Short answer is Not really Sales, but still within the S&M spend bucket.
1) Product-Led Sales (PLS): These are accounts that have already signed up to the product and might need a little nudge to convert (e.g., Free to Paid, MRR to ARR, Plan1 to Higher Plan). For early-stage companies, this function often falls between Product, Customer Success, and Sales. Traditional salespeople find it challenging.
2) Signal-Based Selling: This approach is leaning more towards Marketing (or even AI-based SDR). Marketing sets up signals (e.g., frequent visits to key assets like the homepage, pricing pages, repeat webinar attendance, repeat content downloads). Sales can use these signals to personalize their outreach and secure meetings. Traditional salespeople find this data-driven approach difficult.
Due to the larger time and money investments, these functions are typically found in slightly larger companies with a product-led DNA. and both of these typically touch multiple departments (Product, Market, CSMs, SDRs, Sales).
This is excellent, team! Thank you for doing this research and sharing it!
For the first charts that split out founder-led, product-led, and sales-led… would PLS and signal-based selling fall into sales led? I’m imagining so…
Great question, Dave!
Short answer is Not really Sales, but still within the S&M spend bucket.
1) Product-Led Sales (PLS): These are accounts that have already signed up to the product and might need a little nudge to convert (e.g., Free to Paid, MRR to ARR, Plan1 to Higher Plan). For early-stage companies, this function often falls between Product, Customer Success, and Sales. Traditional salespeople find it challenging.
2) Signal-Based Selling: This approach is leaning more towards Marketing (or even AI-based SDR). Marketing sets up signals (e.g., frequent visits to key assets like the homepage, pricing pages, repeat webinar attendance, repeat content downloads). Sales can use these signals to personalize their outreach and secure meetings. Traditional salespeople find this data-driven approach difficult.
Due to the larger time and money investments, these functions are typically found in slightly larger companies with a product-led DNA. and both of these typically touch multiple departments (Product, Market, CSMs, SDRs, Sales).
- Gururaj