The ultimate guide to product-led sales | Elena Verna

Elena Verna is a leading growth expert with over 15 years of experience in tech. She was SVP of Growth at SurveyMonkey and interim CMO at Miro, where she built high-performing teams that drove significant growth. She recently served as interim Head of Growth at Amplitude and currently advises and is a board member for early-stage startups. In today’s podcast, we discuss:
• What product-led sales is
• How product-led sales differs from product-led growth
• Unpacking common acronyms: PQAs, PQs, PQLs, and MQLs
• When and how to consider investing in PLS
• Metrics for identifying qualified accounts
• The team, data, and tooling required for implementing PLS
• Common pitfalls to avoid when adding PLS

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Where to find Elena Verna:

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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Elena’s background and what she’s doing now
(07:13) Product-led sales (PLS) vs. product-led growth (PLG)
(12:47) How sales solutions can be applied to enterprise-level problems
(15:06) Defining enterprise-level problems 
(17:51) How product-led companies start with PLS
(20:30) When to add sales
(22:36) Two ways to get to PLS
(24:27) Why every sales-led-growth company needs to add PLG
(26:50) Two ways you can own revenue
(28:37) PQAs, PQs, PQLs, and MQLs
(37:17) How to get started adding PLS
(42:01) Metrics to identify PQAs
(47:00) Why sales should be carefully applied 
(49:07) Systems, infrastructure, and tooling
(50:59) The people and resources required for PLS
(53:42) Why you should have a clear ROI for every new hire
(55:05) Why product needs to be accountable for monetization with PLS
(59:57) Revenue-based goals product teams should have
(1:06:28) Common pitfalls startups run into when implementing PLS
(1:09:15) Benchmarks and the amount of time needed for implementing enterprise solutions
(1:12:04) Using onboarding to profile users
(1:13:08) Will AI be the next sales movement?

Referenced:

[lukecresante]

This is next level... Taking so long to get through because of all the valuable note taking moments

[vipjoel]

Absolute gold mine here. Gave me so much clarity on the noise around Plg and Pls

[kira]

wow i know nothing about sales coming from a tech background but Elena make it so simple to understand the mechanisms

[farrukhbhatti]

Very insightful, loved the conversation. Lenny your Qs are pertinent and flow goes very well. Elena's answers are so specific and all encompassing - awesome.

[AndiSzilagyi]

Elena's answers are so well organized & structured. So much good info in every word😊

[devikottary]

Lenny!!! Elena is so so good! Only love to this episode. ❤️. Elena has broken down the concept of PLG vs. PLS so effortlessly. 20 mins into this episode and already started to harvest GOLD. Long live product thinkers and leaders like Elena and Lenny. Recently, I had been to one of the product meetups and the CPO of Propel Ventures, Melbourne. When asked about PLG, the response was PLG is a BS and wouldn't work in B2B space. I am going to share this link for people to enlighten themselves and keep their BS aside.

[khushilunkad]

Thank you! We have great organic demand and want to layer a PLS motion, and I didn't know where to even start from. I took lots of notes and already have lots of creative ideas on how we can approach this swiftly. I'll pitch to the team and report back! I also didn't know that Reforge's PLG course would include Product-Led Sales as well. Nice!

[LiranTal]

Very much enjoyed this episode. Great work Lenny and Elena to run down through PLS, PLG and related domain knowledge.

[greggallo]

Elena is always awesome and good fun. Thank you to you both.

[koyamani]

Lenny, you are smart enaugh, so make the ads in different sections or at the end.

[MichaelBabich]

With all due respect, 7 minutes of advertising before the video even starts is too much. I tried to watch this channel's videos more than 3 times and could never get past the first 5 minutes—Lenny force-feeds advertising to a viewer with a shovel. Life is too short to waste so much time. At least move it to the end of a video—if your video is good, people will watch it to the end. If not, then it's not worth gifting you with so much time of a viewer's life and attention. I recommend learning from Lex Fridman and the way he treats ads in his long videos.