Newsletter · Long read

Why, When, and How to add Sales to your Product-Led Growth motion

Elena Verna · elenaverna.com Free Advanced

The clearest thresholds anyone has published for this decision, plus the warning that matters: the pipeline your new sales team works was built by the product motion you are about to defund.

  • Verna's rule: add sales to product-led growth, never substitute it, no matter how good the first 100k dollar deal felt.
  • Sales starts earning its keep once average order value climbs above about 10,000 dollars and a buying committee appears.
  • Above roughly 1,000 employees, end users can no longer trial a rogue tool on their own, which is a sales trigger.
  • All product-led growth is self-serve, but not all self-serve is product-led growth.
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The question it answers

  1. When should you add a sales team on top of a self serve product, and how do you avoid breaking it?

Read with it

  1. A useful breakdown of the signals Postman used to decide a company was ready for a sales conversation, such as many developers... Reo.Dev Article · Long read Postman's Sales Playbook: Scaling Enterprise Sales Without Breaking PLG Reo.Dev
  2. Datadog's own VP of Marketing describing the dual motion and, more usefully, saying you have to actively reach out to the... OpenView Article · Short read An Inside Look at How Datadog Reached $500M in ARR (and Counting) Kristin Hillery
  3. Podcast · 26 min S6E1 - Product Led Growth ft. Ruchin Kulkarni, Co-founder of Toplyne.io Ruchin Kulkarni
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