The Effectiveness of Warmbound as an Alternative to Inbound and Outbound Models for Go-To-Market Teams
Analysis of 500+ B2B deals across SaaS, Fintech, and IT industries reveal that Warmbound, which focused on buyer signals, significantly outperforms traditional inbound and outbound approaches with double the close rates (12.8% vs 6.3%) and shorter sales cycles (33 days vs industry benchmarks of 69 to 81 days).
Thinking in Terms of Inbound vs Outbound is Hindering Growth
Let's address the elephant in the room: the Outbound vs Inbound funnel paradigm is broken.
Despite mounting evidence, marketers keep chasing outdated metrics, sales teams are staring down unrealistic quotas, and someone, somewhere is wondering why their 40-email nurturing sequence isn't pushing prospects further down the funnel.
Buyers aren't just ignoring our funnels - they're actively running from them. The buying decision making process is non-linear and buying intent can raise or lower at any time. But most journeys and funnels are set up in opposition to this reality.
In this analysis of 500+ B2B deals across SaaS, Fintech, and IT industries we look at what’s not working and how a new approach, Warmbound - which focuses on responding to buyer signals rather than relying on traditional inbound or outbound methods - significantly outperforms these conventional strategies
Why Traditional Inbound & Outbound Funnels are Breaking
The classic sales Funnel - whose origins date back to the other ‘20s - were an attempt to simplify and add structure to a complex and abstract process. 70% of buying and decision making activity is hidden from and unknowable to marketing and sales teams.
People don’t follow the neat stages from awareness to action like the classic funnel suggests, their intent to buy is always in flux. It’s less of a journey down clearly laid out steps and more like a spectrum where your prospects’ position is constantly shifting.
You can’t force someone to buy that’s on the wrong side of the spectrum. You have to wait until they are ready.
Exploring Another Approach: Warmbound
To examine the effectiveness of an alternate approach, I recently conducted a deep dive into 500+ B2B deals across SaaS, Fintech, and IT industries. I tracked where they closed, stalled, or failed.
I analyzed these results by which pipeline each lead was sourced from : Inbound, Outbound, and a third option, Warmbound - a new approach we’ve coined at Warmly that is a unified sales/marketing funnel.
Here’s how we defined a deal from each pipeline:
📝 Inbound: Any deal that started with a lead completing a form to request a demo.
📤 Outbound: A deal sourced through cold outreach to a lead with no previous engagement - done through cold calls, emails and LinkedIn DMs.
🔥 Warmbound: A deal that is sourced by engaging with a lead that has exhibited a buying signal - value page visit, return site visit, social engagement, etc.
Comparing the Performance Data of Inbound, Outbound, and Warmbound
The data analyzed contained 500+ B2B sales leads over a 90-day period (February–April 2025) across SaaS, Fintech, and IT. These were SMB to mid-market sized companies (50–500 employees).
We examined the close rates and sales cycles of these leads from the top of the funnel through Closed Won.
In addition, average deal size held constant across all three channels. So the differences we see in Close Rate and Avg. Days to Close was not impacted by deal size.
Close Rates Across Funnels
First, let’s look at close rates. We’re looking what percentage of the meetings first booked with an Account Executive (before being deemed a Sales Qualified Opportunity) end up Closed Won.
Warmbound deals closed more than twice as often as Inbound or Outbound (12.8% vs. 5% and 6.3%).
Industry average puts lead to close rates between 3-5% [1][2][3]. This aligns with the data in our dataset. Warmbound shows a greater than 2x increase in total close rates for either source.
Sales Cycle Across Funnels
Interestingly, in our analysis of the sales cycle, Inbound showed a 17 day longer time to close average than outbound. This can mostly be attributed to the fact with Outbound, while the conversion rates are lower, connects with you with the prospect faster, while with Inbound there is no human contact before a meeting is requested or booked. That leads to a higher chance for a pushed meeting and therefore a longer sales cycle.
When compared industry benchmarks, our Inbound showed relatively similar sales cycle length as the benchmark 69 days [4]. However, our Outbound data shows a far shorter sales cycle than the standard 81 days [5].
But either way you view the data, Warmbound deals close far faster than our averages and the benchmarks. An average of 33 days make it 36 days shorter than inbound and 48 days shorter than the industry average outbound sales cycle.
Why Warmbound Shows Stronger Results
Warmbound functions as a hybrid model that enables go-to-market teams to utilize the strengths of both Inbound and Outbound while mitigating their weaknesses. This shows in a couple of key areas:
Proactive vs Reactive Outreach
It’s well established that Inbound leads show much higher intent than leads sourced through Outbound, hence the higher close rate.
However, Inbound suffers from being a very reactive channel, it can take a while to wait for a form fill before engaging with a lead. While Outbound is very proactive and seeks to convert prospects that haven’t demonstrated any prior interest.
The signal-based approach with Warmbound enables sales to take a proactive approach and reach out to leads with intent levels that are equivalent to Inbound without needing to wait for a demo request.
Establishing Human Connection Quicker Lowers Sales Cycle Time
Depending on your the industry, up to 40% of Inbound leads will no-show to their first demo [6]. But for outbound, the average no-show rate is only 20% [7][8]. With Inbound, because there has yet to be a human connection, first meetings are easy to forget or deprioritize even when intent is high.
This delay can slow the sales cycle, rescheduling takes time, schedules may not align as cleanly the second round.
Warmbound moves the human connection process up in the process, before the demo, combining the higher show rates of outbound and the higher intent leads the much quicker sales cycle of Warmbound.
Refining your GTM Strategy with Warmbound
Warmbound is a simple yet powerful concept—responding directly to buyer signals rather than relying on hand-raisers or high volume outreach to generate sales. Marketing and sales teams looking to grow faster and more efficiently should consider utilizing a signal-based approach and adding a Warmbound motion to their go-to-market strategy.
Getting Started With Warmbound
To learn how to use Warmbound as part of your own go-to-market motion we have a library of playbooks to reference. Here are 3 powerful plays we use most often at Warmly.
🎥 Live Video Chat to engage high-intent users on website.
Set up notifications to alert your sales team when a high-intent user is on your website, so your reps can connect with them instantly while they’re still browsing.
See Full Playbook
📩 Automated Follow-up Messages Sent to De-Anonymized Website Visitors.
With Warmly, you can de-anonymize your site visitors, segment them, then orchestrate them into follow-up email and LinkedIn DM sequences that automatically send customized messaging based on their actions on your site.
See Full Playbook
♻️ Reactivate Closed Lost Deals
Connect your CRM to Warmly (HubSpot or Salesforce) to track Closed Lost deals and get notified when a lead from a previously lost deal re-engages on your website.
See Full Playbook
We aim to move to a fully Warmbound approach using our Warmly Platform by the end of this year and we’ve been helping our customers do the same.