Elena Verna on how B2B growth is changing, product-led growth, product-led sales, why you should go freemium not trial, what features to make free, and much more
1. Prioritize Product-Led Retention
Every company must first focus on product-led retention, specifically activation and engagement, because a product cannot sustain product-led acquisition without habitual user usage.
2. Layer Growth Strategies
Do not view sales-led and product-led growth as an either/or decision; instead, treat them as sequential layering, aiming to execute both correctly and together to own the market.
3. Avoid Crushing Product-Led Growth
When expanding upmarket, avoid the common mistake of abandoning product usage growth and product-led tactics in favor of enterprise sales, as this can lead to a slowdown in enterprise pipeline and overall growth.
4. Incentivize PLG Sales Correctly
Understand that product-led growth (PLG) and product-led sales are an expansion game, not about landing the highest initial value; incentivize your team to recognize that they are engaging accounts much earlier in the sales cycle.
5. Focus Product Roadmap on Users
If you are rooted in PLG, avoid exclusively focusing your product roadmap on enterprise features, as you must continuously innovate and delight your users to empower them as selling agents within their organizations.
6. Embrace Product-Led Sales
Leverage product-led sales by using self-serve usage to generate leads and qualify accounts based on network effects, usage volume, velocity, and feature breadth, allowing sales to engage when the entire enterprise would benefit.
7. Avoid Time-Bound Trials
Do not use time-bound trials (e.g., 7 days) as they alienate large enterprises that require more time to evaluate products; instead, use usage-based freemium models that allow users to explore at their own pace.
8. Strategize Your Freemium Offering
Define a clear strategic reason for your freemium model beyond just conversion to paid, considering if it drives indirect monetization (virality), serves as a proof-of-concept, creates habit loops, or helps discover new use cases and personas.
9. Make Growth-Promoting Features Free
When deciding what to make free in your freemium model, prioritize features that help indirect monetization, suffice for all users (commoditized), aid the ‘aha’ moment, or create habit loops, while gating features that create friction for your growth model.
10. Hire Internal for First Growth Role
For your first growth hire, look internally (e.g., FP&A analyst, PM, data analyst, engineer) as they are familiar with your product and can achieve quicker wins, rather than risking an external hire who might ‘copy-paste’ previous models with a high failure rate.
11. Hire Growth After Product-Market Fit
Only bring in a full-time growth person after achieving strong product-market fit, which means having proven retention (at least 6-12 months post-launch) and green shoots in customer acquisition and monetization, as growth scales an existing model, it doesn’t create it.
12. Develop Growth Frameworks
To drive repeatable, sustainable, and defensible growth, focus on creating frameworks for solving growth problems rather than approaching each issue individually, which helps minimize context switching and scales success.
13. Optimize for Career Retention
When considering leadership roles, optimize for retention by using a ’try before you buy’ approach, such as starting as an advisor or interim, to ensure a good fit and avoid mismatches that shorten leadership tenures.
14. Embrace B2B Consumerization
Recognize that B2B products are shifting towards consumer-like experiences, focusing on user-centricity, delightful onboarding, and habit-forming design, rather than just enterprise feature checklists, to empower employees and drive adoption.