Hi and welcome to the fourth episode. I'm your host, Vincent Jong, and today I'll talk with Ben Williams about how companies with a sales team in place can use PLG to drive efficient growth. This interview is part of my upcoming book called Product Le Sales. If you're doing sales today and are wondering how you can leverage PLG, then this book is for you. For early access, visit plgandsales.com. Now, let me introduce our guest for today. Ben is a product and growth executive with over 20 years of experience. He has had roles like VP of Product Le Growth at Sneak and VP of Product at CloudBees. Nowadays, he is an adviser to founders and product and growth leaders of growth-stage B2B startups. He's a self-confessed geek around all things PLG, building and scaling product and growth teams, and loop-based growth strategy. He also runs a successful newsletter on PLG called The Product Le Geek.

Hi, Ben! Great to have you today. To get us started, can you share some highlights of initiatives you've worked on where PLG—so, where product-led growth and sales were effectively being combined in a go-to-market motion?

Yeah, I think there's different ways to combine PLG with what I think of as a human sales motion. Most of the spotlight falls on the lure of a massive top-of-funnel, providing this never-ending pipeline for sales, but the reality is that a lot of ingredients have to be just right for that formula to be successful. The less often spoken-about motion is driving success within your existing customer base and leveraging that success to foster expansion opportunities. Almost all of my advising clients are building or have built some kind of hybrid motion to some extent. Some are what I think of as PLG-native and are layering on sales motions to scale to larger contract values and go up-market. Others have come from sales-led origins where PLG can improve the quality of their lead funnel, drive improved close rates, and in some cases, help them expand down-market.

I think the best and most well-known, and arguably most successful, example that I have would be from my time at Sneak. The entire motion from Sneak's inception was actually built around bottom-up adoption of the product as a means to drive companywide monetization. But the first examples of monetization actually weren't through the product-led route; it was through an outbound motion. That whole motion was very much improved by the addition of what was going on in the product and the intelligence and knowledge of what was happening in the product to drive pipeline and inform the sales process and the conversations that the sellers were having with potential customers. The founders understood that developers at the time were increasingly caring about security of their code, needing better tools, and desiring less friction than they had. What made Sneak so successful was that crazy focus on the end developer experience—not just in the product itself but in the go-to-market model. For those who know Sneak, much of the success has been fueled by product-led growth. This is an acknowledgment of the reality that most developers would rather not talk to sales folks. But at Sneak, we were really trying to build a massive free user base—not to monetize individuals there—but to make sure that when the need arose, they would pay for the product when they wanted to use Sneak in a bigger team or when they wanted to go from a personal use case to a business use case.

There were a lot of open-source maintainers using Sneak on their projects, and it was common for those devs who started using Sneak in open source to introduce it at the companies they worked at. So that whole notion of bottom-up adoption was fundamental to the strategy. In the early days, as is the case in most companies, sellers would try to speak with anyone who came through the product door that we could identify as being from a big company. I think that was generally okay in the early days at Sneak because the first sellers were super close to the product team, and through those customer conversations, a great deal was learned that helped shape the product's evolution. But that situation probably went on a bit longer than it should have before the process was refined out of necessity. As sign-up volume increased, we needed some kind of filter to help the sales team prioritize which prospects they engaged with.

At first, that model was based around simple signals: Has the account reached limits? Has a threshold been reached in the count of contributing developers, which was the licensing mechanism? Has there been a self-served purchase? There was a naive, non-scientific definition of activation that we broke down into what we called success levels, which scored differently. But over time, as we gathered enough behavioral usage data, we were able to confidently redefine that and replace those success level metrics with something that was actually predictive of retention and monetization. We integrated that into the product-qualified account scoring model.

One interesting thing to note is that there was never any pushback from the sales team in that context about the self-serve motion or potential cannibalization because they knew they'd seen historically that the bottom-up motion was just so important in fueling the enterprise pipeline. In fact, even at the scale that Sneak was when I left at the end of 2022, nearly half of all recurring revenue came from companies who started using the product in a really meaningful way before any kind of sales engagement. That was a metric I called "product-influenced revenue," and it was quite demonstrative of the impact that that bottom-up motion had on the overall revenue motion.

