In this episode of the Growth Machines Podcast, host Vincent Jong speaks with Jesse Ervin, CRO at Nylas, about the company's journey from a sales-led approach to a hybrid product-led sales model over the past two years.

Jesse introduces Nylas and describes how the migration from traditional sales to a product-led growth strategy has impacted the company's sales, customer acquisition, and internal processes.

They discuss challenges faced, surprising insights, customer behavior monitoring, and adjustments made during the transition. Jesse also highlights the importance of a flexible approach, constant improvement, and focusing on customer self-service.

00:00 Introducing Jesse and an overview of Nylas
04:46 Challenges and Concerns with PLG Transition
07:26 Strategies for Sales Team Adaptation
11:30 Metrics and Outcomes of the PLG Implementation
17:10 Signals and Customer Interaction
19:32 Future Directions and Conclusion

In this episode of the Growth Machines podcast, host Vincent Jong speaks with Kristen Habacht, Chief Revenue Officer at Typeform, about integrating sales into a product-led growth framework as a company scales.

Kristen discusses the evolution of Typeform from a PLG pioneer to incorporating sales without creating artificial barriers for customers. She highlights the importance of customer success, segmentation strategies, and the role of tech partnerships.

The conversation also delves into the benefits of combining sales and PLG, such as improved NPS and revenue per rep, and touches on nuances like sales team incentivization and the relationship between product and sales teams.

Kristen concludes with advice on questioning basic assumptions to drive business inflection points.

00:00 Kristen Habacht's Background and Typeform Overview
00:48 The Evolution of Typeform's Product-Led Growth
02:54 Segmentation and Sales Strategies
06:51 Challenges and Counterintuitive Insights in PLG
09:50 Sales and Product Team Dynamics
16:31 Combining Sales and PLG for Success
19:50 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In this episode of the Growth Machines podcast, host Vincent Jong speaks with Sindre Haaland, CEO of SalesScreen, about the company’s nearly two-year journey to launch a Product-Led Growth offering.

Sindre discusses SalesScreen history, their sales gamification platform, and the challenges and strategies involved in shifting from a sales-led to a product-led approach.

Key topics include the importance of internal alignment, the role of different team members in driving the project, and early learnings from their beta phase. He also shares insights on balancing value in their freemium model and the backend complexities that come with PLG implementation.

00:00 Meet Sindra Halland: CEO of SalesScreen

01:01 The Evolution of SalesScreen

02:04 Transition to Product-Led Growth

04:10 Challenges and Strategies in PLG Implementation

07:32 Building the Essential Package

12:42 Beta Testing and Learnings

16:48 Final Thoughts and Future Outlook

18:08 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

In this episode of the Growth Machines podcast, host Vincent Jong talks with Laura Erdem from Dreamdata about their unique approach to combining product-led growth and traditional sales in their go-to-market strategy.

Laura delves into her role and the evolution of Dreamdata's sales strategy, from a sales-led model to incorporating a free trial product-led component. They discuss the trials and triumphs of this transition, the importance of understanding customer needs, and how personalized trials have become a key part of their success.

Laura also shares insights into how close collaboration between sales and product teams has become essential and unexpected learnings that have shaped their strategy.

00:00 Laura's Background and Dreamdata's Journey
01:55 Transition to Product-Led Growth
03:09 Sales and Product Integration
05:19 Customer Trials and Sales Strategy
09:53 Unexpected Insights and Challenges
16:29 Segmentation and Qualification
20:21 Wrap Up and Get in Touch

In this episode of the Growth Machines Podcast, Vincent Jong hosts Andrew Davies, CMO of Paddle, to discuss how Paddle went from a product-led model back to a sales-led model to end up in its current hybrid state.

Andrew provides insights into Paddle’s transition from a sales-driven model to an integrated product-led and sales strategy, the importance of understanding customer decision processes, and the challenges encountered in ensuring a frictionless user onboarding experience while mitigating risks.

The conversation highlights the need for a hybrid approach in scaling businesses. Andrew also shares his experience with adapting commercial infrastructure to support this hybrid model and tackling both internal and customer-facing complexities.

00:00 Andrew Davies' Background and Paddle's Mission

01:36 Evolution of Paddle's Go-to-Market Strategy

03:26 Challenges and Decisions in Product-Led Growth

07:02 Hybrid Sales and Product-Led Approach

10:00 Complexities and Learnings in Scaling

16:18 Final Thoughts

In this episode of the Growth Machines podcast, I speak with Susann Johansen, Head of Growth and User Experience at OneFlow, about how they introduced Product-Led Growth at Oneflow, a traditionally sales-led company.

Susans shares the evolution of OneFlow's go-to-market strategy, the challenges of implementing a freemium model, and the nuances of segmenting and scoring product-qualified leads (PQLs).

She also highlights the collaborative efforts between product, marketing, and sales teams to align on the right timing and approach for customer outreach.

Our conversation covers the varying success of PLG across different regions and the interplay of PLG with traditional sales in complex B2B purchasing processes.

00:00 Susann's Background and OneFlow Overview

01:00 Transition from Sales-Led to Product-Led Growth

02:03 Challenges and Strategies in Implementing PLG

04:48 Segmentation and PQL Scoring

07:13 Sales and Product Collaboration

10:08 Country-Specific PLG Effectiveness

14:08 Unexpected Successes and Final Thoughts

16:04 Conclusion and Contact Information

In this episode of the Growth Machines podcast, Vincent Jong talks with Yazan Sehwail, co-founder of Userpilot, about integrating product-led strategies with human touch for optimal sales and expansion.

Yazan shares Userpilot’s journey from focusing on one feature to managing complex product offerings, highlighting their approach to balancing free trials and demo CTAs based on the type of customer and their needs.

He discusses the dynamics between product-led motions and sales teams, emphasizing the importance of tracking user engagement and experimental approaches to post-activation feature adoption.

Yazan also speaks on the future of personalized user experiences powered by AI and hints at trends observed within Userpilot’s customer base.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:53 The Evolution of Userpilot's GTM Strategy
02:59 Balancing Self-Serve and Sales Models
06:27 Managing Sales Team Dynamics
10:14 Strategies for Expansion Revenue
13:54 Trends in In-Product Experiences
16:57 Future of Personalization with AI

On this episode of the Growth Machines podcast I speak with Mathias Thulin from GetAccept. He shares how they developed the Go-to-Market model for GetAccept going from sales-led to freemium and now a combination of sales-led and free trial.

As of today combines a free trial, an interactive product tour, and a book-a-demo option in an intuitive way. Depending on the customer profile, one or more of these options will be emphasized during the customer journey.

One of the things that was a big topic at GetAccept was ungating the content on the website. Mathias talks through this experience and how they learned that the more they gave away, the higher quality their pipeline became.

Mathias highlights the importance of understanding the maturity of your category when considering Product-Led Growth. If people don’t understand your product, they might be hesitant to sign up for it.

In a similar manner, we talk about the importance of the decision-making process: can your customer actually start using the product? In the case of GetAccept the adoption is almost always a top down decision, which is more challenging for product-led customer acquisition.

Regardless, Mathias advocates a product-first mindset, even if PLG is not the primary growth motion. He emphasizes that thinking product-first results in a better onboarding and software product altogether, which also helps other Go-to-Market metrics like sales conversions and retention.