Product-led sales is a huge growth segment in SaaS right now – and it’s a fascinating topic for me as well. I’ll be highlighting some of the vendors who do it best in this series so we can all learn from each other in the PLG community.
For my second highlight, I talked to Breezy Beaumont who is the head of growth at Correlated to see what she does, what they do, and her thoughts on product-led sales.
What Correlated Does
They get product usage data in the hands of your sales team so they understand how people are actually using your product. Then you can use this data to find better ways to convert or expand existing users.
The two biggest ways their customers are using Correlated are to:
- Help more free trial or freemium users convert from a free plan to paid users
- Help find opportunities for expansion among current users, whether by cross-selling, up-selling, or expanding usage in the account
Her Journey at Correlated
She joined the company very early in their growth, so one of the things that attracted her was the vision of where they were headed. She also looked at the financial metrics that were becoming more important to investors at this time, including Net Dollar Retention (NDR) and expansion revenue being a crucial piece of that metric.
Those strong essentials, as well as her excitement about the PLG movement in general, were two big factors in her buy-in to the Correlated vision. Plus she works with an awesome team, so that doesn’t hurt either.
Why is PLG Hot Right Now?
Self-serve stuff has existed for a long time – this is not a completely new trend. Most organizations just didn’t get it, so it wasn’t on their radar. But right now, we’re seeing so many companies moving to product-led after seeing the success of the savvy ones who were out front like Calendly, Zoom, and Atlassian, among others.
It became clear that PLG was a huge amplifier for the growth of those companies, and more decided to get on board.
It’s also a result of a generational shift. More and more people are comfortable buying software on their own, even really high-value stuff, and so that’s where the self-service piece comes in. When you actually get your hands dirty using a product, you know that it works and has value – you don’t just need to take the word of the person who is trying to sell it to you.
This knowledge leads to less contract negotiation because you understand the value and what your return will be, so you’re not looking for a discount as much.
The Future of Product-Led Sales
Each generation that follows is even more willing to jump in and use a product, so the movement continues to be more in favor of product led, plus the success of product-led companies means it’s not going anywhere.
Using Correlated helps you to be more successful as a product-led company. They’re out there helping you find revenue opportunities and convert those self-serve and freemium users.
They’re also helping your team understand data like what features they’re using, how often they’re logging in, the number of people associated with the accounts, and tapping into existing data in CRM as well.
Tying that all together, you get a full picture view of who is best to convert, best to expand, and how to have a relevant conversion. Correlated also helps you reach out at the right time with the right message, instead of sending a generic (and easily ignored) email.
Want to learn more about Correlated? Check out their website. Breezy and her team are all very active on Linkedin as well and happy to answer a quick question or have a chat.
Photo by Clayton Robbins on Unsplash
