Inbound vs outbound: which should you invest in?

Outbound pays off when deals are big enough

With outbound, a sales rep works out a target list and connects with prospects through calls, emails, LinkedIn messages or at trade shows. The hard part is finding the hook, the reason in your message that makes them want to talk to you. Teams now automate much of the list-building and outreach, which is what people call GTM engineering. The automation only helps once you know who to target and what to say.

Most of the cost is people. Many software companies split the work between sales development reps (SDRs), who book meetings, and account executives, who close them. Someone has to research each account, write to it and follow up, so each customer has to be worth that time. HubSpot’s founding CRO Mark Roberge puts the floor at roughly $10K a year per customer.

Inbound is often misunderstood

Inbound is when the buyer reaches out to you first. Marketers use the word for content that attracts buyers, and sales teams use it for any lead that came to them without prospecting. Either way, most people picture the same scene: someone lands on the website, likes what they see and books a demo.

The word comes from HubSpot, whose founders built a company in 2006 around the idea that a good blog could draw more interest than an ad budget, and sold the software to do it. Even there, inbound never worked alone. Roberge’s sales team grew to 450 people following up on the leads the content brought in.

Most buyers aren’t looking at any given moment. John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute estimates that only about 5% of B2B buyers are in the market at any given time. When they do start looking, most already know who they’ll consider. In a 2024 TrustRadius survey of more than 2,000 technology buyers, 86% of enterprise buyers already had a product they knew on their shortlist before they started researching. By the time a buyer fills in the form, most of their decision has already happened.

So where does the interest come from? Mostly from places your website never sees, and that are hard to track: a colleague’s recommendation, a podcast, a partner, a conference talk, a LinkedIn post and, more and more, an answer from ChatGPT.

CRMs usually record only the last step. They log the lead as organic search or direct traffic, and the website (and marketing) gets the credit.

A good share of Paperplane’s clients come through collaborators like my RevOps and UX partners or marketing agencies. If they fill in the contact form on the website, they could look like inbound in my CRM even though the referral did most of the work (good thing I track these!).

The website is where buyers confirm you’re credible before they talk to you, which is why traffic on its own doesn’t tell you much. The answer to “how do I get more inbound?” starts with how more of the right buyers come to know and trust you before they need you. Thought leadership and educational content are one way to get there. Partners, events, communities and even outbound are others. Each brings in interest a different way, and the website is where it shows up at the end. Which one fits depends on how aware your buyers are of their options, and what sources of information they trust.

Should inbound come first? A scorecard

Six yes/no questions can help you tell whether inbound should come first.

Many of the companies I meet have been told they need inbound, because that’s what marketing is supposed to look like: SEO so people find you, and paid ads that send them to a landing page with a demo form. It’s become the default playbook, and I think part of the reason is that it’s easy to measure. Traffic, clicks and form fills show up in a dashboard within days, so the work feels like it’s paying off, even when the deals come from somewhere else. The playbook works when buyers search, click and fill in forms. Many B2B buyers don’t. Before you put more into SEO and ads, it’s worth checking whether they fit how your buyers buy.

Answer each question with a yes or a no, then count how many times you said yes.

1. Do your buyers look things up online before they talk to a vendor?
2. Do they already search for products like yours?
3. Can one or two people make the decision to buy?
4. Do you have too many potential customers to list?
5. Is a customer worth less than $10K a year?
6. Do you have enough business coming in today to give inbound time to work?

When it’s a tie

With three yes answers, inbound could work, but it isn’t the obvious first bet. If a customer is worth more than $10K a year, start with outbound. It usually brings meetings sooner, and the conversations tell you what buyers care about, which makes your content better when you add it later. Most companies end up running both. The question is which one comes first.

If a customer is worth less than that, a sales rep won’t pay for themselves. You have two ways forward:

• Reach buyers through someone they already trust: a partner, a distributor, an industry association or the events they attend.
• Change the strategy. Pick a narrower segment, raise the price or sell a bigger offer, so each customer is worth a conversation.

I cover those other ways of winning customers in a separate piece.

Start with your buyers, your deal size and your timeline

So before asking how to get more inbound, look at how your buyers research and decide, what a customer is worth and how long you can wait for results. Whatever your score, the choice also decides who you hire first, what your CRM has to track and how marketing hands leads to sales. If you want an outside view on which one fits, that’s the work I do in go-to-market strategy engagements.

FAQ

What’s the difference between inbound and outbound sales?

With outbound, you reach out to prospects first, through calls, emails, LinkedIn messages or trade shows. With inbound, the buyer reaches out to you, usually after content, a referral or a search brought them to your website. The biggest practical difference is cost: outbound costs people, and inbound costs content and the time to make it.

Is this different for inbound vs outbound marketing?

Not much. Marketing and sales work on the same buyers, so the same questions apply. Inbound marketing is the content, search and social posts that bring buyers to you. Outbound marketing reaches buyers before they come looking, through ads, trade shows, direct mail or campaigns aimed at a list of target accounts. If your buyers don’t look things up online, inbound marketing won’t reach them either, however good the content is.

Can you run inbound and outbound at the same time?

Yes, and most companies do. What matters is which one you start with. If a customer is worth more than $10K a year, outbound usually brings meetings sooner, and the conversations tell you what to write about when you add content later.

Is outbound worth it for small deals?

Usually not. Mark Roberge puts the floor at roughly $10K a year per customer, because someone has to research each account, write to it and follow up. Below that, it’s often better to reach buyers through partners, associations or events, or to change the offer so each customer is worth a conversation.