As I’ve been getting more into sales and thinking about a sales strategy I’ve been listening to podcasts and reading books and articles on sales strategies for early stage companies. One of the podcasts I listened to yesterday was an episode of Lenny’s Podcast called “The Ultimate Guide to Product-Led Sales” with Elena Verna. I have obviously heard of the term product-led growth, but the concept of product-led sales was entirely new to me. I really enjoyed this episode and wanted to highlight some key takeaways:
- Product has gotten away from being responsible for revenue generation and that is a mistake.
- Product-led sales starts with product as a bottom up motion. Sales comes into the picture when the customer has been qualified as needing something more (likely an enterprise level solution) from the company.
- Top-down sales teams should not bombard customers when they first interact with the product – you only get so many chances to win over a customer and they’re less likely to respond until they see the real value of the product and believe that your product can solve a pain point for them.
- Companies that solely rely on sales and marketing teams to drive revenue are going to struggle to compete against companies with a product-led sales strategy.
While this episode and product-led sales motion are geared towards growth stage companies, it is important to think about these concepts, along with product-led growth, at the earliest stages of their companies. This is because you have to build your culture around this type of sales motion. If you build your company solely thinking about a top-down sales motion, it will be harder to later establish a Rules of Engagement for your sales reps that enables them to work closely with product on a product-led sales motion. Overall a great episode and worth a listen for anyone working on developing an early-stage or growth stage sales strategy.
