What is your take on PLG vs sales-led sales?

It is not either/or. It is both. If “Product Led Growth” is using the product so a customer can self-evaluate, buy, implement, expand/renew, that is clearly a good thing as it accelerates the sales cycle, and frankly demanded by customers these days - most do not want to talk to sales early. And there is still plenty of room for sales to reach out to these quality, Product-Qualified Leads, drive upsells, and more. And at some point the self-serve trialer will want to engage with sales for a full trial, purchase the software, and more. Win-win.

For pre-sales PLG, for sure on your web site add screenshots, interactive demos, and a self-serve trial that offers both (1) an “empty” option + (2) option where it is easy for the trialer to load demo data into your product and follow a lab guide to configure the product and get to aha within 60 minutes. Lab guide should not just be loaded up with your value, but also plenty of traps for the competition. And do not forget self-serve documentation!

Fun fact: Even as far back as the late 1990s, enterprise software vendors had free trial downloads (partial PLG) + huge sales teams. So they co-existed back then. PLG is not new..it just got a lot better with SaaS.

You need to pick a favorite. Either you're PLG first or Sales-led first. Because there's many decisions that you have to make you need to pick sides.

To make it easy, if Sales-led is at least 40% of the business, you'll be a Sales-led company - because the weight of having people on the sales team that you need to "feed" with leads/opps is just too big. People have names, and families to feed - so it will "force" you to prioritize them.