Yeah, and Sneak is an amazing example here. Like you mentioned something there—the product-influenced revenue—which makes me think right away about what metrics to look at. Can you talk a bit more about that one? Are there any others that companies need to look at when assessing if PLG is the right addition to their go-to-market funnel?

Yeah, there's a lot of questions in this that I think the answer might be—it depends. PLG has such a wide spectrum that how you track progress, how you track impact, and how you track success are really dependent on the focus and the qualitative goals you have for the initiative. You know, why are you doing this? If you're effectively solving a problem that end users deem super important, and it's painful enough for them to be actively seeking out solutions for, then the efficacy of your product-led acquisition motion will probably be something important to track. From a sales perspective, you'd probably want to look at the dollar value of qualified pipeline that's generated, as well as tracking conversion rates of that pipeline when compared with the outbound motion. Over time, you'd also want to compare things like LTV and revenue—net revenue retention—between the different pipeline sources. At Sneak, net revenue retention was something we tracked closely, but in the context of product that sales, net revenue retention was actually double-digit percentage points higher for customers that came through product usage versus the outbound motion. That was obviously a significant finding for us.

CAC and payback period may well be things you're looking to improve. You’d maybe want to cohort things like ACV, time to value, time to close, and so on. But you do have to just, I think, go back to basics and ask yourselves, "What are you trying to improve? What’s most important to you as a business?" The answer can’t be all the things, or at least not to start with. So, I think focus is really important—understanding what is most important to the business as you're embarking on this journey and setting your sights on improving that thing. From there, you can figure out what you need to measure to do that.

In the beginning, you already mentioned a few ways that PLG can help or can be combined with the sales team and drive value for a business. It's not only the customer acquisition side, but also, as you mentioned, other parts. Can you talk a bit about how companies can do that and what ways are available that they could consider?

There's a lot of variables to consider here. Trying to introduce a motion to drive bottom-up adoption and generate top-of-funnel isn’t going to work if there is little organic demand from end users. There has to be this user problem that is burning enough that those users are motivated enough to be out there actively looking for a solution to that problem. Without that fundamental dynamic, a product-led acquisition strategy is probably just not appropriate. That’s often the case for many enterprise sales companies—they’re solving big, meaty company-level problems and don’t have much focus on user-level problems. But they see the lure of strong top-of-funnel, even though it’s not really something that might be appropriate for them.

That being said, I don’t think you have to give up on that. Maybe there are adjacent problems that your technology could solve where there is that organic bottom-up demand, and you see perhaps a natural cross-sell or upsell path into your core use cases. It might just be that you're early, or the market you're serving isn’t developed enough. Educating a market to drive awareness and inflate demand is a tough task, but putting acquisition aside, it’s my strong belief that every company will need to become product-led in their approach to retention by delivering exceptional user experiences. The alternative is that those companies will eventually be disrupted by others that enter the market, provide the same value, but package it in a way that users love to use.

When your product drives strong usage, retention follows, and if you can build your monetization escalator effectively, you can find ways to generate more revenue from each customer over time. This could be through expansion to more users, with more consumption, or the adoption of additional use cases that you're providing. When you combine that product-led focus on usage retention with proper product instrumentation, you can arm the sales team with the right data and signals they need to farm the existing customer base for expansion opportunities. Letting the product take at least some of the load in nurturing opportunities, with sales harvesting them when those opportunities are ripe and not before.

A common pitfall I actually see with companies trying to introduce product-led motions into sales-led companies, and vice versa, is typically where intervention in an opportunity is premature. Defining a collaboration model that has patience at its core, and understanding the right signals in terms of the right time to engage, is really important. Establishing guardrails between product and sales can be really important too. But when it comes to integrating PLG into a traditionally sales-led organization, the most important thing is to be really conscious of the existing culture and not try to push up against it too hard.

I'm sure you’ve chatted with Franchesca from Amplitude, and I’m sure they’ve got war stories about that. The most effective way I've found is often to not disrupt the existing motion at all. It can be catastrophic if you try to change things wholesale before proving them out. Instead, I think it’s far more effective to form a small tiger team, have the right people involved—including folks from product, growth, sales, and data—offering lots of opportunities for feedback loops that inform the signals used by the model, the scoring, and the playbooks used by the sales team. Have that team accountable and responsible for go-to-market experimentation. Think of it as an experiment to figure out what works—what are the important signals, how should we score those signals, when’s the right time to engage with an opportunity coming from the product, and how should we engage.

