Product led growth vs Sales led growth

Discover the main difference between PLG and SLG. And how soon to monetize your customers. Unlock my tip on a hybrid approach.

Author

Gary Chan
May 06, 2025

What’s the key difference between Product Led Growth and Sales Led Growth?

Product Led Growth (PLG) allows users to use the product by themselves and determine if the product fits their workflow. When users can do this independently, it’s a reduced friction and lower acquisition cost. The product itself, ungated, drives acquisition, activation, and retention and making the customer journey faster and more scalable.

Sales Led Growth (SLG) relies on hands-on human interaction, with sales reps guiding prospects through each customer journey stage. It is better suited for complex, high-ticket, or enterprise solutions where trust, customization, and negotiation are the priorities. The journey is more personalized but involves higher acquisition cost and longer sales cycles.

The main difference is when the customer converts to a paid customer. In PLG, user would go through product led growth bumpers to get onboarded and activated. Once activated, user would discover advanced use cases and hit paywalls to “encourage” user to pay.

While in SLG, the sales team work with the customer to close the deal before giving them full access to the product.

Is there a hybrid approach? 🤔 Can we use the best of the PLG approach and “speed up” converting / monetizing the customer?

We often converted free-customer to paid-customer over our onboarding call.

We conducted onboarding calls with our customers when they sign-up. These onboarding calls act as a “sales discovery” call and an “onboarding call.” We qualify the user by asking questions while we onboard. By the end of the onboarding call, we were able to activate the customer, which increase the likelihood for them to hit retention and expansion!

Best of both worlds! 🌎

Gary Yau Chan

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