The role of outbound approach in scaling – can you make it without?

We regularly hear from founders who face the challenge of scaling that the outbound strategy doesn’t work for them: it takes too much time, the conversion rates are low, etc.

• What is the truth behind these statements?
• Is cold contacting and the outbound really dead?
• Or maybe they feel uncomfortable reaching out to cold leads being not fully convinced about their value proposition?

Is there a choice at all: can you scale and grow significantly w/o an outbound approach?

In the CEE region where we have small local markets, significant growth is only possible through internationalization. Moreover, if you have an innovative B2B solution, your potential clients, the early adapters are very likely located in other regions like WE or the US. If you consider to raise capital, your investors will also expect you to show an impressive growth and think in international outreach.

This means that though all founders first utilize their networks to win initial users, clients and hit the first revenue targets, from the first moment on they also need to figure out ways to reach out to „unknown customers” on „unknown markets”.

The good news is, that if you do it properly (and you can do it!), outbound strategy can be a solid foundation of your successful scaling!

We invited portfolio companies, VCs and outbound experts to find out different aspects of this „painful” challenge and discover their first-hand experience why and how to utilize the outbound approach to feed scaling.

Some key points we will raise via real life (good and bad) examples:

We proudly host:

Michel Henss, Tribe Leader Client Services, Neticle

His main focus is building up a solid growth engine for Neticle, the social listening startup that aims at becoming a market leader in CEE. Previously he built up sales organisations at other tech companies like Tresorit and has also an entrepreneurial background.

Nick Roberts, Senior Alliances and Partnership Manager, Cognism, a hyper growth USD 13M ACV sales technology.

He has seen first-hand how outbound sales has grown this business and now the partner program to USD 1M ACV. He has an engineering background, but mostly worked in sales and business development. He is also a founder of his own company.

Valeri Petrov, partner, Eleven Ventures, one of the most active seed stage VC firms in SEE / CEE. Based in Bulgaria, privately funded by tech and industrial entrepreneurs, with a clear focus on investments into tech startups. They are actively seeking promising investment opportunities in the tech sector.