Lenny Distilled

The ultimate guide to product-led sales

April 23, 2023

Featuring: Elena Verna (Growth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro)

17 quotes · 15 insights

Watch Full Episode

Product-led growth still needs sales

Product-led sales assumes that there is a migration from an individual use case that you acquired an end user with and an escalation into an enterprise-level solution that solves enterprise-level problems.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 10:46

Good friction filters for quality, bad friction blocks everyone

Do not skip those onboarding questions. No, they do not detract for your onboarding completion rates and people that do drop off in the profiling stage, they were low intent anyways.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 01:10:36

Own your career like a product - nobody else will

My goal professional is actually to have options so I can choose what I want to do. You start thinking about what can I do next year that will increase my option pool?
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 01:23:33
Full-time jobs are not the best way to monetize the skill that you have. Too many people blindly default to that package and don't explore other options.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 01:19:08

Redesigns almost never improve metrics

Never ever once have I seen a rebrand or redesign, especially of UK marketing site produce good performance results.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 00:00:45

Freemium vs trials: Choose your religion

Self-serve monetization has a cap of about $10,000. That's just how much we're able to process on the credit cards before they start getting flagged and declined by the banks.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 00:08:34

Give people real ownership, not fake accountability

The worst thing that you can do is to say, 'I'm going to do product-led growth,' or, 'I'm going to do product-led sales and I'm going to do it in marketing.' Recipe for disaster. You'll be failure mode within six months because product has to take accountability over selling of the product itself.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 00:00:40

Product and sales tension signals healthy growth

In traditional sales world, marketing creates pipeline for sales. Sales sells product. Product engages with a paid user to drive retention. In the product-led sales, product acquires and activates a customer and product creates pipeline for sales.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 00:00:00

Champions and buyers are different people

90% of product-led sales is converting the usage into an opportunity by finding a buyer outside, by finding the decision-maker outside.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 00:19:11

MQL stands for Marketing Qualified Lead, a term used to categorize potential customers who have shown interest but aren't yet ready to purchase.

You cannot consider a new product sign-up an MQL in the traditional sense. They're just not there yet. They have a fraction of the enterprise problem that they're solving and they're not ready to buy.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 00:34:41

Own your distribution, don't rent it

When you're doing organic search or paid search, you're making Google richer. You need to create your own or your earned channel that nobody else can compete in but you.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 00:44:45

Your problem isn't unique - learn from others

Your problem is not unique. I am 99% sure of that. Your problem has been felt by somebody somewhere and you trying to re-engineer solution is time lost to market.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 00:34:02

Growth without product-market fit amplifies failure

Growth team can optimize, growth can maybe lift it by 10, 15%. But if you have core product and core marketing issues, growth team will not be able to fix them for you.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 00:16:03

Most users don't know what you're selling

I guarantee you 75% of your customers in freemium product are not aware of what you're selling. Only focusing on monetization awareness can give you incredible output on driving monetization.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey & interim roles at Miro/Amplitude 01:00:56

Time-box experiments to learn fast

If you cannot collect the sample size in a month, we shouldn't test it, period. Because it's just then it's not fast enough.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 01:08:36

Hire when it hurts, not when you can

To figure out your product market fit and how to distribute it, it's not something that you can outsource to somebody.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 00:00:26

Rules beat willpower every time

My north star metric is insights per minute. That's what I try to use whenever I have any live meetings with people.
Elena VernaGrowth Expert, former SVP Growth at SurveyMonkey, interim CMO at Miro 00:05:23

The Missing Stamp

Every episode of Lenny's Podcast, distilled into the insights that matter and the quotes that make them stick.

LENNY WAS HERE__STAMP_DATE__

Lenny, if you're reading this, the stamp's ready when you are. 🧡🔥