Earlier today Stuart McLeod tweeted they do inside sales combined with face-to-face events for his startup Karbon.
I’ve seen several startups follow this same strategy with strong results and I expect more to emulate it. Inside sales is great for all the reasons talked about before (see Rise of the Inside Sales Rep). Only, it doesn’t have the same human element that comes with being in-person that expensive field sales provides. Face-to-face events act as an efficient way to build stronger rapport and connections that are required in B2B sales.
Here are a few more thoughts on inside sales plus face-to-face events:
- Inside sales is used to both close deals (account executives) as well as drive prospects to demos and face-to-face events (sales development reps)
- Running events in the major NFL cities covers the population centers so that a large number of prospects are within a short distance of a program
- Stronger relationships result in better communication, feedback, and experiences (B2B products are much more dependent on people helping people than most technologists like to admit)
- Modern tools like Attend for B2B events combined with Pardot for marketing automation help orchestrate the face-to-face programs
Look for more B2B startups to employ an inside sales plus face-to-face events approach as the core to their customer acquisition strategy.
What else? What are some more thoughts on the inside sales plus face-to-face events customer acquisition strategy?
David Cummings on Startups 
Right out of my Dot Com playbook.
What minimum price point do you think the product needs to be to justify face-to-face events?
Hi Maggie, we have customers with Inside Sales models that are running strategic hosted events with average sales prices ranging from as low as 10k(ACV) up to 100k+. The key is to make the goal of these events pipeline acceleration as opposed to lead generation. Getting your prospects in the room with sales reps, executives, and customers is one of the most effective ways to close deals.
If you are a SaaS business and your ASP is on the lower end(10k), but your LTV is 5 years, then each deal you close from these events is worth 50k. If you take the right approach you should be able to attribute multiple deals back to these targeted events.