My fears leading Product Led Growth
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Congrats on the progress. Theres never a time or context when you should stop being close to your users and customers. In PLG its more relevant than anywhere since user centricity is a foundational pre-requisite for success.
When I led all things PLG at Snyk, one of our core growth principles was:
'Know the User' Be empathetic and curious about our users, their motivations, problems and behaviour.
If it's an interesting topic for you, I shared more about it in this post: https://www.plg.news/p/product-x-design-collaboration-in
When I led all things PLG at Snyk, one of our core growth principles was:
'Know the User' Be empathetic and curious about our users, their motivations, problems and behaviour.
If it's an interesting topic for you, I shared more about it in this post: https://www.plg.news/p/product-x-design-collaboration-in
My Biggest Worry: Hitting Sales Targets One of my main concerns was meeting our PLG revenue goals. Our objective was to make the PLG motion self-sustainable. Our sales team is moving upmarket towards bigger enterprise customers, so PLG is helping disrupt the market, generate brand awareness, and create some buzz against the incumbent.
Hitting sales numbers can be tricky, especially when you're giving away your tool for free at first. We had to figure out the whole journey for customers using our compliance automation tool. Teaching customers about compliance is already hard, and we had to guide them through the various paywalls, advanced use-cases, and pitch the sell to them as well.
Dealing with Challenges Getting the team on board with this uncertain journey was tough too. We had to learn as we went, which can be uncomfortable for people who are used to knowing exactly what to do.
I started talking directly to our customers to deal with these fears and worries of leading. I used the Superhuman onboarding process, which gave my team and I more confidence.
By talking to customers, we learned a lot. I took what I learned back to our team and executive leaders. We improved the product, improved our selling, and fixed our pricing. Soon, we started to see some progress.
Things Got Better As we kept working, we started to see tractions. More people were buying, and others were telling their friends about us. These onboarding calls helped alleviate our anxiety and uncertainties.
Lessons Learned Learn Quickly: PLG often requires a willingness to learn and adapt quickly.
Focus on customer engagement: Direct interaction with customers provides invaluable insights and builds confidence.
Iterate rapidly: Use customer feedback to continuously improve your product and strategies.
Communicate openly: Share learnings and challenges with your team and leadership to foster alignment and support.
By facing my fears head-on and focusing on customer engagement and continuous improvement, we were able to build confidence in our PLG strategy and ultimately drive success for our team and company.
In the end, doing things that didn't always seem efficient at first, like talking to many customers one-on-one, gave me and my team the confidence to overcome our fears. We learned that it's okay to be unsure at first, and that by working closely with customers, we could figure things out and reach our goals.