Product-led growth (PLG) seems to be everywhere these days. There are many communities dedicated to it, and almost every other company I meet with is either considering it or has already decided that it’s right for them. Others are still contemplating. If you are in B2B SaaS, it is almost impossible to avoid the discussion, and rightfully so.

While you are debating whether or not it’s the right choice for you and your product, you need to remember that the decision is not always straightforward. Many companies feel that it is irrelevant for them, and while it might be true still, this is a conclusion that you want to come to after giving it the proper consideration and for the right reasons.

Here are three reasons that companies often use to explain why PLG is not a good fit for them. If these are the reasons you are thinking about as well, you should probably reconsider.

Note: if you have already decided to go with PLG and even started your journey, these tips might be useful as well.

We Are Already a Product-Led Company

This is one of the common misconceptions about PLG: product-led company and product-led growth are two different things. While you can’t do PLG without being and product-led company, the other way around is not necessarily true.

A product-led company means two things: first, is that your primary source of revenue is from selling your product and not from customization projects, training, and other potential services. As such, and if the company is truly committed to doing it right, it also means that the company generally sells the product that they currently have and not future promises. What I mean by selling future promises is not one-off commitments to close certain deals, but rather a general culture in which the company does everything to close every deal, the sales people would promise the customers anything they want, and the product and technology teams get it as an afterthought and have to follow.

In a product-led company, the product team has a strong presence in the business organization. Knowing that the product is the business, everyone wants the product to succeed, and the product team is expected to lead everyone in the right direction. Being a product-led company is a business decision that is manifested first and foremost through the organizational culture.

Product-led growth, on the other hand, is a specific growth model in which the product actually serves as the sales and marketing tool for its own growth. This, too, has its cultural and organizational implications, but it is a decision at a completely different level. It is still a very strategic, business decision, but much more concrete than the general decision that our company wants to sell products and not projects.

You can’t do PLG if you are not in a product-led company, but many great product-led companies don’t do PLG, so obviously it’s not a must. On the other hand, if you don’t consider PLG simply because you think you are already doing it because you are in a product-led company, you should think again.

Our Product Isn’t Suitable for PLG

That one might be true, but remember that the product itself can change. In some cases, the correct decision would be to rewrite significant parts of the product or even start a new one. Now, you might think that you can’t afford to rewrite your product, and you might be correct. But can you afford not to?

When you are immersed in your existing product, you might miss important signals from the market. This is true in general, but for PLG it is even more important. On one hand, PLG is such a dramatic change to the B2B SaaS industry, but on the other hand, the signals of whether you should go there or not could be hidden from you unless you actively seek them. 

It seems as if the decision to go with PLG depends on the product, but it actually depends much more on the target customers and their buying preferences. If your target audience isn’t willing to get products purchased by higher-up managers, it would be very hard to succeed that way. The thing is that you might already be successful, and I say that you still need to consider PLG. The reason is that the market is constantly changing, and people get used to buying things a certain way. If it has always been the reality that developers, for example, get their tools from an organizational decision made somewhere else, Slack came and changed everything. 

As soon as other tools start selling the same way – giving the developers an opportunity to try or use the product for free before a purchase decision is made – this becomes the new norm. They won’t necessarily tell you that they want PLG, but if you are asking them to show up for a demo conversation with a salesperson and your competitors simply lets them start now without additional fuss, your former successful reality now becomes a disadvantage.

It might be that PLG is not right for you, but you shouldn’t dismiss it just because your current product isn’t suitable for it or is selling well. As PLG becomes the new norm in many industries, you must seriously consider if it is relevant for yours, because the real signals that something is changing would typically come only when it’s too late. 

We Can’t Do Without Salespeople

It might be true, but you don’t necessarily need to give them up. While the ideal PLG model means no-touch sales (that is, no human interaction happens as part of the sales process and the customer simply purchases the product on their own), many successful PLG companies have sales teams. Large enterprise deals tend to close better when there is a person involved, but we need to understand exactly why. 

One reason is that you need the salesperson to convince the customer that the product would bring them the value that they are looking for. In many traditional enterprise sales organizations, this is truly the case: first, the potential customer sees a presentation about the product. Then, they see a demo. Next, they decide to go on a POC and check for themselves – but usually in a dedicated environment that lets them only feel the product rather than truly use it and get value from it. It is only after the deal is sealed and the product is fully deployed that the customer actually sees the value of the product first-hand. So you must have a salesperson to convince them to carry on in the process.

In the PLG model, the product demonstrates first-hand value to the customer from early on in the process, so you don’t really need a salesperson to do that for you. You might, by the way, need a customer success representative to help the customer get the most out of the product as they are already using it. 

The other reason that you might need a salesperson in the process is, in short, trust. Making an enterprise-level deal with your company is a major decision for your customers. It is typically a meaningful decision both in terms of budget and in terms of how deeply they will rely on your product and how hard it is going to be for them to replace it. So before they “marry” your product, they want to make sure they are making the right choice. 

In the PLG model, this decision should come more easily to them, because their employees are already using the product and enjoying it, and basically asked the managers to purchase it for them. However there is still typically negotiation to be made, a number of options that each might be relevant for the customer and it is the salesperson’s job to help the customer decide which one is best for them, and generally seeing that you are a company that they would be happy working with. This part doesn’t go away when you switch to PLG. While the desire is that most deals would close seamlessly without having a salesperson involved, there is definitely room for salespeople in larger and significant deals. Their role, however, changes. Instead of convincing the customer that your product is the best solution for them, they should focus on helping the customer make the right choices as to where to take it.

PLG is not for everyone, but everyone should at least consider it. If you decide it’s not relevant for you, make sure you do so for the right reasons and revisit the decision occasionally since the world changes and you don’t want to learn about it only when it’s too late.