Practical Founders Podcast

#118: The Silent PLG Killers: Why Smart Founders Fail at Product-Led Growth – Wes Bush

Wes Bush is CEO of ProductLed, a coaching and education company that has helped almost 500 serious SaaS founders to succeed with product-led growth strategies, tactics, and execution. These include freemium products and free trials, where the product itself creates the awareness, engagement, and enthusiasm to buy before any human intervention (aka “the required sales demo”).

Wes has written two successful books, including Product-Led Growth and The Product-Led Playbook, which describes key concepts, frameworks, approaches, and useful examples for SaaS founders. In this expert episode, Wes shares his expertise for SaaS founders, including these topics:

  • Defining product-led growth
  • Transitioning from sales-led to product-led
  • Common mistakes in product-led growth
  • Identifying challenges and solutions for user experience
  • Pricing strategies in product-led growth
  • The future of product-led growth in SaaS

Quote from Wes Bush, CEO of ProductLed

“The PLG model you choose doesn’t matter. Not a bit. Freemium, free trial, credit card up front, whatever. You can make any of those work. That’s not the question. What matters in PLG is the actual outcome that we hope somebody will get from our product-led experience.

“Does your free motion actually have a transformation in it where they can feel they will grow bigger, save time, and do cool stuff? Because if you don’t have that, it’s literally just, “Hey, look around, see for yourself, see what you can do in this product.” That’s not real value.

“What is your PLG outcome that creates that transformation for the user? There has to be tangible value for the user before they ever consider buying. That’s what customers want when they buy software now–Show me value first before I think about buying from you.”

Links

Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale


This week’s podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io.

 

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Greg Head recorded this on episode on November 14, 2024 for the Practical Founders Podcast see all of the episodes.

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