Your B2B product-led motion is more of a data problem than a product problem

And chances are, your tech stack is working against you. So let's talk data & tools.

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This post is co-written with Austin Hay, co-founder of Clarify (AI-native CRM), ex-Head of Marketing Tech at Ramp, Runway, and mParticle.

By now, most people (we hope?) understand that in Product-Led Growth (PLG), the product must be self-serve and able to sell itself without human or sales intervention. But what many overlook is that PLG success also hinges on data availability. Yet, too often, companies fail to prioritize the right data infrastructure and the specific types of data needed to make PLG work - crippling their ability to scale before they even get started.

What’s worse, your revenue and martech stack was likely built for and by traditional sales motions, and now it's working against you at every turn. We’ll attempt to fix that in this post. Let’s get technical!

Isn’t PLG just… self-serve product?

(If you're a PLG/PLS guru, fast forward to ‘The data foundation you can’t skip’ section.)

But before we dive in, we need to clear something up: PLG is not some self-serve or trial tactic, but a complete go-to-market and product strategy. Instead of relying on the traditional sales motion, you're letting end users discover and fall in love with your product on their own terms. The magic happens when that individual value turns into team adoption and eventually catches the attention of the people with purchasing power.

PLG hype

The question is not whether you should do PLG or not, but rather when. All consumer companies are already doing it. B2B is getting there, but industries go through consumerization at different speeds, and you just need to watch for the right timing. Check out this post on “To PLG or not PLG, that is NOT the question” on how to make the right decision.

“At Ramp, we realized PLG was the right approach because users could immediately see the value in expense management without needing a sales engineer. But that's not true for every product,” says Austin Hay.

PLS: The new sales funnel

Product-Led Sales (PLS) is the lovechild of PLG and the traditional sales motion. It's not just a fancy new acronym; it's a completely different way of thinking about your sales strategy.

Your typical B2B sales funnel probably looks something like:

Marketing campaign → MQL (marketing qualified lead) → SQL (sales qualified lead) → Demo → Opportunity → Close

But a PLS sales funnel looks like this:

User signs up → Gets value → Invites team → Usage triggers PQA (product qualified account) → PQL (product qualified lead) identified → Sales reaches out → Expansion opportunity

In PLS, your product does the heavy lifting. Sales and marketing step in only when there are clear buying signals. It's more efficient and, frankly, less annoying for everyone involved.

Some of you might be thinking, “This sounds a lot like a regular old B2B sales motion. Our customers start with our freemium product and, when and if they hit specific usage or need requirements, we reach out to them.”

Let us make it painstakingly clear: PLS is all about using product data to figure out the perfect time to make a move on potential buyers. It’s not as simple as waiting for a user to click the ‘I’m ready to talk to sales’ button or needing something like SSO to reach out.

So the role of PLG is to collect the right signals of a customer’s readiness to buy and their likelihood to convert.

To read more about PLS, checkout this Product-led Sales Guide.

The data foundation you can’t skip

There's a set of data points you absolutely need to make PLG work. Not “nice-to-have” - must-haves. Skip any of these and you're building on quicksand.

User demographics

Let's start with the basics: who's actually signing up for your product? The following are essential core demographics - absolutely non-negotiable. You can't make smart routing decisions without knowing who your users are and why they're here. Everything else builds on this.

You should ask for this data upfront. Don’t guess and don’t use enrichment tools. Almost all of the B2B companies are doing onboarding profiling, so follow their lead. Check out this post on "How to do onboarding user profiling.”

Acquisition

First, let's talk about attribution. Traditional attribution methods are dying. Last touch attribution and multi-touch attribution? Fading fast. URL parameters? Getting stripped. Cookies? Blocked. IPs? Hidden behind Apple's gateway. At best, you're getting fragments of the story.

Yet, it’s important to pinpoint your traffic sources (organic, paid, or word-of-mouth), have campaign attribution, and discover how users first hear about your product. Surprisingly, the humble “How did you hear about us?” survey will do the trick to gather all this information.

Additionally, make sure you are capturing these metrics:

Activation “messy middle”

Oh the activation black hole... Marketing obsesses over the signup flow - got to get that CAC down! And engineers? They’re diving deep into product metrics because performance metrics matter. But that crucial middle ground from signup to engagement? That often falls through the cracks. Ironically, this "messy middle" of activation is exactly where most of the PLG efforts are focused on.

So, what should you be tracking?