10 things I learned from doing Inbound Leads
The surprising results + learnings applied back to outbound
As Parker, my inbound BDR was going on his Europe tour, I proposed to cover the inbound role in addition to my outbound duties for the following reasons:
Allow inbound AEs to focus on closing instead of context switching
Benchmark results of ‘Experienced hire vs entry level’
I’ve never tried inbound before
It was an interesting experiment and the hypothesis was this:
I would outperform Parker on number of meetings booked
And if yes, we were keen to understand the following:
What learnings can we apply to the inbound team?
How can we better optimise calling scripts, improve objection handling?
For purposes of the experiment, we used similar variables:
Definitions of MQLs remain unchanged
Number of MQLs were similar
No external webinars were happening, hence no influx of leads
Leads came in via all usual sources - website, demo video, interactive demo, lead form, requested callback
Similar time period: December vs January - equally slow months
For simplicity and ease of discussion, Parker is known as BDR, while I’ll be known as Senior BDR.
After 3 weeks of data:
Here’s what the data tells us:
BDR has higher conversion rate: despite having lesser MQLs, he still books a high number of meetings
Senior BDR is more efficient by booking 1.3x more meetings
Total number of meetings booked is similar
BDR works harder; Senior BDR works smarter
Here’s what we can infer:
If you work hard (making more dials, following up), you can compensate for lack of proficiency as a BDR
While it seems as if BDR worked 2 more hours than Senior BDR, the truth is closer to the fact that the BDR worked the phones more
Senior BDR spent the other 2 hours investing in other channels such as email and linkedin and was able to achieve similar results
Learnings from doing inbound:
Especially for the inbound leads, it seems as if most of them had already some latent interest or had an idea of what they were looking for
Having a sales rep call them helps to activate the latent interest and qualify it for the account executive
Conversely, convincing inbound leads that lacked interest or didn't align with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) from the outset posed significant challenges in arranging meetings
This included leads such as
Budget conscious → didn’t want to pay the SaaS premium
Satisfied with existing system → didn’t see a need to change
Went with competitor → just signed up for a competitor and not looking to change within 1-2 years
Too small → product was overkill for their needs
For the leads that converted to a demo, they fell into the various buckets:
Strong interest → looking to solve it urgently + 1 call close to demo
Some interest → open to trying, and open for a demo
Latent interest → had been thinking about it but had been too busy to prioritise, sales rep caught them at a good time, required multiple follow ups
Implications + what this could mean for your inbound team:
Instead of trying to optimise for the best openers or objection handling, it’s more important to make sure to accurately capture all the demand →
Don’t let any inbound leads fall through the cracks or go unactioned
Ensure accurate routing of leads to respective reps through lead scoring mechanisms that only rout to rep once it hits a threshold
Ensure fast response time once lead comes inbound (SLA: 10 minutes response → 21x more effective in lead conversion)
Feed leads into the reps dashboards as tasks notifications, alert notifications, slack alerts
Ensure a tight cadence of multiple follow ups with a mix of manual and automated steps, which includes multi channel including phone, email and linkedin
This ensures that once lead comes inbound, within 5 days they should have received 2 automated emails from reps, 2 call backs and a linkedin connect
Note: Some may see it as excessive but it’s better to optimise for speed than inaction
Goal: Get a response from lead, especially those key leads that are always busy
Read more: Speed to lead
Have strong disqualification criteria and re-routing process back to marketing if there is no reply →
Feed it back to marketing so that they get re-nurtured back into the demand gen funnel
A ‘No’ now doesn’t mean ‘No’ forever →
Timing is everything - I’ve seen so many cases where a lead that was initially not interested come back 3 months later wanting to find out more because they recently hired a new CFO, raised a new round of funding etc
Strong hubspot hygiene and classification of lead status
Inbound Reps only need to fill up to 2 properties on CRM: ‘Lead Status’ ‘playbook’ template when going through the inbound call
Ensure that rep only needs to fill the necessary fields, automate the rest through automated data enrichment such as clearbit
Note: If you can free up time for your inbound reps, you can repurpose them for other activities including outbound (more on that in a separate post)
How can we apply this to outbound?
Unless you are focused solely on strategic accounts (10 accounts in territory), the learnings from inbound to outbound is largely the same:
Timing matters more than the quality of your outreach
As my founder friend once said:
The worst cold email at the right time is better than the best cold email at the wrong time
Does it mean we should start download emails from zoominfo and use outreach to send sequences to a 1000 prospects? Hell, no.
If someone had strong interest, they would have already come inbound
Your goal as outbound is to find leads that are semi-interested, activate their ‘latent interest’ while bypassing the spam filter
How can we find the ‘latent interest’ in a productive manner?
Look at ICP and target lookalikes
Past closed lost deals - Revisit CRM
Look at external triggers that indicate a company might be open to change:
Final thoughts
Make data-driven decisions; ensure all calls, emails are logged and use the data to paint a picture to keep optimising processes and productivity
Timing > Quality of outreach
Inbound leads tend to be smaller ARPA (Average Revenue per Account) and tend to be adopting a new solution from manual processes instead of direct competitor
Use inbound leads to inform outbound ‘ICPs’ and nail down Product-Market-Fit before doubling down on outbound to go after ‘Whale’ customers
What else would you add?