3 misconceptions that will kill your PLG strategy

Free-trials, product's responsibility and no sales.

Product-led growth (PLG) has emerged as the go-to strategy for many companies in the SaaS world, but like every strategy, there are many misconceptions that can often lead to unexpected detours.

Today, I want to explore the top 3 that I see time and time again as a PLG advisor.

1. Self-serve = Adding a freemium/free trial

2. PLG = Product's responsibility

3. PLG = No sales

Let’s break them down one by one.

Beyond free models, self-serve means that your product can intuitively deliver real value and offers a clear path from signup to upgrade without any human touch points.

Just because people can try your product before they buy it DOESN'T mean it is self-serve.

Some SaaS companies let people try their product for free, hoping they will want to start paying for it.

The problem ❌
They forget to make sure their product can do everything a customer-engaging team member (Sales, Marketing, CS…) would normally do.

The solution ✅
Map out all the things that your customer-engaged teams do, and then make sure your product can do these things too.

For example 👇

Typically, sales or CS teams guide new clients through the onboarding process.

But now, you have to consider an approach where the product itself is the guide.

And so you need to provide things like intuitive empty states, product tours, checklists, and more, to enable users to experience your product's value without human handholding.

Some other important things that most companies forget to equip the product with are:

→ Articulating the Product’s Value Proposition
→ Retention and Subscription Renewals
→ Predicting Customer Behavior
→ Upselling and Cross-Selling
→ Personalizing Experiences
→ Collecting User Feedback
→ Educating Customers
→ Driving Conversions
→ Generating Leads
→ Qualifying leads

The list goes on.

It’s more than just adding a freebie.

Every department needs to be committed, aligned and understand their unique role and contribution.

PLG is a company strategy.

Many companies have asked me "So, who is actually responsible for PLG?"

It’s sales.
And marketing.
Oh and customer success.
Well yes, and obviously product.
(Engineering too 🤫)

Now, it is true that there should be defined roles and team/s that lead these efforts.

But, let’s get this clear.

❌ PLG is NOT a product thing.
✅ It's a company thing.

Every department needs to be aligned.

Every department needs to understand their specific role and how they contribute towards building a product that users love and more importantly need.

Poor team alignment will destroy your product led growth engine.

This means your teams need to work together.

• The interactions that sales has with customers is critical information for the product team to understand what user’s actually need.

• Customer success feedback needs to affect the next marketing campaign.

• Product’s analysis of feature usage and user journeys must be public company information that every department has access to, and it should affect their decision making.

These are just examples but you get the point.

Every team NEEDS to collaborate so they can:

→ Work toward’s the same goal, which is increasing value.
→ Build a product that meets the changing needs of their users.
→ Create powerful feedback loops that fuel the company’s decisions.
→ Co-ordinate resources accordingly so that everyone can work on their own areas without getting in the way of others.

Make sure each department understands their unique responsibility, and help them work together.

Building a product that can sell itself is only the starting point.

PLG is about leveraging the product to boost company-wide growth and monetization efforts.

Some examples:

Sales should be using the product to qualify accounts and build a pipeline built on self-serve usage.

❌ The goal is not to replace sales.
✅ The goal is to leverage the product to allow sales to focus on high-value activities and convert leads more effectively.

Marketing should be using product data to empower their next campaign with a more targeted approach.

❌ The goal is not to replace marketing.
✅ The goal is to leverage the product to allow marketing to actually show people the product rather than just telling them about it.

Customer success should be using the product to help users become more successful in the product without needing their help.

❌ The goal is not to replace CS.
✅ The goal is to leverage the product to allow CS to focus on more important accounts and solve common issues more efficiently.

These examples are just scratching the surface, but the same rule always applies.

The goal isn’t to replace, the goal is to empower.

Thanks for reading!

See you next week :)