4) Product-Led-Sales Driven Motions
Product Signals Will Drive Sales Motions
From experience we know that outbound leads behave differently to inbound ones, causing us to have different sales motions which are adapted for each model.
Inbound leads come ready to buy, but can come from a wide variety of segments. They tend to be smaller in contract value, but close more quickly. Outbound leads on the other hand tend to take longer to close, require more customer education, but often carry larger contract sizes to match.
In the world of product-led-growth our sales motions will have to adapt too.
SDRs who segmented markets based on firmographic information like company size, revenue, fundraising events, and new hires will have new information about product usage to play with.
You essentially welcome your prospect into your house, watch how they behave, and offer a better experience according to their behavior
Signals that inform sales teams to reach out will come directly from the product. Customer behavior inside your product will help indicate whether a customer is likely to upsell or expand users. Similar to traditional MQLs (marketing qualified leads), the product can offer PQLs (product qualified leads).
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Slack: 70% of customers send 2,000+ team messages in the first 30 days 2.
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Dropbox: 85% of customers upload 1 file in 1 folder on 1 device within 1 hour 3.
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HubSpot: 80% of customers use 5 features out of the 25 features in the platform within 60 days
Stages of Revenue Expansion: Seed, Land, and Expand
As we stated earlier, the traditional sales model captures the majority of value upfront in the initial contract value. Since PLG motions start with little to no value capture there multiple steps to unlocking the full potential of a customer.
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Seed: An individual user becomes engaged with your product, perhaps through marketing campaigns or viral networks. They’ll probably start on a freemium plan. Little to no sales effort will be involved here, the product should do everything to convert.
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Land: The product becomes relevant in the company. Perhaps multiple people are on a freemium plan and it makes sense to upgrade to premium enterprise features. At the “land” stage, value extraction happens via self-serve conversions to paid plans. The greater product adoption creates a land swell and momentum that can push adoption across the entire enterprise. At this stage, penetration risks stagnating without the help of a dedicated sales team.
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Expand: A dedicated sales team will leverage product signals to identify key stakeholders to work with. They’ll drive product adoption throughout the enterprise and negotiate with multiple stakeholders to enter into longer term contracts. The “expand” phase will become an exciting place to build a career in the coming years. Many of the playbooks here are still unwritten.