Think before implementing Product Led Sales
All the steps I've done before building my first PLS engine so you don't suffer (too much)
Last week, I wrote about viral loops, one of the best ways to get the flywheel going for your product. I’m currently working on content around optimising an existing viral loop, so we can delve deeper into each step of the process and the (many) caveats you should be aware of when investing in one.
But this week, I’ve chosen a different topic: PLS (Product-Led Sales). PLS is a powerful approach for business growth, especially in B2B, but it’s not feasible for every company or product. Since this is a complex topic, I’ll keep this post short and focused on assessing your readiness to adopt PLS and what to consider before committing your time to it.
In future posts, I’ll dive deeper into how to build a PLS engine, discuss key concepts like incentives, compensation, CRM choices, and more. For now, note that I’m assuming you already have an in-house sales team. The decision on whether to have a sales loop at all is beyond the scope of this post (but will definitely come up later).
PLS: Restrictions Apply
PLS isn’t for everyone. As a combination of Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Sales-Led Growth (SLG), it can be both a powerful tool and a major headache. If your company isn’t mature on either the product or sales side (or both), you’re more likely to create friction and confusion rather than supercharge your growth strategy. In that case, I recommend starting by examining and fixing inefficiencies in both processes, as this will often yield quicker results.
If your company is mature enough, the next step is determining if your target market justifies this approach. For B2B, as
(aka GOAT) mentions in her presentation (video below), PLS is best suited for “middle-of-the-pyramid” segments. These are segments where the value at stake justifies a sales motion, but the complexity isn't so high as to make a product-led approach impossible.In my experience, B2C products can also benefit from a PLS motion, especially if they already have a sales team in place to handle specific user segments. Implementing PLS in B2C is trickier, especially when dealing with lower ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) segments, so it requires careful consideration. As a general rule, prioritise higher-end users for this approach.
I’ll explore this topic further in the future, but for now, I recommend checking out Leah’s presentation.
I’ll share on the next lines some of the steps I took before implementing my first PLS engine. These steps were crucial, as they allowed me to assess the current maturity of both product and sales processes, build a clear target and communicate it and get all stakeholders involved and bought in from the beginning.
Do Your Homework
“Building is easy; the hard part is knowing what to build.”
Few statements ring truer. PLS is a complex subject that combines the best and worst of both product-led and sales-led strategies. You don’t need to be a world-class expert in both areas to start experimenting, but doing your homework is critical. Otherwise, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure.
Choose Your Battles
It’s common for teams to overextend themselves by taking on more scope than they can manage. The same is true for sales teams. They might be tasked with acquiring and activating users (through outbound efforts), selling, upselling, cross-selling, and retaining accounts, all at the same time. While the product should ideally take on many of these responsibilities, it’s not uncommon to see unrealistic expectations placed on sales teams.
Don’t fall into this trap. Trying to optimise for multiple goals is equivalent to optimising for none. Sit down with your leadership and define one clear goal. Be aware that different goals require different strategies, so make sure to choose something already being measured in your company that’s relevant to the business and aligns with the sales team’s targets.
I also advise against choosing retention as your first goal. Sales teams often view retention as a negative metric—something that reduces compensation rather than increases it. It’s difficult to incentivise retention, and your target users are typically hard to reach and convert.
Become an Expert
A core component of PLS is leveraging product usage data to qualify users or accounts. However, this data often contains a lot of noise.
In the early stages, it’s hard to distinguish signal from noise. The last thing you want to do is build an extensive lead-scoring model that includes every signal you and the sales team consider relevant. Adding too many variables too early will make it harder to diagnose your results quickly.
Instead, start by examining your product. Understand the use cases, retention metrics, usage patterns, and how different features are used. Talk to product managers, customer success teams, and users. If you don’t understand user habits and usage patterns, you won’t be able to identify the signals that drive meaningful results. Write down your hypotheses and document them for easy reference.
After gathering this information, dive into your data to find correlations between your hypotheses. With some luck, you’ll identify 3-5 signals that strongly represent opportunities aligned with your goals.
Get Buy-in Early
Incentives are a challenge you can’t ignore. Sales teams are heavily driven by incentives, but this isn’t a bad thing—use it to your advantage.
Sit down with sales leadership to understand how targets are set, how individual salespeople are measured and compensated, and how the sales cycle operates. Pay special attention to what high performers do, as they’re often seen as role models. Gaining their buy-in can be instrumental to your project’s success.
Once you understand how the team works, design a test with leadership. You have two main options:
Select a group of salespeople to work only on your leads and compare their performance to the rest of the team.
Send a set number of leads to the sales team each day and compare the performance of those leads.
Both approaches have trade-offs. In the first, you’ll be responsible for generating all the leads, but that doesn’t mean they should or will all come from the product. It also means you’ll face complaints if someone doesn’t get enough leads or if lead quality is perceived as low. I don’t recommend this approach. The second option gives you less control but allows you to focus on building the engine rather than managing the commercial process.
Avoid common mistakes
Use the fewest number of salespeople possible: The fewer, the better. Focus on getting buy-in, tracking performance, and collecting useful feedback. If results are promising, scaling will come later.
Never stop tracking: You need to track leads through the entire sales cycle. It’s not enough to just compare win rates; you also need to monitor process adherence, timing, and individual performance. Make sure you have a data expert on your team (or that you’re one).
Don’t forget other allies: CRM and marketing teams can be valuable allies on this journey. Get them involved early.
Wrapping Up
Building a PLS engine isn’t easy, but when done right, it can be transformative. This post is meant to help growth professionals considering a move to PLS, but it’s not an exhaustive guide.
I’ll revisit this topic over the coming weeks, so feel free to reach out if you think something’s missing or have any feedback. If you find this content useful, consider subscribing for early access to more on DIY Growth.