My Key Takeaways from Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself

I kept this book on my wish list on Amazon. According to OpenView, product-led businesses are valued more than 30% higher than the public-market SaaS Index Fund.

As I am also working on a Product-led model, I wanted to read the book, so I’ve ordered the kindle version last week. It is worth reading and personally and I’ve finished fast, I loved it. I thought of sharing the key takeaways in a pictorial format. Let us go into the topic.

Product Led Growth

My Key Takeaways from this book:

  • Truly great SaaS companies are built to be product-led.
  • Product-led growth isn’t easy to implement as it sounds.
  • Successful Product-led growth strategy’s incredible rewards
    • Dominant Growth Engine
    • A significantly lower CAC
  • Incredible MOAT framework to decide the go-to-market strategy of the product.
    • M – Market Strategy
    • O- Ocean Conditions
    • A – Audience
    • T – Time to value

MOAT Framework

  • Next learning needs to decide the model is Freemium or Free Trial

 A free trial is a customer acquisition model that provides a partial or complete      product to prospects free of charge for a limited time.

A freemium model is a customer acquisition model that provides access to part of a software product to prospects free of charge, without a time limit.

Free trial or freemium

  • Next learning is deciding on the Market Strategy: Is your growth strategy dominant, disruptive, or differentiated?

          Dominant example – Netflix, Shopify, Uber

          Disruptive  example – Canva, Google, Udacity

  • The author has classified the companies as Red-ocean companies and Blue ocean companies. 
    • Red ocean companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. It harvests demand.
    • Blue ocean companies access untapped market space and create demand. It creates demand. 

The below picture shows the difference between both.

Red Ocean Vs Blue Ocean Strategy

  • When It Comes to Product-led Growth, Why Does This Matter?

If you’re in a blue ocean and creating demand, your product may have a steep learning curve. Before you can make the sale, you need to educate your market on why your new way of doing something is better. 

In a red ocean, prospects already know how your product can help them, and a product-led model is advantageous—it can widen your funnel, decrease your CAC, and help you expand globally in a fraction of the time.

This trend—though not a rule—is shared among the hundreds of SaaS businesses I’ve analyzed: Blue Ocean businesses lead with a sales-led GTM. Red Ocean businesses lead with a product-led GTM.

  • Next learning is about Selling strategy. Should we have a Top-Down or Bottom-Up approach?

 If you’re selling large deals, top-down systems are essential. Example: SAP, IBM, Oracle. If you are selling small deals, and the audience can be onboard faster without any complex steps, then you can opt for a bottom-up selling strategy. Example: Slack, Canva, Atlassian.

Based on the nature of your business, you can select the selling strategy. Both of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes, you can do the hybrid model too.

“From a marketing and sales perspective, Product-Led Growth is a game-changer. It means you can deliver on your promise to prospects. It also means the product sells itself if you get in front of people at the right stage of the buying process.” – Juliana Casale, Head of Marketing, CrazyEgg

  • Building a product-led foundation will be helpful. You can follow the UCD framework. U- Understand, C- Communicate, D – Deliver
  • Identify why people need to use the product?
  • Communicate your value
  • Learned about a few product metrics, Churn, ARPU, etc
  • The sales-led way of buying software: Research about the software, analyze the needs and it’s mapping with our requirements, demo and then give a trial.
  • The product-led way:  Just start using the product. Ask for help if you get stuck. Based on your usage and profile, receive personalized recommendations.

History tells us that “how” you sell is just as important as “what” you sell.

I hope you enjoyed my key takeaways from the book. To know more go through the complete book from here.

References:

Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself  – Bush, Wes.

 

 

 

 

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