Trish, 
Completely agree that it should be a mix of inbound/outbound, sales generated and marketing generated leads. Surprised to see event and tradeshows being lower on the totem pole. I still believe their is value in meeting someone face-face.  
Any chance you can add tradeshows to the poll? Most of my deals in q1 were from a tradeshow I had attended during which I met the prospects. Additionally the best marketing leads I have received from email campaigns are typically leads that have been nurtured for a long time and usually are people who we had spoken with at least once previously or even better had met face-face in the past. My take on inbound leads is that you are rarely dealing with a decision maker so even if they are in their buying cycle, you are usually dealing with a lower level contact who is doing research and is hesitant to bring their boss into the decision making process so your sales cycle is longer. By cold calling and getting to a decision maker sooner, you can accelerate your cycles.  
 
Great event last night. Thanks to Glance for hosting. 
Brian

In my opinion wise telesales does not disregard any mean of communication. I think you need always a combination of soft and hard Intelligence. Soft are: email, campaign, events, webinar, etc... 
Hard is: getting in touch with customer by telephone  
In my view Webinar, events, mailing are a good way to engage the customer into a deeper discussion and better qualification. So at the end the best way to qualify opportunities is still the good old phonecall.

@Brian - sorry I missed "tradeshows" on the poll. I have added it.

A blend is a must, and one big, "has to be earned" source of new business is referrals. I'm kind of surprised this was left off the list!

I think you're being a bit too proactively defensive on this one, Trish.  
 
Not many people are saying that outbound marketing doesn't work anymore. They are saying that it is waning in effectiveness at a rapid rate.  
 
Would websites, webinars, social networking sites and email be on this list 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago? Would they be rated as high last year or the year before?  
 
Wouldn't outbound calls, tradeshows and direct mail be 3, 4s and 5s a few years back?  
 
Every company should be doing outbound sales to their target market. But, there is a huge disparity between the reality of the market today.. Most buyers are using the web to research and find services/products, while very few companies have figured out how to scale their inbound lead generation or the inside sales apparatus that goes along with that.  
 
Of course, anyone that blogs about this stuff is on the bleeding edge, maybe drinking a bit too much of the kool aid. And I know that you get "inbound lead generation", but are you backing the wrong horse?

I get what you are saying Pete and I do consider myself part of the "outbound mafia" - and proud to be a card carrying member. But, I did not publish the original research and if you look at our poll, outbound is still the number one lead source as rated by sales reps. So, our opinions aside, this is what sales people think. 
 
The horse I am backing is that of "unified marketing" where inbound and outbound merge intelligently. That is a bet I know I can win for my business and for my client's businesses. 
 
Always good to hear from your Pete, you always make me think. See you at the races!

Agree, Trish. Intelligent mix of both is essential- push and pull, inbound and outbound, ying and yang. I've forwarded to my sales team for their votes.

Interesting, because outbound calling is not at all our #1 source of leads. Our website and blog attract so many, we don't have time to call everyone. 
 
Jeff Ogden, President 
Find New Customers "Lead Generation Made Simple" 
http://www.findnewcustomers.net

LOVE this intel! This is so interesting! Thanks Trish!

@Trish. 
 
Any business that's not doing an intelligent mix of a) what worked for them in the past (outbound) and b) what the market is saying is increasingly critical (inbound) should be slapped around.  
 
Whether you do the slapping or I do the slapping doesn't matter too much to me. I think we're on the same exact page there.  
 
However, I don't think we should just ask salespeople what they're doing. We should be helping salespeople tell their marketing team what they should be doing.  
 
You and I both know how salespeople leverage social networking online. They work LI like they work a room. It's just slightly more efficient for them, but for most not as efficient as cold calling a target list. The ones that are good at online networking turn connections into sales opportunities. However, companies would be 10x more efficient if their sales and marketing teams worked together to leverage social media, blogging and seo to attract traffic to landing pages where people convert into leads that then can be nurtured by marketing and sales into opportunities. We both know this process is 100x more scale-able, measurable and predictable for CEOs than what's happening now.  
 
Let's fight that fight. Let's enable salespeople to fight that fight. They need more ammo to walk into their marketing team to demand that they do the right activities to deliver warm leads.  
 
Meanwhile, you can tell people to use their auto-dialers and zoominfo databases to cold call smarter too. It's not mutually exclusive.

Trish, I don't know if I'm regular, but I guess I'm an old salesman. I thought about answering on my blog, but I'll start here. I do some of the inbound marketing stuff. I blog, read and comment. I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. I'm still a salesman. I don't cold call unless I need to show somebody how to do it. I can use LinkedIn and have a sales conversation today. I can contact a client, get a referral and have a sales conversation today. There are a several other ways that I can have a sales conversation today and if I have a sales conversation today, I have a lot better chance of selling something than if I write a blog article (and I've been blogging for a while). 
 
So, if someone is struggling and they need revenue sooner rather than later, focus on getting help with outbound. You'll get faster results. If you've got time every day, enough money so you can handle no revenue growth and can do it for 6 months to two years, get inbound help. It's easier and once you get it rolling, it becomes exponential.

we get most from outbound telesales, but it's because 1. we do the other stuff so poorly 2. my boss asks for 80 dials per day. Brrrrr...now THAT's cold! We had a call blitz and made 50 calls each over 3 hrs.....150 calls, 0 appts. 
 
Answer: keep calling! and keep looking...for a better opportunity....and they wonder why retention is so low.  
 
