Please Don’t Say Product-Led Growth

I felt a distinct feeling the first time I heard someone utter the phrase “product-led growth.” Well, actually, two feelings. One was confusion; the other was sympathy.

I was confused because, on the face of it, all growth is about products (or services). People give money to companies (or the partners or distributors of companies) in exchange for things they value. That money becomes revenue, and the more of it companies accumulate, the more they grow.

I was sympathetic because I was sorry this person didn’t understand how growth worked. Or was it that I didn’t understand how growth worked?

Isn’t all growth product-led growth?

I acknowledge that “PLG,” as the denizens of its ostensible collective like to refer to it, is distinct from historical approaches that predated the advent and availability of customer data. The salesperson at the Buick dealership trying to get your grandparents to cough up $9,925 for a 1980 Regal was probably just as much of a factor in getting them to write that check as the sound of the 140hp engine. The Lucky Charms ad airing on Thursday NBC Must-See TV had more than a little bit of a say in the cereal you pulled off the shelf at Kroger the next day.

But here’s the thing – growth isn’t a function of first-time, highly-considered purchases. It’s the result of loyalty, of people buying more and recommending products to their friends. So if that Buick Regal didn’t make grandma feel like she was headed to the promised land, and if those Lucky Charms proved unlucky to your kids’ taste buds, you won’t ring the register for those SKUs again.

In that sense, software has more in common with Buicks and Lucky Charms than we might initially assume. Sure, a marginal cost of $0 makes it slightly more margin-accretive than American-made metal or marshmallows. And sure, no software is going to get you the cool factor of that 6-cylinder turbo or a food that’s “Magically Delicious.” But the reason Zoom beat WebEx is that WebEx wasn’t (and still isn’t) any good, whereas Zoom made it easy to get to a lifelike meeting in one easy click, and have a f2f conversation and share content in ways that were arguably more efficient and empathetic than even being in the room together.

Products that reduce friction and make for better experiences win, full stop. PLG is a thing not because salespeople and marketers are disappearing (though the archetype of the egotistical PM is the stuff of legend), or because sales and marketing are not integral to the mechanics of revenue generation (they are; check out the great thinking from Refine Labs if you disagree). Rather, it’s because data on products has become more widely available; because we live our home and work lives online; and because a world running on bits is easier to iterate within, improve upon, and disrupt than a world of atoms.

At its best, I see PLG not as a methodology or a movement, but as an observation based on the fact that consumer choice forces companies to innovate and, thereby, introduce more products more frequently or be left behind. At worst, I see PLG as a way for product managers to attempt to inflate their contributions to revenue at the expense of other necessary functions.

Even if you don’t see the advent of PLG as an attempted referendum on historical sales and marketing motions, it’s undeniable that PLG, in some ways, disrespects its own reason for being – that is, it does not recognize the agent that puts the G in PLG. Without people and teams, there is no PLG, because no one would buy the P. And without a relentless focus on improving the experiences of people and teams (i.e., looking outward), the P will not be adopted anyway. Taking the human element out of the growth motion is perhaps PLGs greatest hubris.

The doctrine of PLG also seems to imply that, once a company develops an Enterprise motion, the product is no longer essential to driving growth – are we to assume that, once companies are big enough to have to sell to Enterprises to maintain their growth rates, that the PM and Engg teams that drove “PLG” in the early years no longer value the product, and will give the reins over to the supposedly hapless Sales and Marketing teams? Or simply that they will all leave the company and seek Series A-based fortune elsewhere, forcing M&A to become the new R&D as companies scale beyond a few hundred million in ARR?

Here’s the thing. All growth is always product-led growth. Ultimately, we build and develop relationships with people and with brands, but if we aren’t delighted with the products and services we give over our hard-earned money for, we’ll swipe left or click elsewhere. This is true at home with cold cereal, and it’s true in the Enterprise with software.

I move that we rename this motion Team-Led Growth, or “TLG.” Without the needs and wishes of customers and users and people and teams at their disposal, product teams (and the salespeople and marketers around them) would have no idea where to start or what to build. And, perhaps more importantly, they’d have no source of revenue to tap into after that Free Trial. So while the product enables growth, it’s the teams out there that are truly driving it.

Let’s respect the agency of people and teams out there doing great work. Let’s honor the importance of building products and services that reduce friction and make for better experiences. And let’s work together as sales, marketing, and product teams to put wonderful and important things into the world. Let’s just not falsely attribute the Product as the thing that’s driving the Growth when, in fact, it’s the teams of people who are the ones responsible for that.