length (default: standard B2B cycle; if transactional or expected to close within a week, use the compressed track below). - Two or three value-add candidates: a case study from a similar company, a relevant article, an answer to an open question. Label any assumption about the buyer's priority as a guess until they confirm it. ## Cadence calendar ``` WARM TRACK (post-meeting, first 7 days) Day 0 Email Recap within 2 hours: discussed / their #1 priority / next steps w/ owners+dates / open questions. Confirms shared understanding + paper trail. Does not sell. Day 2 Email ONE value-add: case study, article on the problem they named, or answer to an open question. One link, one sentence of context. No pitch restatement. Day 5 Email Nudge THEIR action item: "Were you able to get time with your IT lead? Happy to join if useful." Day 7 Email Forward the Day 0 recap + one line: "Making sure this didn't get buried - has timing shifted?" COLD TRACK (8-30 days of silence) Day 10 LinkedIn or phone - different channel, not another email. Day 17 Email Useful-without-expectation: resource or insight, NO ask. Subject line does not reference the deal. Day 25 Email Breakup: "I don't want to keep reaching out if the timing is off. If things change and you want to revisit, I'm here - otherwise I'll close this out." AFTER Stop unless they re-engage. Park in 90-day re-engagement drip if still a fit. Never restart the same cadence. COMPRESSED TRACK (transactional / <1-week cycles) Day 0 recap → Day 2 value-add → Day 5 breakup. ``` That is 7 touches before the break - within the 5-7 touch band a stalled deal deserves. The breakup email gets more replies than almost any other touch in the cadence; sending it is not giving up, it is the highest-leverage move left. Bad Day 5 touch: "Hi Sam, just circling back on my last email to see if you had any thoughts!" Good Day 5 touch: "Hi Sam - you mentioned looping in your IT lead before Friday. Were you able to get time with them? Happy to join that conversation and handle the security questions directly." ## Deliverable Produce a filled-in cadence calendar for the specific deal: each touch dated from the meeting, channel assigned, and value-add named in advance - plus the drafted Day 0 recap ready to send within the 2-hour window. ## Do NOT - Do not send "just checking in" - a touch with no new information, no action-item motion, and no value teaches the buyer your emails are skippable. - Do not continue past the breakup email - following up after a polite close destroys the relationship and the brand, not just the deal. - Do not improvise touches day-of - unplanned follow-ups default to check-ins because the value-add was never sourced. - Do not restate the pitch in the Day 2 value-add - the recap already established fit; the value-add builds credibility instead. - Do not run the full 25-day cadence on a transactional deal - over-engineered follow-up on a one-week deal reads as desperate; use the compressed track. ## Quality bar Before the cadence ships: the Day 0 recap goes out within 2 hours and contains the buyer's stated priority in their own words plus next steps with owners and dates; every scheduled touch passes the three-purpose rule; at least one touch after Day 7 uses a non-email channel; the breakup is scheduled, not optional; and there is an explicit stop-and-park rule after touch 7. If the deal predates any meeting, this is the wrong skill - build the cold cadence in outreach-sequence-designer.