What is your tried and true method of assessing an organization’s goals to determine the customized proportion of inbound to outbound leads needed for success?

Every organization is different, and I always start with looking at both historical data and benchmarks. Generally, the lower the average deal size, the higher the percentage of inbound leads should be. For example, if your ADS is low (let's say $5000 or under), it's not very efficient to have both SDRs and AEs spending time researching contacts and cold prospecting, especially since cold prospecting converts at low rates. In terms of time spent to get a deal, a large % of the deal size will be taken up by paying salaries. Similarly, it doesn't make financial sense to run 1:1 or 1:few ABM campaigns on these deal sizes because of the effort involved.

As deal sizes get larger, the percentage of outbound should increase. Once you get into the millions per deal, it makes a lot more sense to spend dedicated sales effort to research and prospect into accounts. At this point, it also makes financial sense to dedicate marketing resources to build custom campaigns and messaging for a 1:1 ABM approach.

Start with the business targets to understand what the goals of the business are. Slice those business targets by available segments such as: region, country, solution, etc. Then look at the historical conversion rates within each segment to understand what's worked in the past. Build your model off the historical data to find out where you should be investing. Now, put together a recommendation that invests in the highest performing channels in the regions with the best win rates.