6 steps for starting product-led sales in B2B
For many B2Bs, the best salesperson has become the product.
Buyers now want greater control of their buying journey. They want to find, try, and even purchase products on their own, without having to take the salesperson's word that their product is the right one for them.
Product-led sales is the strategy that focuses on the product itself to drive sales, rather than relying on traditional sales techniques such as cold calling or demos.
The approach has become increasingly popular in recent years, with companies like Slack, Dropbox, and Zoom using product-led sales to achieve rapid and sustainable growth.
This popularity is an indication that the world of SaaS has matured, and the buyers within it have a new way they want to experience software.
To learn more about the ins and outs of doing product-led sales as a B2B company, Steffen was recently joined by the brilliant Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow, Esben Friis-Jensen.
What does it mean to be a product-led business?
Let's dive in with some definitions about what it means to be a product-led business.
During our chat with him, Esben defined it in two different ways.
1. The first way is how most people would define it, which is as a comparison to the traditional sales-led model.
In the traditional approach, you would request a demo, get a demo, have conversations back and forth, and then finally you get to try out the product.
With product-led you flip this on its head, by starting with the product and moving from there - with the emphasis being on the quality, value, and experience of the product.
2. The other way to look at it, is to see it as a cultural mindset for the whole company.
Everyone thinks about the product first in all that they do. No matter which area you are involved in in the business - you always ask yourself “how can the product solve this problem”.
This means that every member of the go-to-market team from SDRs and Account Executives to Account Managers, Customer Success, Solution Engineers, and Marketing, can drive revenue through product usage insights.
Kicking off Product-led sales
Before you begin your journey down the product-led sales path, the first thing you need to do is to make sure it’s actually a good fit for your company (it’s not a strategy that’s suitable for all!).
A product led approach is ideal if you have a simple product that any potential customer can learn to use. The lack of human guidance in this model means your product must be able to be easily understood, and convert customers with little outside assistance.
Many startups begin off in a product led growth fashion, simply by focusing on creating the best product possible and getting someone to use it.
Sometimes it can be a bit more of a challenge to make product-led sales happen though.
For example, if you’re defining a new market and have to educate the customers then you can easily find yourself slipping back into a sales-led approach.
Where product-led sales is great for smaller businesses that have a shorter sales cycle and is especially beneficial for B2B companies in Saas, sales-led is often a better choice for software companies that are more complex and/ or target enterprise organizations.
Implementing Product-led Sales
1. Focus on creating a great product
The first step to implementing a product-led sales approach is to focus on creating a great product.
This means investing time and resources into researching your market and customers to understand their needs and pain points, and using this information to create a product that solves their problems in a unique and compelling way.
A great product will not only make it easier to acquire and retain customers, but it will also help to generate organic referrals and word-of-mouth marketing, which are crucial for a product-led approach.
2. Make your UX and UI super simple and targeted
The user experience is a huge reason why customers will stick around after trying out your product, and a strong UX will help keep your users logged in and renewing their subscriptions.
The faster they find value in-app - the less friction you will experience in the sales funnel!
3. Nail the self-service onboarding experience
One of the key principles of product-led sales is to provide a self-service onboarding experience. This means making it as easy as possible for customers to sign up for and start using your product, without the need for a salesperson.
To achieve this, you’ll need to focus on creating a user-friendly and intuitive onboarding process that guides customers through the key features and benefits of your product, and encourages them to start using it right away.
The onboarding experience is how you turn a first-time user into not only a long-time paying customer but someone who will recommend your product to others.
It's also the most challenging part of PLG, so give it the attention it deserves!
4. Offer a free or low-cost trial
Another important aspect of product-led sales is to offer a free or low-cost trial of your product. This allows customers to try before they buy, and experience the value of your product for themselves before committing to a purchase.
The length and terms of your trial will depend on your product and market, but the key is to make it long enough for customers to get a good sense of your product, but short enough that it doesn’t become a burden or drain on your resources.
If you’re a new startup starting out then make sure to have a free trial from day one; you miss out by not having one and by having it there from the get-go you won’t need to do big changes later.
When you open up your product you can get more people in, and with that comes the potential to make more money as you move away from only selling to your friends.
5. Focus on customer success
Customer success is a critical component of any product-led sales approach. This means investing in resources and processes that help customers achieve their goals with your product, and providing excellent customer support and service to ensure they have a positive experience.
To achieve this, you’ll need to establish clear metrics and goals for customer success, and invest in tools and processes that enable you to monitor and measure progress towards these goals. You’ll also need to build a team of customer success professionals who are dedicated to helping customers get the most value from your product, and who are empowered to make decisions and take action to ensure their success.
6. Leverage data and analytics to optimize your sales funnel
Finally, to make your product-led sales approach a success, you’ll need to leverage data and analytics to optimize your sales funnel and drive growth. This means tracking key metrics like user acquisition, engagement, retention, and revenue, and using this data to identify areas where you can improve and optimize your approach.
For example, you might identify that a particular feature or action is critical to driving retention and revenue, and focus your messaging and resources on encouraging customers to use it.
Finishing thoughts
On the whole, product-led sales can be a great strategy for avoiding unnecessary sales calls and wasted time - many people don’t need these sales calls, as when you understand their product you just want to check it out yourself!
An important thing to keep in mind though, is that while most PLG companies start with no sales reps, it's a myth that there’s never a sales team involved.
However, when doing product-led sales your focus is on putting the product first, which means that the role of the account executive and customer success is likely to change.
Commonly, sales and CS will become more of a nice-to-have rather than a must-have, and you might change to having just 1 team - product experts.
These experts can help drive the account to become larger, and help convert where there is doubt.
Esben bio:
Esben is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow (a code-free onboarding platform), as well as the Co-Founder at Cobalt (a Pentest as a Service (PtaaS) platform).
As well as being a skilled entrepreneur, he brings with him a background as an Accenture consultant, with 3+ years of experience in test and deployment management of global IT implementations.