It’s tempting to focus on all the different ways you can look at what’s going on in the product and all the different playbooks you might run—whether it’s expansion, new revenue, or the different arrays of expansion and churn prevention. But boiling the ocean is a recipe for disaster. Pick a playbook to focus on first and ignore the others for now. You'll get to them eventually. No process or scoring model is going to be perfect, but if you approach it methodically, you can ensure the best chance of iterating your way to something ultimately highly effective.

You mentioned in the beginning that you had the luck at Sneak of not facing much objection.

There wasn’t much objection from the sales team regarding this path, but that’s not always the case. Even if you're not trying to disrupt the status quo of the company, there might still be valid concerns, especially about how these changes will affect the results they’re currently seeing. Do you have any examples of how you dealt with that, or what might be a good approach?

I think building confidence across the organization is really important, and that starts with the executive team. Your executive team might already be aligned, or you could be a lone voice championing this shift. There are generally a couple of upfront approaches that are effective. First, start by making comparisons to successful applications of product-led strategies in companies with similar business models or market dynamics. These examples don’t have to be from the same industry; they just need to be comparable in terms of context. I’ve found that reaching out to product and growth leaders at companies with similar models is often helpful. They’re usually happy to share their journeys—what worked, what didn’t—and building a portfolio of examples like that can make the idea feel more achievable for your company.

The second approach is building out a model for your business. Yes, this model will be full of assumptions, but you need alignment about why you’re considering PLG and what the goals are. Having a realistic foundation for why and how PLG can help you achieve these goals is crucial. It's also important to consider alternatives: What if you didn’t adopt this strategy? That helps you present a more balanced view and avoids making it feel like you’re just cheerleading for a passion project.

When you approach things methodically, with a well-thought-out, well-researched case, it will inspire more confidence. It’s also useful to think of initiatives in this area as experiments—an exercise in learning how to grow. But be careful not to mistake this for a lack of commitment. PLG isn’t a quick fix; it’s a strategic shift that requires long-term commitment. Pilot projects can help build confidence on a smaller scale before you invest further.

One of my clients implemented a small product experience on their marketing site before deciding to adopt a premium strategy and create a full-fledged free plan and self-serve model. Identifying smaller initiatives like this can help you learn and build confidence before scaling up.

If you're in an organization with a strong sales culture, it can help to recruit champions from within the sales team who have seen PLG work elsewhere. These internal advocates can be instrumental in gaining acceptance and support for your ideas across the organization.

And as you mentioned earlier, focus is key. Don’t try to boil the ocean. To wrap up, how do companies decide where to start? How do they know which area will add the most value or is the easiest to approach first?

Well, as with much of this, it depends. But it definitely helps to have someone on your team who has experience across various hybrid go-to-market models. If you don’t have that expertise in-house, leaning on an advisor can be hugely beneficial. I’ve also talked about building a growth model. Doing so can help develop a shared understanding and alignment on your business's bottlenecks and constraints. This model will help you identify where PLG can make an impact and apply critical thinking: If we applied PLG here, what would that look like? Would it help alleviate a bottleneck or constraint? Do we have an acquisition problem, or should we focus on improving retention?

Additionally, you need to ensure the situational context is right. If you're focusing on acquisition with PLG, you need the market dynamics and user demand to be there. You can’t just build something and expect people to come if it's not solving a significant problem they’re already trying to solve.

So, the short answer is: it depends. But a good starting point is understanding your business model, identifying constraints, and clearly defining your PLG goals. Then, you'll have a better idea of where to start.

Great! Thanks so much, Ben. Before we wrap up, you also share a lot of your thoughts on your blog. You mentioned you published something today—can you tell the audience a bit about that?

Sure! My alias is The Product-Led Geek, and I write on my newsletter, which you can find at pg.news. I’d love for you to check it out, and hopefully, you’ll find it useful!

Thanks again, Ben. It was a pleasure having you here.

Alright, that's it for today. There were some great insights shared today, especially on the importance of having a good growth model. Focus your PLG efforts on driving key results that the company needs right now, and don't try to boil the ocean. These insights, along with more, will be included in my upcoming book on product-led sales. To get early access, go to plgandsales.com. Thanks, and have a great day! See you next time!