Looking for inbound/outbound pipeline workflows & best practices.
Hi all,
Hope this will resonate with some of you and get a discussion going.
I'm very much interested about recommendations and tips regarding the best/most efficient way to handle inbound and outbound leads and deals on Pipedrive.
More specifically, how to accurately track inbound vs outbound performance all along the funnel.
How early - or late - do you input your outbound prospects on Pipe? As soon as there's a demo booked?
If so, how do you (easily) input the data from earlier in the funnel into Pipedrive?
Hopefully, you see where I'm going with this; i'm looking for best practices (hell, even playbooks) on how to drive your inbound and outbound funnels in Pipe simply and with accurate data.
Here are two specific examples of our case in Edflex and I'd be delighted to have feedback on this.
- We input outbound deals in pipedrive when a demo call is booked. A lead gets created, handled until a demo is booked, at which point we convert it to a deal in the closing pipeline. Before the discovery call is booked, everything is done from our outreach tool (lemlist, a very neat french tool i'd be excited to talk about:)).
- inbound deals are demo requests from our website and are directly input in pipedrive in an dedicated inbound pipe.
- This creates complications from a reporting standpoint because there's no way to track infos from the deal that's attached to the activity you're tracking (what a mouthful!).
------
I also wanted to create a dialogue around a second subject that I think will be of interest for everyone:
the best way to sequence activities on your inbound leads in order to do all of your pre-demo work from the activities panel.
I feel as though internal features aren't suited for this and haven't found the right method.
Going through Zapier showed some promise but it's quite time-consuming and prone to breaking. (think "find the deal=>find the user=>create the activity=>wait=>check the activity for updated owner, deal status, deal stage update=>create the activity=>wait... ad nauseum 
)
Hope to read from this lovely community soon,
Arthur (from Edflex in Paris!)
Comments
-
@Justin Stephens here is an expert, do you perhaps have some input Justin?
0 -
Mike van der Valk said:
@Justin Stephens here is an expert, do you perhaps have some input Justin?
Hopefully he and others can join in the discussion here @Arthur Le Tiec
0 -
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
0 -
Pavel Fyodorov said:
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
Just tagging you here @Arthur Le Tiec so you see @Pavel Fyodorov his helpful answer
0 -
Pavel Fyodorov said:
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
@Mike van der Valk , @Pavel Fyodorov ,
Thanks a lot, I've just now seen it, I'm ever so sorry for the delay ! :-)
Thanks for sharing. We've considered using the "lead" item as a pre-qual outbound item but shied away from it because of the lack of tracking available via Insights and lack of automation/workflow capability.
It might be time to give it another shot now that Leads have been worked on (even though i'm not sure they've added native capabilities to Leads, maybe just Zapier compatibility, which is still something).
follow-up question: are leads from the site handled by SDRs/IS in the sales funnel for qualification or is it something else?What do you mean by "get my emails to warm up " ? I'm afraid I'm not sure how to answer this.
Here is the process: we source prospects from Linkedin, Sales nav and other tools, and import them in Lemlist. From there, we launch an multichannel outreach campaign and pilot everything from Lemlist until the prospect marks interest. We then book a hybrid or demo meeting and create a deal in the Sales pipeline.
it does create friction because activity data isn't easy to get out of Lemlist and cannot be crunched easily with datapoints from somewhere down the funnel.
0 -
Pavel Fyodorov said:
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
We're currently working on integration leads with email and workflow and insights is also in the plans for sure!
0 -
Pavel Fyodorov said:
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
Hi @Arthur Le Tiec ! Thank you for the detailed answer.
Leads that we collect from the site (for now these are the people who left their contacts in the typeform) we also put into the Deals section of the Pipedrive where they go through the funnel.
Thanks for the description of your Lemlist experience, I will try how it works.
0 -
Pavel Fyodorov said:
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
Cool, thanks for the feedback Pavel!
Are they contacted and qualified by account execs or SDRs at this point in the funnel?I highly recommend Lemlist as an outreach solution. They have a 14 day free trial which you can compound with Phantombuster to create a small automated sequence rather easily.
If need be, i'd be happy to put you in touch with them, as they are our countrymen and friends :-)
Arthur
0 -
Pavel Fyodorov said:
Hi Arthur! I put all outbound prospects that I find into the leads inbox so I will develop them eventually. After they reply and show interest I will move them to the deals section and take them through the funnel. Inbound leads we get from the site go straight to the deals funnel. I wonder how do you work with lemlist - where do you get emails to warm up?
Thank you, Arthur! I will keep this in mind.
As for the funnel - inbound leads are handled by account execs. SDRs are focused mainly on the outbound activities. There are exceptions when incoming lead looks very promising and might require custom approach and solution.
0
