The P in PLG

What does Product truly mean?

Gary Chan
January 27, 2025

The Product in Product Led Growth: Your North Star for Success

Today, I want to share some hard-earned insights about the "P" in PLG (Product Led Growth). When people in your team hear "product-led," they often nod along, but what does it really mean in practice? 🤔 Let me share our journey on improving the “P” in PLG.

Slow Start: Sales-Led to Product-Assist

When we first started our PLG initiative, we were essentially running a sales-led operation with "product-assist.” Our self-serve onboarding was basic, our paywall strategy was minimal, and honestly, our sales pitch wasn't great – we didn't even know what truly triggered people to buy. We had what I'd call a "half-baked product" in terms of delivering a premium experience that could drive activation.

The Transformation: Making “P” (Product) the Star ⭐️

Our transformation required us to learn quickly. Instead of relying on human intervention to showcase value, our product needed to do the heavy lifting. Here's how we approached it:

1. Improving the Self-Guided Product Value Journey

We knew users must be able to experience their "aha moment" and reach activation without human intervention. Initially, we said "Yes" to customers who needed follow-up calls, learning from their challenges and objections. After improving our guidance, we said “No” to follow-up calls.🙅‍♀️ Instead, we sent self-guided documentation instead of scheduling calls. The goal became empowering users to navigate independently and quickly, discovering value on their own terms.

2. Building a Complete Product Support Ecosystem

To enable self-guided success, we need a complete ecosystem. This includes comprehensive self-serve documentation that covers all aspects of the product, instructional videos that visually guide users through key features and processes, and strategic email follow-ups that guide users toward activation. 📚

We had another Growth Product Manager who managed to scale the self-guided educational content and community.

3. Making Product Discovery Intuitive

We started with a linear user journey because it was easier to improve upon. 🧭 We added clear progress bars and indicators for activation milestones and later introduced optional goals for our customers, like completing security questionnaires or launching compliance pages for investors.

The Bigger Picture: Product Philosophy 🧐

Product Marketing as Trust Builder

Product marketing became crucial in building confidence and reassurance. We focused on demonstrating that the product delivers on its promises through social proof and testimonials. By lowering the barrier to entry, we enabled skeptical customers to experience value firsthand. 🙌🏼

Breaking Down Team Silos

The whole company is responsible for the success of the Product in PLG. The product team isn't the only team leading the Product – it's the full experience delivered by everyone in the organization. Engineering, sales, marketing, design, support, and all customer-facing teams build that Product experience. I believe any team can lead the PLG vision: Marketing, Growth, or Product. 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼

Making Product-Led Success a Reality

Now that we have the foundation in place, we were able to tackle:

Time to Value as the North Star

Time to value became our obsession. ⏱️ We believed shorter time to value increased the likelihood of purchase and referrals. We streamlined onboarding to create quick wins and ensured core functionality was accessible without complex setups.

Evolution of Support

While our sales and customer success teams remain crucial, we've shifted routine questions to self-serve channels and automated solutions. This allows our human touch to focus on complex, high-value situations where it matters most. 🙋🏻‍♂️

Creating Natural Value Discovery

Our product now guides users to discover initial value quickly and uncover additional benefits organically. Our new self-guided journey enhances satisfaction because now the experience is self-explanatory. The polished experience also enabled more handraisers (product-qualified leads) faster as they go deeper into the product. 🙋🏻‍♀️

The Path Forward

Product-led growth requires intentional design, comprehensive support systems, and a clear user journey. When users feel supported, experience quick time-to-value, and see a clear path to progress, we knew our product has successfully embraced PLG.

This isn't about eliminating human touch – it's about making our product easy to use and the experience scalable. Our product became the primary driver of word-of-mouth growth, while our small team focuses on high-value customers requiring additional handholding and customization. 👍🏼