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Growth + Product: The Explosive Formula to Skyrocket Your Revenue 🚀

Growth + Product: The Explosive Formula to Skyrocket Your Revenue 🚀

Discover how blending Product-Led and Sales-Led Growth strategies can unlock explosive revenue potential. Learn where your business fits on the growth spectrum and take your strategy to the next level.

Jojo Giuffra
October 22, 2024

In partnership with

In the last few posts, we’ve been deep in growth strategy, focusing on scaling your sales to the next level.

But today, I’m dropping a hack that will completely reshape your growth and product strategy: understanding the role of growth and digital product in your customer journey and sales process.

You’ve heard the classic B2B vs. B2C split—B2B leaned on sales reps, while B2C relied on digital tactics.

But here’s the kicker: the internet has flipped the script. Now, even B2B companies are selling like B2C. Just look at Canva—a prime example of this shift.

Forget the old B2B/B2C split.

Let’s get into something fresher: Product-Led Growth (PLG) vs. Sales-Led Growth (SLG). In today’s growth game, finding the right balance between these two is the secret sauce to scaling.

PLG lets your product do the talking. Users discover the value on their own, dive in, and experience the benefits—no salesperson needed.
SLG That’s where a dedicated sales team steps in, perfect for complex products where customers need a little extra hand-holding to get the full picture.

So, as you build your strategy, it’s crucial to know where you’re leaning: PLG or SLG. Nail this decision and you’ll scale faster, save resources, and give your customers a smoother experience.

Today, we’re going to lock down how to choose the right approach from the start, using the Growth Principles we’ve been covering in the last few posts. This is the foundation you need to set right at the beginning, based on the 4 pillars we’ve been exploring.

1) Identify the players and their use case

A use case is basically your product’s sweet spot—it’s all about who your product helps (your persona) and what problem it solves for them. Here’s the breakdown:

Persona: This is your target group—the people who are going to find real value in what you’re offering.
Problem: The reason these people are actively hunting for a solution. They’ve got jobs to get done, and your product is the answer.

How to Identify Your Personas and Uses Cases

Your product could solves more than one problem, and have more than use user persona, right? So, it’s crucial to think about:

What are all the players involved into your product or service?
If you have more than one player involve, who is the decision maker?
What uses cases and problems are they trying to solve?

Lets take Reddit as an example, where we have two players involve, on one hand Advertisers and on the other Users.

Players	Use case	Goal	Metric
Advertiser	Reaching a segmented, engaged Reddit audience	Increase sales, brand visibility, or leads	CTR, conversions, ROI
User	Engaging with relevant content	Find valuable content and answers to their questions	Time spent on the platform, User satisfaction, ARPU, % of engaged users

Players

Use case

Goal

Metric

Advertiser

Reaching a segmented, engaged Reddit audience

Increase sales, brand visibility, or leads

CTR, conversions, ROI

User

Engaging with relevant content

Find valuable content and answers to their questions

Time spent on the platform, User satisfaction, ARPU, % of engaged users

Another example could be slack, where you have the end users (employees of a company), the decision maker (IT Manager or Company Leadership), and you also have the Integration Partners (Google Drive, Zoom, Salesforce, etc).

Players	Use case	Metric	Goal
Decision Maker (e.g., IT Manager, Company Leadership)	Selecting a tool to improve team collaboration and productivity	Adoption rate, ROI, time saved	Boost team efficiency, streamline communication
End User (Employees/Teams)	Using Slack for daily communication and collaboration	Response time, channel engagement, satisfaction	Communicate easily, access info quickly, improve workflow
Integration Partners (e.g., Google Drive, Zoom, Salesforce)	Providing seamless integration to enhance Slack’s functionality	Integration usage, active users	Increase adoption, enhance cross-platform workflows

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2) Customer Perception Value

Now it’s time to dig into the nitty-gritty: how much value do your customers really see in your product? Figuring this out will help you choose the best growth path—whether that’s leaning on Sales-Led Growth (SLG) or going full throttle with Product-Led Growth (PLG).

When you understand the value your customers perceive, you’ll have a solid idea of whether you can back a sales team or if your product is strong enough to drive growth on its own.

Here’s how to think about Customer Perception Value:

High Perceived Value: If your product solves a big, complex problem (especially for enterprise clients), your customers are likely to see high value and be ready to invest. The bigger the challenge, the higher the value they assign, which means they’re willing to commit more resources.
Low Perceived Value: If your product solves simpler problems—like those faced by small teams or individuals—the perceived value may be lower. In this case, the problem isn’t as big, so the solution might not justify a higher price or major investment.

Below you can see the Reddit example, where it makes no sense to have an SLG approach with the end users; nevertheless, advertisers are another story.

Player	Perceived Value	Explanation
Advertiser (e.g., Marketing Manager)	High Perceived Value	Access to a niche, engaged audience for targeted ads.
End User (Reddit User)	Low Perceived Value	Users value content and community engagement, not paid features.

You can also observe the Slack example, where it may be a good idea to have a SLG approach with the Decision-Maker and Integration Partners.

