15 Comments
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Andrea Szilagyi's avatar

"End user is not a lead" I see a lot of companies getting confused about this recently. Great read :)

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Priyadeep Sinha's avatar

The best bit about this piece is that anyone can understand what Elena is saying. Masterpiece, Elena!

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Mikita Martynau | FounderGames's avatar

Very actionable guide! Piece of gold, thank you!

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Leah Tharin's avatar

Fantastic piece.

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Antoine Caspar's avatar

Masterpiece, thanks !

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Jose Miguel Dergal Carreto's avatar

Amazing content, Elena.

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Stefan's avatar

Great post Elena! Loved the Product Led Account section!

I think I speak for most people nowadays but I would much rather do everything myself (sign up, try for free, then purchase) then schedule a call sometime in the week, have a call, set up trial, etc.. Not possible for everyone, but companies like Figma made it happen.

For example in my company we made a free trial for an ad agency. The troublesome part when hiring an agency is that you have to vet them, and you never really know what you get until you work with them. That's why we made a trial and users can sign up themselves and get full access without ever talking to the team. People don't want to be sold to, they would rather engage with the product themselves.

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Ben Williams's avatar

Great stuff Elena!

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Kartik's avatar

Very insightful! I’ve seen products sending you an outreach to upgrade just minutes after you sign up! Also interesting take on PLS; typically the buyers are not easy to acquire and convert to an engaged or activated user, any thoughts on the different ways one can approach and engage them?

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Miles via ConfidanteAdvisory's avatar

Hmmm. Very software/SaaS oriented, very…marketing biased. Even the multiple use of the word “motion”…is something you’d NEVER hear in an enterprise sales team. Funny.

Net: the two factions are not at any risk of getting together anytime soon.

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Ryan Dsouza's avatar

Maam,

Love this article!

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John's avatar

Thanks for the great guide Elena! Do you have guidance on ways to identify if the user is the buyer? I’ve been struggling to do so.

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Patrick Polak's avatar

excellent piece!!

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Sami Atieh's avatar

Amazing article!

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Khushi Lunkad's avatar

Just here from lenny's pod because I remembered that you wrote an article and wanted to explore if there were any golden bits. ⛏️🪙

I have a personal question and would be super grateful if you'd offer some advice.

We have extremely good organic demand (several Fortune 500 companies have purchased). No SDR yet and no plans to hire one either but we want to go upmarket a bit more strongly. I'm curious, what's the easiest way to start PLS with fewer resources and do more with less? I'm thinking of layering on a new enterprise tier, making pricing public like Mixpanel did, emailing users to make sure people are aware of this tier, have some in-product triggers. Anything you'd recommend?

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