Multichannel prospecting means contacting the same person through several channels over the course of a sequence: email, LinkedIn message, call. The goal is to reach the person where they read their messages, in a form suited to each channel. The reason for the contact does not change from one step to the next.
What each channel brings
- Email leaves room for context (the observed fact, the question, one sentence on what you do), and the person reads it when they choose to.
- LinkedIn suits people who post or comment there. The message fits in a few lines and builds on a visible fact.
- Phone gives an immediate answer, including a refusal. The opening takes two sentences: who you are, why you are calling.
Choosing the first channel
Begin from the signal and the person: after a LinkedIn post, open on LinkedIn, where the person spoke up. An executive with little online presence is more likely to read a short email. So you choose prospect by prospect, with no team-wide rule.
Where it fits in signal-based prospecting
The prospecting sequence sets the order of the steps; multichannel prospecting decides the channel of each one. Every message, whatever its channel, comes back to the same signal or to a new fact observed since, so the prospect doesn’t get three unrelated messages.
Common mistakes
- Copying the same text from one channel to another.
- Chaining channels on the same day, without leaving time to reply.
- Continuing on another channel after a negative reply.
- Calling without a precise reason, just to “touch base”.
See also: Prospecting sequence, Sales follow-up, and Cold outreach.