PLG is meant to empower your sales team, not replace them
The three key ingredients you need to build a powerful product-led sales motion
Today, we're diving into a topic that has become increasingly popular but also incredibly misunderstood.
The misconception is that PLG exists to make your sales team obsolete. But here's the truth: PLG and sales teams can and should co-exist, even thrive together, creating a harmonious duet that elevates your business.
This is what we’re going to breakdown in this post 👇
Product-led growth = Building a product that can sell itself.
Product-led sales = Building a sales pipeline on top of a self-serve motion.
The goal isn’t to replace sales.
The goal is to leverage the product to allow sales to focus on high-value activities and convert leads more effectively.
The three key ingredients you need to build a powerful product-led sales motion:
1. Teaching sales how to work with product data
2. Creating internal feedback loops
3. Cross-functional alignment
Let’s unpack this.
First off, let's address the elephant in the room.
There's a widespread idea that the goal of building a product “that can sell itself” is to replace the need for a sales team. This is far from accurate.
The purpose of PLG isn’t to replace your sales team but to empower them to focus on what they do best, which is closing high-value and more complex deals, expanding accounts, and building long-term relationships with customers.
Product and sales is a relationship that’s not just co-existent but mutually beneficial.
Let’s take a step back for a moment to understand what it even means to build a product that can sell itself and why it’s only step one.
When people talk about a "self-serve" product, there's often a misconception that it simply means giving users access to the product and letting them find their way around. While that's part of it, a successful self-serve motion is far more comprehensive and nuanced.
A successful self-serve motion starts with intuitive onboarding that quickly shows users the value of your product, not just its features.
It includes resources like FAQs, video tutorials, and chatbots to solve problems 24/7. Users can easily give feedback, helping you to continually refine the product.
Plus, smart design anticipates users' next steps, whether that's an upgrade or another solution, aiding your sales team in unblocking, upselling and cross-selling.
So, self-serve isn't just about initial access. It's a comprehensive, user-friendly ecosystem that evolves with your customers
Beyond simply offering free tiers, a true self-serve approach ensures that your product intuitively demonstrates its value, guiding users seamlessly from initial signup to potential upgrades, all without requiring manual intervention or guidance.
It’s important to mention here that a complete self-serve cycle is more valuable than a 'perfect' one that needs human help.
Why?
Scalability: A self-serve model that's complete on its own is highly scalable. You can handle more users without proportionally increasing your employee costs. Introducing human touchpoints, even for 'perfection,' limits how quickly you can scale because it directly ties growth to manpower.
User Experience: Users often seek immediate solutions. A self-serve system that provides a full experience from start to finish keeps users happy by delivering instant gratification. Adding manual processes, even if they’re 'flawless,' can introduce delays and lower user satisfaction.
Operational Efficiency: A complete self-serve system lets your human team concentrate on what machines can't do: complex problem-solving, relationship-building, and custom solutions. If you make a 'perfect' system that still requires human touch, you dilute this focus and divert resources from more impactful activities.
Awesome, now that we’ve cleared that up let’s get back to the world of Product-led Sales.
First, we make sure our product can sell itself.
Then, we build a sales pipeline on top of that self-serve motion.
To make this PLG and sales partnership fruitful, there are three essential ingredients you need:
Ingredient 1: Teaching Sales How to Work With Product Data
Sales and product teams often work with vast amounts of data, but these valuable data sets tend to remain isolated within their respective domains.
Breaking down these data silos enables the development of transformative metrics like Product-Qualified Leads (PQLs), which have the potential to revolutionize the sales process.
Regular cross-team workshops are the starting point for defining PQLs and other key performance indicators. But to truly harness the power of this collaborative approach, your organization must establish the right infrastructure to track and use product data dynamically.
This could involve implementing advanced CRM systems, real-time dashboards, or other data visualization and distribution tools that can be shared across departments. The goal is to make data not just accessible but also actionable.
By closely aligning sales and product teams—and arming them with a dynamic data infrastructure—you enable a form of "situational awareness" that goes beyond static reports. Teams can respond in real-time to emerging patterns, customer behaviors, and market trends.
Further, the uncovering of unique "micro-moments" in customer interactions can serve as powerful triggers for sales engagement and product refinement.
Ingredient 2: Creating internal feedback loops
Feedback isn't merely commentary—it's actionable data that can fuel growth across every aspect of your business.
While each department has its own angle and focus, combining these multiple perspectives can yield comprehensive insights that are greater than the sum of their parts.
But for feedback to be effective, you need an infrastructure that allows for smooth, real-time communication.
A mere suggestion box won't cut it.
Implement an internal system that makes sharing feedback across departments easy and systematic. This could be a shared digital dashboard, regular inter-departmental meetings, or even daily/weekly slack/email digests.
The point is to make the transfer of crucial insights as frictionless as possible - Make it simple for every team to contribute to and extract insights from this collective knowledge pool.
A system that collates feedback from multiple sources enables a form of "collaborative wisdom."
Take this a step further by introducing a 'Voice of the Department' initiative. This idea helps to pull in special insights from each team and share them with the whole company. It's a way to make everyone feel like they're part of the big picture.
Ingredient 3: Cross-functional alignment
In any team, everyone has a position to play. The same goes for your company; each department has a unique job and brings something special to the table. Understanding this is the first step to real alignment and collaboration.
The next step is getting everyone to aim for the same goals. And for that, you need shared goals and ways to measure success.
First off, make sure everyone knows what each department does and why it's important. Hold cross-department meetings to share this info.
Then, work together to set shared goals, key performance indicators, or even one big "North Star" metric that everyone can aim for. These become your team's scoreboard, helping you track if you're winning the game.
When everyone knows their role and what they're aiming for, magic happens. The marketing team knows how their campaign success will help sales.
The product team understands how features they build will affect customer satisfaction.
Everyone gets how their work fits into the bigger goal.
This creates a sense of unity and makes everyone more effective. It's not just about individual performance but team performance.
Conclusion
To put it simply, PLG and sales teams are better together.
PLG is great at attracting and engaging a diverse range of potential customers and streamlining the entire flow for the right segments
Your sales team takes this relationship to the next level, diving deep to provide tailored solutions and close substantial deals.
It's not an either-or scenario but a synergistic alliance that enhances the customer journey while boosting your bottom line.
So next time you hear that PLG is here to replace your sales team, you can confidently say, "Not so fast. They’re actually the perfect duo."
Thanks for reading!
See you next week :)