PLG Weekly #2: Dreamdata's journey to Product-led Sales, Parabol's success in breaking down budget barriers
or How I learnt to stop worrying about PLG and learnt to embrace it.
Welcome to the second edition of the PLG weekly. Let's start by looking at Dreamdata - a company that made the transition from Sales-led to Product-led, and how.
💰 Dreamdata's move to product-led sales.
Dreamdata, a B2B revenue attribution product, recently moved to product-led growth. Here are the benefits they have seen so far:
An explosion of companies with a Dreamdata account.
A more tangible and logical sales process led by product and proof, instead of salesmanship and luck.
Higher conversion rates from sales qualified leads to won deals
Accounts being far in the onboarding process already on the day where they sign the contract (simplify this, please)
PLG is the buzzword today, and every company is looking at some form of PLG funnel. Dreamdata's approach to this is, by far, the best. Here's why we think so :
They first added a free trial CTA to understand how many of their customers want a free trial.
Whenever someone clicked on the free trial CTA, they manually created an account and sent it to them.
Although this is an example of doing things that don't scale easily, it allowed them to fix experiences and quickly provide an excellent free trial experience.
Take a look at their new sales funnel.
Signups have started to account for 37% of their SQLs up from zero :)
They have had to implement two changes to their sales process.
Start measuring PQLs: The factors they used are -
Who’s the company? Meaning do they fit our ICP?
Who has actually completed onboarding? Product proof first. Then sales.
Who is exceeding the limits set forth on our pricing page? Meaning it’s fair to reach out and say “we need to talk”.
How big is their ad spend? The urgency of getting a Revenue Attribution solution like Dreamdata up and running very often correlates with that.
The Hybrid Account Executive
AEs must know the product well as the lines between Customer Success and Sales blur. Typically in a sales-led funnel, Customer Success comes in after a contract is signed. However, during a free trial, AEs have to know the product thoroughly to convince the customer for a successful sale. Equip your AE's with product knowledge before switching over (or) adding a product-led funnel.
We’re looking forward to more learnings from Dreamdata as they continue their PLG journey.
If you want one why to switch to product-led sales, this quote from Dreamdata should convince you 👇
Doing product-led sales, for lack of better words, feels like a more honest way to sell. You don’t have to promise stuff. You don’t end up overselling. The product will be the proof you need to convince your customers.
🧑🏫Lessons from Parabol in scaling bottom-up sales.
A lot of PLG products are productivity tools that individual users adopt and make popular across their company. The challenge is that often individual users don't have a budget to pay for them and have a tough time getting a budget for new tools. Similarly, Parabol is an agile meeting tool for remote teams that help connect, reflect, and progress in less time.
Here are some of the key takeaways on how they're working through a bottom-up sales motion :
Usage limits instead of time-based trials.
For productivity tools, usage tiers are a better way to convert users than limiting the trial to X days. Parabol bases its free tier on usage limits and the number of users when they are indeed receiving value from the product.Be generous with your champions.
When your usage limits are breached don’t immediately revoke access to the tool. Use it as a bargaining chip to get your champions to help with intros into the company and navigating the buying process.
Sales folks at Parabol are empowered to extended additional time-bound, gratis usage as long as they are getting compensated in other ways.Don't be afraid to take the product away.
Sometimes, a purchase won't happen unless an organization learns what life is like without your productivity tool.
Parabol sometimes returns an account to the allowed usage parameters within their free tier, which creates the internal momentum necessary for an Enterprise purchase to be made.
They've closed 4X more enterprise accounts with this playbook.
If you’re building team productivity tools, you should apply these lessons immediately!
You’ve reached the end of this week’s edition and we hope you’ve enjoyed it. We’ll be publishing every Wednesday and if you like what you read this week, please subscribe and share with anyone who might be interested in PLG.