Less than 2 months to go for another total solar eclipse! One of our colleagues is planning to watch it from Maine. Who has plans and where are you planning to watch it from?
In this newsletter we will focus on another interesting conversation from our previous meetup:
Gusto's Journey to Product-Led Sales: Key Learnings and Future Focus
Gusto's shift to a product-led sales (PLS) strategy has yielded impressive results, with a 50% customer acquisition rate driven directly by the product experience. This video by Badri Sridharan, Head of Growth, delves into the key learnings and future focus of this successful transition.
Collaboration and data-driven decision-making were central to their success. Implementing a unified data platform for lead scoring and pipeline management, along with aligning incentives between growth and sales teams, ensured a smooth and efficient process. Leveraging product usage data effectively proved crucial, allowing them to engage users at the right moment and offer limited access to trigger lead generation when users were ready for more.
Gusto also found that positive employee experiences fueled significant referrals, highlighting the importance of a strong product-centric culture. Looking ahead, optimizing lead nurturing, refining incentives to truly reflect the PLS model, and further leveraging their unified data platform are key focus areas. Additionally, they're exploring separating lead generation and sales for individual scaling.
Key learnings:
Gusto's PLS strategy boosted customer acquisition: 50% came directly from their product experience
Collaboration & data-driven decisions were key: Unified data platform, aligned incentives, and effective use of product usage data streamlined the process.
Positive employee experience matters: It fueled significant referrals, highlighting the importance of a product-centric culture.
Overall, Gusto's journey serves as a valuable case study, demonstrating the power of a collaborative, data-driven, and product-centric approach to achieve success in a PLS model. Their continuous refinement promises further efficiency gains and increased customer value in the future.
In other things
FunnelStory & Success Venture Partners dinner in #SanFrancisco!
The burning question on everyone's mind at the dinner was - is customer journey mapping crucial for success, and how do we tackle it?
Here are some key insights from the CS rockstars in the room:
It's a complex beast - One participant shared the struggle of dynamic journeys due to segments, seasons, and verticals.
Universally valuable across stages - A consulting leader emphasized the importance of mapping at all stages, from Series A to public companies.
Action is key - A CS leader stressed the need to operationalize journeys into engagement models across various departments.
Data trumps opinions - Another leader pointed out that marketing ownership often lacks access to crucial product data, making journeys more subjective than objective.
Metrics matter - A revenue leader argued that customer journeys must be tied to specific metrics for each function.
Feedback loop is missing - A senior leader lamented the lack of feedback mechanisms for existing journeys.
AI is the future - Almost everyone agreed that data and AI hold immense potential for defining customer journeys.
