Welcome to the second edition of Breaking Inbound, your weekly deep-dive into inbound numbers and conversion rates across industries.
Oh, and a Merry Christmas to those who are celebrating 🎄🧑🎄
We’re just 9 days away from 2026 ✨
If you’re like most people, you’re probably thinking, “No more shop talk until January. I mean, who’s going to search for legal & compliance software right now?”
Spoiler alert: people are searching. Still.
In case you missed out on our previous edition (you can read it here), the second week of December was promising. The third week saw a slight dip in demo requests, but it wasn’t dramatic enough.
The conversations are still going on, and leads are turning into deals.
So before you completely log off and snooze your calendar, let’s dive into what the numbers are actually telling us.
Inbound Snapshot
This week saw a 12% drop in demo volumes and a 6% decline in qualified requests compared to last week; telltale signs of holiday slowdown. But conversion quality remained steady, with average qualification rates staying steady at 75%. Meeting rates dipped slightly, but still stayed steady at 63.8%. Fewer leads came in, but the ones that did are converting at nearly the same rate as before.
Segment Snapshot
Assumptions: SMB: <100 employees; Mid-market: 101–1000 employees; Enterprise: >1000 employees
Qualification rates held steady across all segments, while meeting conversion rates saw slight declines in SMB & mid-market. SMBs maintained their lead in conversions with a stable 76.6% qualification rate, though their meeting rate dipped slightly to 63.8%. Mid-market continued its volume dominance with 16,098 demo requests and 74.3% qualification rate. The story of this week was enterprise momentum: with a 6% jump in qualification rate and a 2% improvement in meeting conversion rates.
Industry-wise Meeting Rates
Despite the holiday slowdown, all industries maintained a baseline of converting more than 50% of demo requests into meetings. The standout performers were legal & compliance software and healthcare, both posting meeting conversion rates above 70%.
Manufacturing, retail & e-commerce, and financial services held strong above the 75th percentile. On the other end, support software took the biggest hit with a 10.5% drop from last week, and developer tools, HR, IT & security, and travel struggled, falling below the 25th percentile for the week.
Funding Stage Analysis
SMB segment
- Seed-funded companies received the highest number of demos this week, but their meeting conversion rate declined to 59.7% this week.
- Bootstrapped companies improved their meeting conversion rates to 61%.
- Series B companies maintained a steady meeting conversion rate of 64%, while improving on their qualification rate by 8%
- Despite receiving lesser demo requests, Series A companies have maintained steady qualification rates at 77%, with their meeting conversion rates improving by 5%.
Mid-market segment
- Public companies maintained their momentum this week with a 76% meeting rate
- Series A companies continued to receive the highest demos this week, improving their qualification rates to 78% and converting 59% of their demos into meetings.
- Series B companies maintained steady qualification rates of 70% & meeting conversion rate of 63%.
- Series D companies improved their qualification rates & meeting conversion rates to 54%.
- Seed companies maintained 77% qualification rate & 60% meeting conversion rate.
Enterprise segment
- Series D maintained 80% meeting conversion rates, highest in this segment
- Series B received the highest demo requests, improved their qualification rate to 89%
- Series E had the second-highest meeting conversion rate of 74%
- Series C improved its meeting rates slightly to 58%
Top Performers
Legal & compliance emerged out as the top performer this week, with a 73.2% meeting conversion rate ✨
TL;DR
- Overall demand softened this week, with demo requests falling by 12% and qualified pipeline dropping by 6%.
- Segment-wise, there was just a minor change in the qualification rates, and a slight dip in meeting rates for SMBs and Mid-market
- SMB remained the most resilient segment, holding on strong with qualification rates of 76.6% and sustaining a 63.8% meeting rate, despite a drop in demo request volume.
- Mid-market demo requests declined the most (13.5% decrease), but it maintained stable meeting conversion rates.
- Enterprise as a whole improved its qualification and meeting conversion rates, with standouts like Series D companies turning 7 out of 10 demos into meetings.
- Legal & compliance, healthcare, and education software improved their meeting rates, whereas support, travel, HR, and sales software saw steep declines.
While there’s a slight slowdown, demos and meetings are still happening. The holidays haven’t frozen your pipeline.
That said, every percent counts when you’re tracking meeting conversion rates, because it translates to revenue.
Wondering how much revenue you’re losing out on lost conversions? Get the exact number here.
We’ll be back with next week’s numbers. Until then, here’s to ending 2025 on a strong note! 😎