 
 
At least with a Webinar I might learn something, with the phone, anyone who's somebody's hiding or has unpublished company phone. Cool thing about the phone, employees don't need to know how to spell. Which is why tele- is abbreviated....

A combination is best, and it should be tuned towards the product/service the company selling. But Outbound Calling will always be at the top because of the sales intel it gives on a prospect, period.

A mix is certainly still the way to go. It is hard too imagine though that an outbound call is better than and inbound call, intuitively, that does not make sense

I would say the ratings of various lead sources depend largely on your marketing/sales model as they did in my last two companies. One was an enterprise sales play and web leads were 'OK' but not as good as outbound prospecting. The second was an internet download a trial and follow up with inside sales model. The best leads (both according to sales and close rates) were people who downloaded the product trial. 
 
I think this supports your point Trish - this isn't a one size fits all world and broad generalities aren't really helpful in designing an effective campaign.

@Kevin Conklin 
 
I have a problem with your conclusion that inbound marketing wouldn't work in 'enterprise sales' based on your experience w/ one company.  
 
The enterprise sale because it is higher price and higher margin (hopefully) enables an outbound outside sales model. The lower cost saas based model requires an inside sales model. 
 
But, that does not mean that inbound marketing is less effective (when done right) for an enterprise sale. I think Trish would even say that inbound lead generation and inside sales are playing a larger and large role in complex high ticket sales.  
 
In order to generate warm sales ready sweet spot leads, you must treat the "website" as multiple sources including: SEO, PPC, email, referring links, social media, etc. Within each source, there are then more sources. For example, within SEO, there are multiple keywords. Offers, landing pages and calls to action matter too. In order to generate leads, a marketer must identify the exact sources that generate the right leads. Then, do more of that. Less of the stuff that generates the "ok" lead. They should also do 'lead segmentation and 'lead nurturing' to move a lead closer to being warm, rather then sending all leads directly to a sales team.  
 
Comparing a shitty inbound marketing strategy with cold calling with a targeted list is like putting a dog in a horse race.

Pete, I will let Kevin speak for himself but I don't think he meant that inbound didn't work it just didn't get the sales process launched as quickly as in the scenario of downloadable trial. And, if that is the case, he is correct. 
 
 
 
In enterprise sales with multiple decision makers it is rarely your ideal contact that visits the website. Yes, you can use activity as an indicator of interest but you still have to do the hard job of finding your contacts, having relevant conversations with them and launching the sales process. But yes you are correct in saying inbound and inside sales are playing an ever increasingly larger role. 
 
 
 
Love your analogy about the dog in a horse race but unfortunately not all sales processes are created equally. We are not in a one size fits all world and that is especially true when it comes to sales and marketing. 
 
 
 
PS - If you could provide contacts at enterprise sales companies that have "rock on" inbound strategies in place that launch the sales process, I would kill to interview them for this blog!

I don't disagree with anything you said, Trish.  
 
Since very few companies are great at inbound lead generation YET, I feel the need to correct misconceptions. Sorry, if I was too frontal, Kevin.  
 
I've asked some people if they'd be interested in getting interviewed, Trish. There seems to be a few that are interested. I've sent them your way.  
 
Also, here's a list of the most successful HubSpot customers.

Wow! Guess I should have gone into more detail in making my point.  
 
First let me say I am a big believer in inbound marketing and actually prefer the inbound SaaS or downloadable software and inside sales model to the enterprise sale by a huge margin. We spent quite a lot of effort in my last gig building an inbound machine that doubled bookings quarter over quarter for multiple quarters. Over 90% of our opportunities came from inbound and we worked every angle we could think of for SEM, SEO, social, referral, measured everything and continuously optimized for best and fastest conversions at multiple levels in the funnel. So I certainly wasn't trying to compare 'shitty inbound' tactics with cold calling. I don't even believe in cold calling. 
 
My observation was more in line with a side conversation that Trish and I had in which we were lamenting the tendency of some to push any model blindly without considering the specifics of a companies go to market. My observation is that the relative merits (as well as the quantitative conversion rates) of different lead sources depends largely on your go to market model. 
 
Second let me say that my characterization of the lead source as 'ok' was a reference to the survey that started the discussion. The survey was directed at sales persons (not the most quantitative bunch in the world). In our enterprise model the sales people would respond that those leads were 'ok' but not as good as what they would come up with on their own. Now I'm a marketer at heart and take those type of comments with about a pound of salt - but that was how they would have responded to the survey. In fact, what we observed was that eventually the conversion rates to 'opportunity' or 'close' were better for inbound leads but they took longer and hence to an enterprise sales person were just 'ok'.  
 
Thirdly, since I was successful in achieving our objectives in both companies, I feel qualified to express those opinions. I advise all my clients to quantitatively measure conversion rates as far through the sales process as possible and invest in their lead sources according to which produces the most money in the shortest amount of time. Certainly inbound marketing is a major focus of what I do for both enterprise and 'new model' clients. But one would be naive to rule out any approach that sales believes is working without qualitative data. 
 
Lastly, even though in my last company our goal was 'zero outbound' I have to point out that your statement equating outbound to cold calling is erroneous and misleading. I'm sure you would also agree that not all warm leads are purely the result of inbound sources.

Great clarification and dialog, Kevin. Thanks for elaborating and sharing.  
 
I think it's time for Trish to get over the fact that HubSpot pushes inbound marketing over outbound marketing. It's like expecting Google to push the dewey decimal system or something.