Player	Perceived Value	Explanation
Decision-Maker (e.g., IT Manager)	High Perceived Value	Solves company-wide communication and productivity issues. Justifies the investment.
End User (Employees/Teams)	Medium Perceived Value	Simplifies team communication, but users focus on daily collaboration, not the broader impact.
Integration Partners (e.g., Google Drive, Zoom, Salesforce)	High Perceived Value	Expands Slack's functionality, enabling smoother workflows with integrated tools.

3) Motivation

Motivation is a key part of the equation. If users are highly motivated, they’ll engage with your product on their own. Low motivation? That’s when you’ll need more touchpoints—or maybe even a full sales team—to guide them along.

Breaking Down Motivation

Motivation can vary based on the use case and the complexity of the problem your product is solving. Here’s how it breaks down:

High Motivation: When users feel the problem is immediate and personal, they are eager to find a solution quickly. The higher the personal impact, the stronger their drive to engage with your product independently.
Low Motivation: When users don’t directly experience the pain point or when the problem feels more abstract or distant, motivation to act decreases. In these cases, additional guidance or a more proactive sales approach is necessary to help users recognize the value of the solution.

Motivation varies among players, affecting growth strategies. Below are the motivation levels for Slack and Reddit players, indicating where additional touchpoints or guidance may be needed.

Slack Motivation Example:

Player	Motivation Level	Explanation
Decision-Maker	Medium to High	Motivated to improve communication and productivity company-wide.
End User	Medium	Motivated by easier communication, but urgency may be low.
Integration Partners	Medium	Motivated to increase usage through seamless integration.

Reddit Motivation Example:

Player	Motivation Level	Explanation
Advertiser	High	Motivated to reach Reddit’s engaged audience for visibility and conversions.
End User	Low to Medium	Motivated by relevant content

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4) Primary Value Promise + Ability to use product

When evaluating how users interact with your product, it’s crucial to consider both their ability to use it and how easily they can access the core value your product offers. If your product is too complex or has a steep learning curve, users might struggle to reach the point where they fully experience its potential.

High vs. Low Ability to Access Value

High Ability to Access Value: When users can quickly and intuitively grasp your product’s core value with minimal effort, they are more likely to engage fully and continue using it independently. A simple, user-friendly experience allows them to immediately see the benefits of your product.
Low Ability to Access Value: When your product requires a significant amount of setup, technical knowledge, or ongoing guidance, users may struggle to reach the core value. In these cases, users often need more support, whether through onboarding, demos, or customer education, to fully realize the product’s potential.

Slack PVP Example:

Player	Ability to Access Value	Explanation
Decision-Maker	High	Can quickly understand Slack's value in improving company productivity.
End User	Medium	Can access communication features easily but may not fully leverage advanced features.
Integration Partners	Low	The ability to integrate depends on the tech library or API that Slack provides.

Reddit PVP Example:

Player	Ability to Access Value	Explanation
Advertiser	Medium to High	Can access Reddit’s audience, but needs targeting and creative efforts to maximize value.
End User	High	Easily accesses relevant content without barriers, contributing to strong engagement.

5) Growth and Product role

Alright, now that you’ve done the groundwork, it’s time to pull everything together and define the role of your growth and product strategy.

The Growth Motion Spectrum: Where Does Your Business Fit?

Here’s a trap many companies fall into: thinking they need to choose between Product-Led Growth (PLG) or Sales-Led Growth (SLG). But guess what? Most scaled companies don’t fit neatly into one box. The reality is, your growth and product strategy will likely sit somewhere in between or can be different for different players in your ecosystem.

Think of it as a spectrum with four main options:

Product-Led (your product does all the heavy lifting)
Product-Led, Sales-Assisted (the product leads, but with a bit of sales support)
Sales-Led, Product-Assisted (sales drives growth, with product there to help)
Sales-Led (sales team all the way)

Remember, you may have more than one player in your product, in that case, you could have different strategies for different players.

Below is an example of how could you define

	Low	High
Customer Perception Value	PLG	SLG
Motivation	SLG	PLG
Primary Value Promise + Ability to use product	SLG	PLG

Most startups start with either PLG or SLG because, hey, you only have so many resources when chasing product-market fit. But as you scale, you’ll need to blend both approaches to maximize growth.

To conclude our Slack and Reddit examples, you can see the strategies that the company needs to follow for each segment below.

Reddit Example:

User Segment	Growth and Product Strategy	Details
Advertisers	Sales-Led, Product-Assisted	The sales team works with larger advertisers on complex ad campaigns, supported by product tools on the ad platform.
End Users (Reddit Users)	Product-Led	Reddit relies entirely on user-generated content and community engagement to drive growth, without sales involvement.

Slack Example:

User Segment	Growth Strategy	Details
Decision Makers (IT, Executives)	Sales-Led, Product-Assisted	Sales team drives growth by engaging decision-makers, with product demos and features supporting the pitch.
End Users (Employees/Teams)	Product-Led	Teams adopt Slack independently due to its ease of use and intuitive collaboration tools, with minimal sales involvement.
Integration Partners	Sales-Led	Sales teams need to finalize the integration projects with large companies like Google or Zoom.