Skip to main content

Inbound Vs Outbound leads

Getting leads for a new product is very critical. It helps keep the momentum and helps us get initial feedback.

When we design a new product and have a functional prototype ready, we typically do one round of testing and demonstration within our organisation and collect feedback.

What matters more is the feedback from our prospects - potential users.

When we have a functional prototype ready, we have 2 paths to choose from:
  • Start a web-site , have some information and quickly get leads from the page
  • Go out on the field and interact with potential users and prospects, demonstrate the application
While we see a lot of product teams and startups doing the first one, It is the second path that matters till the product goes to beta.

Taking a product to beta is a big task.

Taking our example, we took 2 prototypes and 8 months to even start alpha and our beta is in 18 months with 2 customers.

While all teams are tempted to have inbound leads, the problems there are
  • In-bound leads are not engaged enough for us to provide useful feedback
  • The conversion rate is very low. Indirectly this could push down team morale.
  • Quality of leads is also very low. People might have registered as a lead for various reasons and might not completely understand the product.
That said, Outbound lead generation is very expensive and it is not easy for an engineering team to perform the function.

We tried it for 2 -3 months. Outbound lead generation is a sales intensive function and needs a separate skill in itself.

Outbound lead generation has got its own problems:
  • Focusing and getting the right set of leads to target is very expensive and time-consuming.
  • Having a right conversation is also very tough. It needs the right skill set.
  • Having a team on the ground interaction with leads is expensive and time-consuming.
  • Training the sales force or having the engineering team do the sales calls is also expensive.
That said, the costs far outweigh the benefits.

For a new product Outbound leads is the way to go.

Just one more caveat: Be careful about how you position your product. Outbound lead generation can get confusing at times.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Journey in Inquiry and Advocacy - An experience report

It is recently that I have consciously started practicing Inquiry. Let me explain. I am a consultant who constantly looks at the situation and comes up and implements the solution to progress from there. While I do that, I constantly use Inquiry as a means to progress - one of the key facilitation technique specifically in multiple stakeholder situations.
Post a Comment
Read more

Principles for developing systems that are anti-fragile

I have been trying to make sense of what anti-fragility means and how do I use that in my day job. As a Business Principal, I tend to work with the abstract but orchestrate a program of work that needs details. This makes my job a little difficult in the terms of designing for more self-preserving systems that preserve the spirit of the abstracted strategy or vision. I came across an article from Daniel Russo on anti-fragility and his attempt at creating a manifesto similar to the manifesto for agile software development. For more reading on Daniel Russo, here is his profile:  http://djrusso.github.io More reading from his paper here:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050916302290 This post is an attempt for me to understand what goes into developing a program that uses every opportunity to strengthen itself and achieve its objective - the vision.  I liked the approach of principles for developing systems that are anti-fragile. It is a very valua
Post a Comment
Read more

User Personas

User Personas are a very good tool for the product owners, business analysts or product managers to be able to co-create with designers. It is predominantly a product of the user research and should not be an amalgamation of demographic data. It is the best way for us to list all scenarios that a persona would take when they want to attain a goal. It is predominantly used to build empathy with user, focus the team and build consensus in a large diverse stakeholder group. The website I referred to is here:  https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/a-closer-look-at-personas-part-1/
2 comments
Read more