Quarter in life as Head of PLG

🚀 A Quarter in the Life of a PLG Leader: Connecting the Dots of Product-Led Growth

As the head of product-led growth (PLG), the end of each quarter is a crucial time for reflection, analysis, and communication. It's an opportunity to showcase achievements, evaluate strategies, and set the stage for future growth. Here are the key concepts to reflect on for the quarter and how PLG contributes to the organization's success.

📊 Communicating Quarterly Achievements

At quarter's end, my most crucial task is weaving together our narrative of progress. It's not just about hitting sales numbers – though those matter tremendously – it's about painting the complete picture of our growth journey. Think of it as connecting the talking points across our PLG motion: sales achievements, product innovations, marketing victories, and the organic word-of-mouth and virality growth.

📈 Building on Previous Growth

Growth is all about building momentum. The true measure of success lies in consistent, quarter-over-quarter improvement. Key areas to focus on include:

• 💰 How can we boost and consistently hit higher sales targets?

• 🎯 Is a higher sales quota feasible next quarter?

• 💼 Which investments should we focus on for growth?

• 📣 How can we expand our marketing for rapid growth?

• 📝 How do we get more sign-ups and onboarding calls?

• 🔝 What can we do to improve upselling?

• 🚀 How can we increase activation rates from last quarter?

• 🏃‍♂️ Are we scaling faster than last quarter?

• 🔄 Have our marketing investments started that magical snowball effect?

• 🗣️ Is our product becoming the talk of the industry?

The real magic happens when we see more sign-ups flowing in, more onboarding calls being scheduled, and more users discovering value that compels them to upgrade.

🌞 Seasonal Considerations

It's important to account for seasonal fluctuations, such as the holiday-heavy Q4. We need to ensure we are front-loading any sales deals in Q3 or early Q4 to avoid the holiday season. Even in PLG, there is upsell seasonality.

🏆 Celebrating Big Wins that Matter: Magnify It

Some victories feel particularly sweet. For when we recently landed a customer through our PLG motion with the same ACV as our Sales Led motion. This wasn't just a win – it was validation that compliance software and large ticket sales can indeed be driven by product-led growth, disrupting traditional industry assumptions.

Highlighting successes like this is crucial for PLG team morale and organizational buy-in. That sales deal will not* be the last and only large sales contract from PLG. It's just the beginning!

🔍 Analyzing Marketing Numbers Behind the Funnel

A critical part of the role involves evaluating marketing spend and its impact:

• Marketing spend efficiency

• Assessing conversion rates from marketing channels

• Customer onboarding success rates

• Activation percentages

• Upsell conversion trends

• Growing collection of testimonials and case studies

• Virality metrics

• Analyzing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) ratios

🤝 Cross-Pollinating PLG to Sales-Led Motion

One of our most exciting developments is seeing how PLG strategies enhance our sales-led motion. We're taking the best of both worlds – self-serve documentation, interactive videos, lifecycle marketing, and tech touches – and using them to scale customer success across all segments.

Finding synergies between PLG and traditional sales: Sharing PLG techniques to improve efficiency in sales-assisted motions. And for the Sales Led motion to go up in the market, while the hybrid PLG motion can serve both the startups and SMBs.

📚 Learning and Adaptation

Not every quarter will be a resounding success, but each provides valuable lessons for growth and improvement. The key lies in identifying areas that need improvement, whether it's in product enhancement, advanced, paywalls, lifecycle marketing campaigns, or selling to existing customers. With these insights, we can prepare robust strategies for the upcoming quarter, addressing weaknesses and building on strengths.

This process of continuous learning and adaptation shows the resilience of the PLG motion, and its ability to evolve and thrive in changing market conditions.

🎉 Celebration and Recognition

Acknowledging the hard work of various teams is essential for maintaining morale and fostering a culture of appreciation. This recognition should extend across the organization, from the product and engineering teams who build and refine the product, to the customer support and success teams who ensure user satisfaction. The social media and marketing teams play a crucial role in brand building and user acquisition, while the PLG team members often wear multiple hats, contributing to various aspects of the growth strategy.

By celebrating these contributions, we boost team spirit and reinforce PLG as a collaborative and successful company-wide strategy.

🏁 Conclusion

The quarter in a life as a head of PLG is a time of reflection. It's about communicating growth, showcasing key learnings, and reinforce areas of improvements. As PLG grow, it becomes a more intrench product and marketing foundation as part of the organization strategy.

Read about Product-led Growth

1. Day in life as Head of PLG 🧢

2. Week in Life as Head of PLG 🎓

3. Month in Life as Head of PLG ⛑️

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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.