a single source, nothing corroborates it

Let the enterprise buyer try it without talking to you

Most enterprise evaluation happens before anyone contacts a salesperson, so frictionless access to the working product is what gets you onto the shortlist while weeks of demos and negotiation get you dropped. Buyers now judge vendors on how fast they can see value, which makes this a company-wide commitment across sales, product and support rather than a campaign marketing can run alone.

The method

1. 01

   Let enterprise buyers reach the working product themselves instead of routing them through weeks of demos and negotiation, because they now judge vendors on how fast they can see value.

2. 02

   Frictionless access is what gets you onto the evaluation shortlist, because most enterprise research happens before anyone contacts a salesperson.

3. 03

   Treat product-led growth as a company-wide strategy needing sales, product and support alignment, not as a marketing campaign marketing can run alone.

4. 04

   Aim first at the users rather than the executive buyer, because software purchasing now starts with what the engineers already use and want to try - reaching the CIO first has become the indirect route.

5. 05

   Do not dismiss a self-serve motion as extra hoops before the real decision maker just because the well-known successes look like exceptions.

What it returned

• 2021

  Kogan had argued the opposite for years; more than half of the enterprise software companies to go public recently offer free trials, four of five investors he emailed reported strong demand for product-led growth, and Tomasz Tunguz predicted in 2021 that it would become the default go-to-market for software and infrastructure businesses.

• One CIO, previously a VP at a multinational telecom, told him buying from startups comes down to time to value and being able to try the product on their own data within days, since they have no weeks to spend testing.

• He names Atlassian and GitLab as the cases he had written off as exceptions, and lists his own projects that were product-led without his realizing it: launching a trial for Domino Data Lab, growing self-serve developer revenue at Netlify, and commercializing Teleport's open-source software.

Sources

• Overview of Product-Led Growth (PLG)Greg Kogan · gkogan.co · What Problems PLG Solves for Enterprise Software Companies · 2020-12-23
• I Changed My Mind About Product-Led GrowthGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2021-02-12