It almost always makes sense to not waste time on "dead" leads. Best to start there.
You'll probably get the highest ROI when you focus on the leads that are somewhat likely to convert (ie. you'll influence those sitting on the fence).
But if you're short of people and have lots of high-quality leads, you'll probably want to focus on the leads most likely to convert.
Back at my previous company (fast-growing SaaS), we ran an AB test where leads were split into six groups: half received sales touches and half didn't, and there were three lead score groups in both (low, medium, high probability to close). Working with the medium group gave the biggest uplift.
Which sales leads to focus on? We were in a unique position to answer this because we connect data from marketing tools like MailChimp with CRMs like Pipedrive, plus we track web visits.
Anything particular you were missing from the post? I'm the author and did my best to share everything that's relevant, but may have missed some parts.
I first started thinking about this in my previous job at Pipedrive. CRMs are like marketing software: all seem to have a very similar feature set. But if you looked closely you would see that Close.io was better at high-volume /SDR type work, Pipedrive was better at managing a sales pipeline (with perhaps fewer but higher value deals), some were better at contact management.
Same features, but founders had put together their unique blend based on their worldview.
This is a post in itself. But I guess the main thing here is to take time for crafting a value prop before the time you urgently need it. Even if it's not perfect, start using it. When it works, great. If not, have another stan.
How to do it? Talking to lots of customers helped. Having founders keep talking about product vision until it started making sense to yours truly helped - there was development both on their and my part. Being in the business for more than 1-2 years helped as I developed a better sense of what customers wanted and what competitors were/are doing. Also, basic market research helped.
Never meant these as "do all these 10 things, and nothing else". Every startup is different and no-one should tell you what 3 or 10 things you should do. Perhaps tips #11 should have been: take all advice with a grain of salt.
And indeed, these tips were of unequal weight and difficulty - and advice that people find useful is sometimes a light tip and othertimes an almost philosophical approach.
I am not sorry to hear you found this post as disservice - can't please them all. But it came from a good place, so you know.
One thing in addition to the product? The hustle in the beginning to get the product in the hands of the right people. Appsumo was part of it, but not a very big part of it compared to hundreds of hours that founders spent in pitching and "doing things that don't scale".
AppSumo promotion definitely played a role, but if I had to pick just 1 thing behind getting to 10k customers, this wouldn't be AppSumo. Furthermore, this wouldn't be any one thing.