Hello and welcome to The GTM Newsletter – read by over 52,000 revenue professionals weekly to scale their companies and careers. GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund – sharing advice on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies and the insight of over 350 of the best in the game executive operators behind the fund. They have been there, done that at the world’s fastest growing SaaS companies.
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Covered today:
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Going from PLG to PLS.
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More on GTM for your eardrums.
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More on GTM for your eyeballs.
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Startup to watch.
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Hottest GTM jobs of the week.
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GTM industry events.
The Journey and Transition from Product-Led Growth (PLG) to Product-Led Sales (PLS)
In the early days, product-led growth (PLG) can feel like magic. Users discover your product, sign up, and before you know it, you have a growing base of enthusiastic customers – all without a sales pitch in sight. But as your company evolves and moves upmarket, there comes a time when the product alone isn’t enough.
Enter: Product-Led Sales (PLS) 🤝
Transitioning from PLG to PLS isn’t just about adding a sales team. Rather, it’s about rethinking how you approach growth, engage with customers, and align your entire organization.
Outlined below are the key elements of making this transition successfully – let’s get into it.
Why transition to PLS?
Signs it’s time to shift:
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Complex customer needs: When your customers start asking for more personalized support, custom features, or deeper integrations, it’s a signal that they’re ready for a conversation that goes beyond what PLG can offer.
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Moving upmarket: Targeting larger enterprises means dealing with longer sales cycles, more decision-makers, and a greater need for direct sales interaction.
But the biggest indicator? Your product is thriving, but you’re leaving revenue on the table because there’s no one to catch those high-value leads as they rise through the ranks of your user base.
Key challenges in the transition
Cultural resistance: Many PLG companies are built on the belief that the product is king. Introducing a sales team can feel like a betrayal of that ethos. Overcoming this mindset requires showing how PLS complements PLG, helping to unlock new growth opportunities rather than stifling innovation.
Defining your ICP: Knowing who your ideal customers are is critical. If you don’t get this right, you risk misdirecting your sales efforts. Refine your ICP regularly, and make sure it’s informed by real data and customer feedback.
The product-led seller is a different breed: In a PLS environment, your sales team needs to think and act differently. They’re not just selling; they’re educating. They need to:
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Listen first, sell later. Product-led sellers earn the right to sell by first understanding the customer’s needs and providing value through expertise.
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Recognize the signals. Train your team to identify when a user’s behavior signals indicate that they’re ready for more – whether it’s an upgrade, a custom solution, or an enterprise package.
Pitfalls to avoid
Assuming PLS is just a layer on PLG: PLS isn’t just a plug-and-play add-on to PLG. It requires a top-down shift in how your organization thinks about growth. Make sure your teams are aligned, from product to marketing to sales.
Neglecting ICP refinement: Your ICP is your guiding star. Without constant refinement, your sales efforts can become scattered and inefficient. Make sure your ICP is accurate, specific, and regularly updated.
Strategies for a successful transition
Start with a clear ICP: Look at your current customer base – who are your largest, most successful customers? What do they have in common? Use this information to refine your ICP and ensure your sales team is focusing on the right targets.
Involve the entire organization: Sales can’t operate in a vacuum. Your product, marketing, and sales teams need to be in sync, working together to create a seamless experience for the customer. Regular cross-functional meetings can help ensure everyone is on the same page.
Test and iterate: Start small. Pilot your PLS strategy with a subset of customers and gather data on what works. Use this feedback to refine your approach before rolling it out more broadly.
Adapting sales methodology: In PLS, the best salespeople are those who:
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Educate and empower: They focus on helping customers solve problems, not just on closing deals.
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Build trust: By providing value first, they build the trust necessary for a successful sales conversation.
Case study: Superhuman’s transition
Superhuman’s journey from a single-player, B2C product to a multiplayer, B2B solution is a great example of how to transition from PLG to PLS. Here’s what they did:
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Revised ICP: They identified that sales teams and customer success teams, who are heavy email users, were their best targets for expansion.
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Paid pilots: Instead of offering free trials, Superhuman implemented paid pilots. This approach not only created ownership on the customer’s side but also provided valuable data on how to scale the solution across the organization.
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Quantifying success: pre-post metrics: Superhuman used pre-post metrics to quantify the success of their pilots. By comparing customer productivity before and after using Superhuman, they were able to demonstrate clear ROI, making the case for full-scale deployment.
