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In This Newsletter, We Will Talk About

Why do you immediately need to click "Interested"?

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Now we have covered that, let's tackle the today and what we have in store for you.

We spoke to about 50 Startups who have been selected by YC, Techstars and 2080 Ventures and today I am unpacking our findings on their Inbound Funnel

Some Quick stats for you

1st Killer - The Demo Request Death Spiral

​Calendly discovered that their traditional demo request flow was losing 60% of prospects before they even attended a demo.
Like most SaaS companies, they were using generic Calendly links that resulted in poor show rates and generic demos that failed to convert.

The Real Numbers:

• Before: 27% demo show rate (industry average)
• After optimization: 67% demo show rate
• Conversion impact: 40% increase in sales-qualified opportunities through websites that integrated Calendly as part of their CTA strategy

What They Did Differently:

Calendly introduced Routing Forms that allowed businesses to qualify leads before they booked a meeting. This feature ensured that only qualified leads were routed to the appropriate sales representatives, enhancing efficiency.

The introduction of routing forms led to a 100% increase in demos scheduled through inbound leads.

The Qualification Process That Worked:

1. Pre-demo survey asking about use case, team size, current tools
2. Instant calendar routing based on responses (enterprise vs. SMB track)
3. Personalized confirmation emails with custom prep materials
4. Calendar reminders with specific agenda based on their answers

Why do you think it worked?: ​
Instead of treating all demo requests the same, they created commitment escalation. Each step made prospects more invested, which dramatically reduced no-shows and increased post-demo conversion.

2nd Killer: The Qualification Quicksand

Introducing the MEDDIC Method

At one point, Figma had an engineering script that required basically this one customer at a time. It took around 30 minutes to convert from their pro tier to their organization tier, which is their kind of business enterprise tier at the time.

As Kyle Parrish, Figma's first sales hire, explained: "We started successfully as a sales team, getting a bunch of pipeline built up, but we have this massive bottleneck bandwidth constriction".

The Real Challenge: Traditional BANT qualification was killing their product-led growth motion. They were asking budget questions to users who were already successfully using the free product.

What They Did Differently:
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Instead of BANT, Figma focused on usage-based qualification:

Figma's engineers helped the sales team create a data warehouse, pipe in information from multiple siloed databases, group users by organizations, mark high priority accounts using Clearbit data, deprioritized closed-won accounts using stripe data, and lastly, score leads to reflect the likelihood of sales conversion.

The Qualification Process That Worked:

• Usage intensity: How many files created per week
• Collaboration signals: Number of team members using Figma
• Feature adoption: Which premium features they're trying to access
• Organization size: Clearbit data showing company growth stage

Why do you think it worked?​
​This data-driven approach allowed them to focus on accounts with the highest conversion probability while maintaining their freemium growth engine.

KILLER #3: The Decision Maker Mirage

Calendly knew that there could be 1,000 Calendly users at the same company, but their sales team wouldn't know it because they were not in CRM.

But they knew that by aggregating both internal and external data points they could see if there are multiple Directors or VPs using and looking for scheduling, and put together an advertising plan that targets that company to drive inbound leads.

The Data Integration:

• Internal usage data: Who's using Calendly and how often
• Clearbit intelligence: Company hierarchy and decision makers
• Intent signals: Which features premium users are trying to access
• Network analysis: Internal collaboration patterns

The Buyer Circle Strategy: Bringing back the efficiency point, how would they deliver on the thousands of prospects every month who want to talk to someone or get a demo in a sustainable way?
Luckily for them, Calendly had a routing product with its HubSpot, Salesforce, and Marketo integrations.

Their Routing Logic:

1. End users → Self-serve upgrade paths and product education
2. Managers → ROI calculators and team efficiency reports
3. Executives → Business case presentations and competitor analyses
4. IT/Security → Compliance documentation and integration guides

Why do you think it worked?
​Ultimately, they were able to increase the number of leads from the website by 50%. And they did that while decreasing the money they spent on lead generation, by simply improving the user flow to give prospects the precise next step at the right moment in time.

What you'll see next Friday?

• Story and Growth Hacks from an Industry Underdog on their road to a $1 Billion
• MOAT frameworks from the story of an Industry Legend (a New Segment at Beyond)
• Misfires and Failures of a Startup burning down the ground.

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✅ Detailed numerical framework with real-time spends and revenue details of these GTM frameworks.
✅ Competitor Analysis and Market Breakdown
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✅ Early subsidised access to our In-House AI Tools & More

I want to add more value to our subscribers and foster an ecosystem where we can set each other up for success and become a community that helps you grow.
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