Finding your place on the PLG and Sales spectrum | Japna Sethi

Growth Machines: Combining Product-Led Growth and Sales

In the seventh episode of the Growth Machines podcast, I speak with Japna Sethi, Product and Growth leader at Calendly. Previously she has been a lead for Product and Growth at Dropbox and she built and led the Growth team at Productboard from the ground up.

Each of these companies dealt with a large flow of incoming users and Japna shares how they built support and sales motions on top of this to identify and convert accounts with larger potential. In one company experiments to involve the support team at key moments led to the creation of an entirely separate team and organization that drove conversion for the business.

She describes the challenges of applying the scientific method in a B2B context, which often leads to long timelines to see results for Product-Led Growth. Listen to the full episode to hear how she recommends to create a portfolio of experiments and what teams can do to make sure they don’t circle back to the same ideas without properly validating or invalidating them.

[00:00] Introducing Japna Sethi
[00:45] Success patterns in companies doing Product-Led Growth
[04:14] Setting the right expectations in terms of timeline
[07:08] Creating a Portfolio of Experiments
[09:51] The API between Product-Led Growth and Sales
[13:42] Common Pitfalls and Challenges
[17:02] Involving Support and Customer Success
[21:27] Dealing with Large User Volumes
[25:28] 3 Things to Look at When Assessing a PLG strategy
[29:44] Final thoughts

This interview is part of my book about Product-Led Sales. Go to www.PLGandSales.com for more info.