You’ve built a phenomenal product. One that everyone (and their mother, brother, coworker, and friend) wants to use. More importantly, you’ve built your company around the idea that you are different. You live to serve your customer, to make a product that delights and excites and doesn’t get bogged down in procurement cycles and delayed implementations. You don’t want your company aligned around a boiler room, ‘always be closing’ sales culture.
We’re here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. Sales is not a dirty word.
Remind yourself of this: a sales team, by any other name, is still a group of individuals focused on acquiring and accelerating new revenue for the company. In product-led businesses, this often takes the form of customer experience, customer support and / or customer success. When approached in the right way, layering in a human sales effort into your product-led business can accelerate growth while maintaining envy-worthy unit economics.
But what should sales look like in a product-led company? The fundamentals of sales remain the same – it’s all about engaging the right people, at the right time, with relevant information. But the who, when, and how have to adapt to support a product-led business.
Who
You’re generating hundreds, maybe thousands of leads and creating great buzz, but are you attracting the right customers? You should consider three things here:
- Target market segment is as important as ever. Do you understand your ideal buyer? It’s more than LTV and CAC – it’s important to understand how you stack up against your competition, relative deal size, speed of adoption and the value you deliver to the end user. Any sales and marketing tactics you do employ should be targeted at this segment.
- Your product is a lead gen tool. A free product (should you choose to employ this PLG pricing technique) is offered to show value and build credibility as part of the sales process, but every lead is not created equal; neither is every customer. Leverage your knowledge of your ideal customer profile to point your resources at the right trial and / or free product leads and use your product to help identify those people.
- Let them come to you. Steer clear of traditional high-activity, dial for dollars, inside sales…