Why is this happening now? Well, companies are going hybrid, whether with their business model or their pricing. For instance, more companies are adopting usage-based pricing models, but they’re often mixing it with existing pricing models, such as subscription tiers. Along the same lines, many companies have adopted product-led growth (PLG) without abandoning their traditional sales efforts. The two motions typically work in tandem, with self-serve adoption driving most usage and sales reps dedicated to closing larger enterprise deals. However, sales reps don’t qualify accounts the way they used to. Why would they be cold-calling anyone or spending money on marketing when there might be much warmer leads in the existing user base? This has led companies to adopt a new approach known as product-led sales. In product-led sales, the concept of “marketing-qualified leads” gives way to “product-qualified leads” (PQLs). This is a major shift because to truly provide sales teams the data they need to upsell or cross-sell existing users, companies must closely align and connect their product usage data with their sales tools and CRMs.
Product-led growth is propelling a wave of sales tools startups by Anna Heim originally published on TechCrunch
