Product-led growth (PLG)
Product-led growth is a motion in which the product itself performs qualification and conversion, and sales engages only where the product cannot close the gap alone.
The defining property is not the absence of salespeople. It is that the product produces the evidence a seller would otherwise gather: who the user is, what they have configured, how much they consume, whether they have invited colleagues. Qualification becomes an observation rather than a conversation.
PLG imposes a data model requirement that is easy to underestimate. Product events have to resolve to accounts, entitlements have to be enforced in the product rather than in a contract, and the boundary at which a self-serve account should be routed to a seller has to be defined as a threshold rather than noticed by a rep browsing a dashboard.
Where it breaks
Self-serve and sales-assisted motions run against the same pipeline and comp plan, so nobody can tell which one produced the revenue.
Related terms
- Go-to-market motion
- A go-to-market motion is a repeatable path by which a specific offer reaches a specific segment, including the channel, the qualification standard, the selling model and the economics that make it viable.
- Channel conflict
- Channel conflict occurs when two routes to market can legitimately claim the same buyer, and no rule decides which one wins.
- Qualification logic
- Qualification logic is the explicit, shared rule set that determines when a record is worth advancing, and it must resolve to the same answer in marketing, sales and the CRM.
- Intent data
- Intent data is third-party or first-party behavioral signal used to infer that an account is actively researching a purchase.
Field notes on this
- Write the stop rule before the pilot starts
A market-entry pilot with no decision rule written before exposure cannot end. It gets extended until it is the default motion, without anyone choosing that.