[pinkmuffinere]

> make sure that there’s a well-defined distinction between success and failure. Don't fall in the messy middle.

I agree this is the right thing to do, but it isn’t always possible to do for a given experiment. For instance, with the cold-calling example, how do you ensure that it’s either a smashing success or definite failure a-priori? Is there a principled way to choose the threshold number of conversions? Do you just pick an arbitrary number? What if the result is just below your threshold? With some experiments I think the only way to win is not to play. Happy to be corrected if anyone has a solution

[new2this]

I've built a few sales team for early stage startups, and invariably the question comes up: "Inbound sales is working. Will outbound sales work?"

The successful experiments I've seen look like this: hire 2 SDRs at the time, focus them exclusively on outbound, then measure their results to identify the CAC. Then, you can make a call if that CAC is something you want to scale.

The failed experiments look like this: the founder doesn't want to invest too heavily in something that might not pay off, so we hire 1 SDR and they have to commit 50% of their time to following up on low quality Marketing leads.

It's not so much about the number itself, but more about the experiment design that will give you clear results

[ben_jones]

CAC as in Customer Acquisition Cost if anyone else was wondering