Product Led Growth owning Revenue

Product Led Growth as a Revenue and Growth Driver

As the head of Product-Led Growth (PLG), my days, weeks, and months are laser-focused on generating revenue through a self-serve model. This transforms how we think about product departments, and revenue generation.

The PLG Motion: From Free to Premium 🆓➡️💎

The PLG motion revolves around free customers who:

1. Sign-up ✍️

2. Superhuman Onboarding 🦸‍♂️

3. Get activated 🔥

4. Hit advanced features 🚀

5. Make a purchase 💳

This journey can lead to two outcomes: either they engage with a salesperson or opt for a self-serve purchase. Our goal is to evolve towards the latter, but this evolution requires a deep understanding of what makes self-serve possible.

Understanding Purchase Triggers: Building Trust and Assurance 🤝🔒

To facilitate self-serve purchases, we must identify the levers and triggers that motivate premium tier users to upgrade. These users often seek reassurance, especially when considering substantial investments. We're not dealing with small monthly plans; we're talking about large ticket items, annual subscriptions ranging from $7,000 to $10,000 or more, for growing stage startups. 

These startups are investing heavily in their future growth, often with the goal of meeting compliance standards like SOC 2, GDPR or HIPAA to close enterprise clients.

To support this journey, we focus on several key areas:

1. Reassurance and Onboarding: We provide extensive hand-holding, self-serve documentation, and video education so users feel confident through the process 

2. Community Building: We establish an supportive environment where users can learn from each other and share experiences — which is social proof 

3. Brand Development: We built out a strong brand presence that is trusted with reviews, and success stories, and that complements the product-led experience — and customers willingness to invest in us.

The Path to Self-Serve Success 🛣️

Our approach to achieving self-serve purchases involves:

1. Doing things that don't scale: We start by consulting and learning, identifying commonalities and patterns that drive purchases.

2. Maintaining a human touch: Despite moving towards self-serve, we recognize the importance of personal reassurance in closing deals.

3. Simplifying the purchase:  When the customer is ready to buy, the actual purchase becomes a matter of paperwork, accessible through a link in the app or via the admin panel. 

Even in a self-serve model, the human touch is crucial. Having a person to reassure clients and guide them through the process can make all the difference. Once they're ready to purchase, the actual transaction becomes a simple formality and trust.

Achieving a seamless self-serve purchase process is an iterative journey. We start by doing things that don't scale, learning from each interaction, and identifying patterns that drive purchasing decisions. This approach has led to remarkable successes, including one-call closes and 30-minute demos resulting in multi-thousand dollar annual contracts.

Owning Revenue as PLG

By owning revenue, PLG gains significant influence within the organization. This authority allows us to:

1. Direct marketing spend more effectively

2. Justify engineering investments

3. Focus on brand virality and word-of-mouth marketing

Our PLG motion allow us to impacting all of these parts of the organizations. Product and Growth team have had impact and are stakeholders, but now by owning revenue, and we also can make stronger influence on investing decisions.

Beyond Sales: The Upsides of PLG

While closing deals is crucial, PLG's impact extends far beyond direct sales. We focus on:

• Upsizing through testimonials and G2 reviews 📈

• Fostering word-of-mouth marketing 👄

• Encouraging user-generated content and case studies 📝

• Building an active community forum 🗨️

• Promoting user success stories on platforms like LinkedIn 🏆

This comprehensive approach creates a snowball effect, amplifying our reach and credibility in ways traditional sales strategies cannot match.

The Beauty of PLG

Product-Led Growth is undeniably a revenue team, but its influence reaches far beyond the bottom line. By rolling the snowball and doing things that don't scale initially. As we figure out the patterns and triggers, we can streamline and automate the process. This approach allows us to close deals efficiently, generate authentic social proof, and create a self-sustaining growth engine. 

PLG creates a sustainable engine for growth. The beauty of PLG lies in its ability to create a virtuous cycle of user trust and assurance, organic growth and viral growth, and streamline purchasing and revenue generation – the more revenue we generate, we can re-invest back to further accelerating the PLG flywheel.

Read about Product-led Growth

1. Day in life as Head of PLG 🧢

2. Week in Life as Head of PLG 🎓

or

Learn more https://www.youtube.com/@GaryYauChan/videos 

I write daily*** about my learning on launching and leading PLG. Feel free to subscribe.

I am Gary Yau Chan. 3x Head of Growth. Product Growth specialist. 26x hackathon winner. I write about #PLG and #BuildInPublic. Please follow me on LinkedIn, or read about what you can hire me for on my Notion page.