Re-imagining Sales for the PLG World

Wait, what is PLG?

For the uninitiated — here is a quick note on Product-Led Growth. In simple terms, Product-led Growth (PLG) describes a go-to-market motion that puts the product at the centre of all the growth efforts. It relies on the customer journey within the product — making the product experience the primary driver of revenue growth, rather than sales outreach or marketing efforts.

The PLG motion has played a transformative role in shaping some of the fastest-growing startups in the world. Startups like Slack, Calendly, Twillio, and Dropbox have been able to grow faster and more efficiently by deploying the PLG Strategy. Each of these companies has built products that allow users to experience value firsthand, and in turn, convert to paying customers.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what companies pioneering PLG motion have been able to achieve:

source: Bessemer Venture Partners

Well, Why tell when you can show?

Hevo is an embodiment of the PLG motion and the fundamental trait of this motion is to deliver value to the user before expecting anything of value. This is why we at Hevo prioritize a short time to value. Hevo provides a self-serve free trial to all prospects that allows them to get into the product right away, derive value by experiencing the product hands-on, and even subscribe to a paid plan — all without having to speak to a human soul. Zero barriers.

We’ve seen that a powerful product experience is the strongest driver that has the highest impact on paid conversions.

In order to further empower the user to truly see the value of the product, we also devised a consumption/usage-based pricing model. The details of the pricing calculation are transparent and made available on the website. Customers can pay month-to-month based on their usage and don’t need to commit to annual contracts upfront. This further enabled prospects to appreciate the ROI of the product.

Given there is a maniacal focus to remove barriers and improve product experience, many times it may seem counterintuitive to integrate a Sales team to get the most out of the PLG strategy.

In our journey in building a Sales strategy driven by PLG — we realized two things.

1. PLG is not anti-Sales
2. Traditional Sales may not suit this motion. Sales needs to be re-imagined with the product journey and user experience at the centre.

In this blog, we have tried to summarize our step-by-step approach in re-thinking the sales process from Scratch to win in the PLG motion.

Step 1: Understanding Customer Journeys in a PLG World

Often, a prospect has two parallel journeys going on:

1. The Journey within the product — Most of the prospects sign up on the product with defined use cases in mind. They attempt to validate these use cases by exploring different features and functionalities. The path traversed to reach the destination has to be smooth — and there is a laser-sharp focus within Hevo to ensure just that.
2. The Journey outside the product — This entails the interaction that the prospect has with Sales and Pre-sales. We figured quite early that this second journey starts (prospects start interacting with Sales) only after the prospect has built a reasonable amount of confidence in the product. We also realized that there needs to be a strong effort put in by sales to deliver a surreal experience by having meaningful, contextual conversations add value to the prospect’s journey.

This newfound realization needed us to go back to the drawing board and re-think what Sales at Hevo would look like.

Step 2: Redefining the role of sales in traditional set up vs in PLG motion

In traditional sales, more often than not, the interaction with a Salesperson is the first touchpoint a prospect would have to make. Access to the company’s product/software is blocked until a salesperson validates the value that the prospect can bring in.

The role of the salesperson is to educate the prospect around the product, communicate value and convince them to explore the product.

In PLG — this is the complete opposite. The prospect dives into the product without really requiring any help. The product speaks for itself and convinces of the value.

In PLG, the role of the salesperson now changes from someone who needs to convince a prospect on the product value to someone who can be a consultant to the user throughout their buying journey. Here’s what the role for a salesperson looks like:

Step 3: Building Processes that Help Sales Win

In PLG, Sales has to be contextual. Additionally, there is a significant element of help that the customers need from pre-sales engineering and customer support teams to validate their use cases.

To aid the Sales team to get visibility of all these threads, we fed the product usage data and support data into the CRM system enabling personalized sales engagement with the prospect.

Before writing an email or getting into a meeting with a prospect — the salesperson knows exactly what are the touchpoints that the prospect has had with the product, the conversations they have had with our chat support, and the blockers they have faced within the product.

This detailed timeline of the customer furthest empowers Sales folks to understand the customers' pain points, unblock them, and drive meaningful conversations.

Step 4: Crafting an incentive Structure for Sales Folks to Increase their Outcomes

Another key aspect we needed to re-think is how we incentivize the sales teams to be the champion of their customers.

Traditional sales folks carry a quota for every quarter/year and have an incentive structure defined based on quota attainment.

In PLG sales, since there is not much control over monthly/annual sales. The pricing for the Hevo is layered — the base plan starts at a low nominal price, eliminating the entry barrier for the product. Customers have the liberty to upgrade to higher plans as and when the need increases.

Hence, we designed an incentive structure that compensates individuals on the number of conversions made — irrespective of the contract being monthly or annual. The value of the incentive remains the same even if the value of the deal is small.

In hindsight — this has been a huge motivating factor for a sales individual.

The Shift in SaaS Sales

With PLG — we have seen a shift in the Sales motion required to acquire and retain customers. In a nutshell, Sales teams of tomorrow need to be more systems-minded, product-oriented and deliver value to the prospect in each stage of the customer’s journey.

At Hevo, we are committed to building a world-class Sales team that does exactly this. Join the bandwagon — explore the open opportunities here: www.hevodata.com/careers