Other companies that successfully made the transition
1. Slack
2. Atlassian
3. Dropbox
4. Zoom
5. Airtable
6. HubSpot
7. Calendly
8. Notion
Tactic: Community-driven growth with sales follow-up.
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Community building: Notion initially grew through strong community engagement, with users creating and sharing templates. The sales team tapped into this community to identify power users within companies who could champion Notion’s adoption at the enterprise level.
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Account mapping: Notion’s sales team engaged in detailed account mapping, identifying potential champions within companies who were already using Notion, and then expanding the conversation to IT and decision-makers.
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Security and compliance: As part of the PLS transition, Notion developed enterprise-grade features focused on security and compliance, addressing key concerns that often held back larger organizations from adopting the tool widely.
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📹 Upcoming digital live event:
The Future of Outbound: An Ecosystem-Led Approach – September 24th at 10am PST / 1pm EST
👂 More for your eardrums
The GTM Podcast – subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
GTM 107: Fueling Growth with AI-Powered Marketing Experiments with Adriana Gil Miner
Adriana Gil Miner is CMO at Iterable, the AI-powered customer communication platform. Passionate about customer engagement, her leadership has contributed to Iterable’s success in helping brands like Redfin, Priceline, and Volvo deliver individualized, harmonized and dynamic communications at scale. Prior to her role at Iterable, Adriana held influential senior leadership positions at Tableau, where she significantly contributed to the company’s remarkable growth from $250 million to over $1 billion, culminating in the successful Salesforce acquisition. Her leadership also left an indelible mark on Qumulo, a data storage startup, and Artefact, with its spinoff—10,000ft—acquired by Smartsheet in 2019. Gil Miner’s 20+ years of marketing experience span prominent names like American Express, Digitas, and Weber Shandwick.
👀 More for your eyeballs
Lessons from going to market with the Solutions team at mParticle, outlined by Paul Mander. Paul built the pre and post sales solutions team at mParticle from 0 to supporting hundreds of enterprise customers. Along the way of selling and supporting a product as complex as a Customer Data Platform (CDP), he tackled some of the more common topics go-to-market leaders encounter as they build and scale their customer facing teams.
As a leader, put yourself out there and it will help attract top talent.
🚀 Startup to watch
Owner – listed on Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups list. This is a list of 25 U.S. venture-backed companies most likely to reach a $1 billion valuation. Of the list’s 225 alumni, 131, or 58%, became unicorns, including DoorDash, Figma, Anduril, Benchling and Rippling. 42 were acquired.
Tavus – launched the world’s fastest Conversational Video Interface. Developers can now build rich, real-time video experiences with digital twins that can speak, see, and hear. The craziest part is that you can see the magic directly on their website by talking to Carter, a digital twin.
🔥 Hottest GTM jobs of the week
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Senior Content Marketing Manager at UserEvidence (Remote – US)
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Enterprise Account Executive at Stotles (London – Hybrid)
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Sales Manager at Owner (Remote)
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Content Manager at Noibu (Remote)
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Business Development Representative at Document Crunch (Houston – Hybrid)
See more top GTM jobs on the GTMfund Job Board.
If you’re looking to hire incredible startup talent, reach out to our search firm partner as a resource: Integrity Power Search (IPS). They are also available to support candidates looking for their next startup opportunity.
🗓️ GTM industry events
Upcoming go-to-market events you won’t want to miss:
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Catalyst 2024: August 14 -16 (Chicago, IL)
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SaaSOpen: September 5 – 6 (NYC)
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SaaStr Annual: September 9 – 12 (Bay Area, CA)
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GTMfund Dinner: September 17 (Boston, MA)
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INBOUND: September 18 – 20 (Boston, MA)
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GTMfund Annual Retreat: October 4 – 6 (San Diego, CA)
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GTM Summit: October 14 – 16 (Austin, TX)
8 years ago, long before the media brand and even the fund, I wrote that my life mission was to: “spend my life solve interesting problems with interesting people and lift everyone up around me along the way.”
Grateful to be able to live that mission every day with GTMnow and GTMfund. Someone told me there was a lull in VC land over the summer…we’re definitely not feeling any signs of that, it’s been one of the busier months I can remember but loving every minute. Plus, event season is just a couple of weeks away.
Have a great weekend ahead!
Barker ✌️
