
If you look at enterprise deals, for example, in most cases, the decision happens by committee, a lot of in-person meetings, getting on a plane, shaking hands, etc. But ever since COVID, you realize that it’s probably not going to be able to happen for a long time, like it used to, or you start need to think about the business differently. So, accelerating into a product-led growth initiative makes a lot of sense. But that doesn’t come without its complications. For example, as a customer, if you are used to signing up for a product and being onboarded by someone from the product’s customer success team, now you are going to create a free account yourself. Now, talking of how it impacts sales and marketing, going from being a sales-led organization to becoming a product-led growth organization, is hard. It’s hard partially because you’ve been a sales-led organization for such a long time. And, your product was always set up for being sales-led. For example, all your internal processes – the invoices, contracts, the way training happens, are all set to be triggered after a sale is closed. And most importantly, in a sales-led organization, the sales rep often controls what their prospect sees. When you transition into product-led, you’ll lose a lot of control. You are moving away from a situation where the sales folks were talking about the value of the product or the solution’s value, but now you have no control over what the prospect sees and how they perceive it. Now, the change is your marketing has to tell a story, which needs to be compelling enough for the prospects to create a free account on your product. Your sales team’s role is to get the prospects to convert their free account into a paid plan because the prospect already knows how the product works. Therefore, the customer conversations typically aren’t anymore about ‘how does your product add value?’ It moves to discussions such as ‘How do I do X with your product? Can you show me?’ It becomes a very different conversation. It doesn’t mean that there are no more strategic parts to that sale. It means that a sales rep plays a much more complex role than before because now it’s about more than being knowledgeable about the product and selling a vision.