In a product-led company, initial growth is usually driven by a self-service channel. Potential customers find, try, and buy the product without ever interacting with a person from the company. These same customers can continue to expand and renew on their own, making for a highly efficient, predictable revenue machine.

As a product-led company continues to scale, a sales-driven motion is often added to further accelerate revenue growth.  There are several ways sales can be layered into a product-led model:

• Expansion & renewal sales
• Inbound sales
• Outbound sales

Expansion & Renewal

Expansion and renewal sales are usually the first and easiest motion to add to product-led growth. This involves engaging customers you’ve already acquired via the product-led self-service channel to build business relationships, understand their needs, help them achieve success, and ultimately expand and renew their accounts.

Inbound

Separate from trials, if marketing is generating lots of leads (from content, webinars, events, etc), applying an inbound sales motion to those leads can be the next step in the progression of sales. Rather than waiting for marketing to warm the leads to turn into trials, sales reps reach out to follow up with leads in order to accelerate the buyer’s journey and convert their interest into a purchase. In some cases, companies have Sales Account Execs do the reach out, and others use Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), depending on the contract value and the most efficient model.

Outbound

And then there are outbound sales. There can be different definitions of outbound, but for this discussion, I am referring to traditional, cold outbound—reaching out to companies who are not already in your lead database.

Of all the various sales motions that can be adopted, cold outbound is usually the most challenging for product-led companies.

Why outbound can be challenging for product-led

If you think about it, outbound sales is the opposite of product-led.

• In product-led growth, potential customers find, try, and buy without ever interacting with a person. They discover your product through one or more channels, such as word-of-mouth, events, advertising, partners, press, organic search, customer reviews, etc. They propel themselves through their buyer journey. Think: Red hot.
• In outbound sales, sales reps conduct targeted outreach to potential customers via a cadence of emails, calls, and social media. The outreach goal is to convert a cold lead who has likely never heard of the company or product into a paying customer through a sales process. The potential customer is pulled into a buyer’s journey instigated by sales efforts. Think: Ice cold.

So...why is it sometimes hard to add outbound to a product-led model? The answer sounds pretty obvious but is often missed. Outbound can be challenging for a product-led company because the two motions are very different.

The strategies, initiatives, and tactics that work to attract product-led buyers (who have strong buying intent when they come into the funnel) might not work for sales-driven buyers (who have little to no pre-existing intent). The messaging and content might need to be adapted or even created entirely from scratch. There may even be a different Ideal Customer Profile or vertical for product-led versus sales-driven.

How to add outbound sales to product-led growth

If and when you decide to try an outbound sales motion, there are some ways to increase your odds of success. The right approach to implementing outbound for a product-led company includes: