Sales-Led Growth

Also called SLG

A go-to-market model where a sales team drives acquisition and expansion, as opposed to product-led growth, where the product sells itself through self-serve.

Why it matters

Sales-led growth fits higher-priced, more complex products where buyers need guidance, while product-led fits simpler, lower-priced ones. Many companies blend both, and choosing the right emphasis is central to go-to-market.

For example

A complex 30-lakh product is sold by reps who guide the buyer through evaluation, since it is too involved to sell itself.

Go deeper

Growth+Sales: The New Era of Enterprise Go-to-Market Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) · article A16z's framing of how modern enterprise software is sold: bottom-up product adoption layered with top-down sales, using companies like Slack, Stripe, and Atlassian as evidence. Essential context for deciding when and how to add real enterprise selling on top of a product people already use. Open a16z.com →

Related terms

Also in Starting Up

See how founders actually handle this on Getting your first customers, part of the Starting Up hub.

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