Moving from Inbound vs. Outbound to Allbound – Alex Olley, Reachdesk

Kimberly Conklin

Alex Olley, Co-Founder and CRO at Reachdesk, delivered a dynamic session at Inspire 2024, emphasising the future of GTM strategies with an allbound approach. Olley highlighted the importance of uniting inbound and outbound efforts, aligning teams around revenue goals, and cutting out tactics that don’t bring results. He shared a compelling story about how they used 6sense insights to refine their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), target their marketing more effectively, and prioritise accounts that showed genuine interest. 

Allbound: Uniting for Revenue 

Olley started by recounting his experience when he first joined a new business. Initially, everything looked fantastic—MQLs, clicks, and a humming marketing team. However, six months in, the company missed its revenue goal. The signals they were looking at were misleading, based on false metrics that didn’t lead to revenue. This scenario is common in GTM teams. The challenge is to turn all the ‘great stuff’ you’re working on into tangible revenue. 

The Harsh Reality 

B2B sales is a long slog. It rarely happens the way you plan and is often fraught with friction. Olley pointed out that companies often gate content, hold back on their product, send PDFs via email, and prevent people from talking to sales—things buyers don’t want. That’s why Olley believes in allbound— an approach where everything ties to revenue, creating alignment and removing friction. As Ted Lasso said, “If God wanted games to end in a tie, she wouldn’t have invented numbers.” 

GTM Strategy 1: Win as a Team 

Olley emphasised the need to create alignment. At Reachdesk, everyone’s comp plan, including marketing, is tied to revenue. If the entire team cares about hitting the revenue number, things tend to happen very differently and quickly. 

Epic Fail: Where’d All the Inbound Go? 

Reachdesk took the plunge and removed vanity metrics to face reality. The result? Inbound and MQLs dropped off, and outbound took a dive. The learning? Stick with it and give it at least six months. Focus on quality metrics, stage 2 conversion, win rate, and ACV. Improvements will happen. 

GTM Strategy 2: Forget About Credit 

Olley stressed the importance of driving performance through alignment. Don’t worry so much about who gets credit for what. Ultimately, it's not about attribution but about influencing revenue. Remove underperforming tactics and double down on what’s working. If it’s not working, forget about it. 

Epic Fail: Did Anyone Check the Ad Spend? 

Reachdesk neglected to look at the return on their ad spend, leading to suboptimal results. The learning? Measure the final gate and understand the ideal mix of channels (outbound, self-gen, etc.). Plan for desired outcomes based on where the budget is applied. 

GTM Strategy 3: Use Signals 

Olley discussed the importance of creating efficiency by moving from static territory maps to dynamic ones. Every AE initially had a massive account book, leading to unequal opportunities and misallocated quotas. By refining their ICP, using 6sense to drive targeted marketing and account scoring (6QAs), and tracking signals to see their in-market ICP, Reachdesk implemented account prioritisation, getting their BDR and AE outreach humming. 

Epic Fail: More Accounts, Please 

Reachdesk relied too much on BDRs, and AEs were slow to follow up on QAs. The solution was a 24-hour follow-up window and bi-weekly refreshes of account books. Training the team on immediate follow-up was crucial—don’t let hot accounts cool down. 

GTM Strategy 4: Removing Friction 

Reachdesk focused on immediate distribution, product tours, ungated content, shared pricing, and digital sales rooms. Removing friction means making it easy for buyers to engage. 

GTM Strategy 5: Better Together with Nearbound 

Olley explained how Reachdesk selected 10 key partners to improve win rates. Partner enablement and targeted account selection were key. If an account had tech overlap and intent data, it was a hot lead. The goal was to collaborate and win together. 

Epic Fail: Why Aren’t Partnerships Generating Pipeline? 

Reachdesk initially underestimated how multiple partner overlaps - three or more ideally - could impact their win rate. The solution was to educate the board and CEO on the importance of partner-sourced pipeline and to switch focus to the partners with the highest potential for future success (shared customers). 

Key Takeaways (inspired by Ted Lasso): 

• Try to win. Don’t try not to lose. 
• Be a goldfish (if something is not working, forget about it). 
• Remember you’re not in Kansas anymore (the world has changed). 
• Give them the white glove treatment. 
• Serve ice cream; it never disappoints. 

The essence of moving to an allbound approach is aligning every effort with revenue goals and eliminating friction at every step of the process. Do that and you’ll make both Alex and Ted proud. 

Reachdesk - ALLBOUND UNITING FOR REVENUE.pdf