Pros and Cons of Self-Serve, Sales-Driven, and the Hybrid Model

Understandably, different business models will require diverse strategies. In this episode, Jeff Hardison, head of product marketing at Clearbit discusses how he approaches product marketing in different kinds of companies and the things he takes into account when in each of those businesses.

Show Notes

[00:53] How he became the head of product marketing at Clearbit

[03:24] What Clearbit is

[04:52] His experience owning the self-service revenue number

[07:15] How companies can decide between a self-service model or have sales lead the whole sales process

[09:25] Three important things about product led growth

[10:55] What he wants to caution people against in terms of product led growth

[12:10] What to do when the self-serve revenue plateaus

[13:54] The best time to introduce sales into the organisation

[17:35] How to help people understand what they’re getting themselves into

[20:17] How to make products easier to implement

[25:37] How to determine when to reach out to specific people

[27:59] One thing he wished he knew in terms of building the self-service model and learning how to turn users into paying customers

[29:21] His advice to sales-driven companies that would like to try self-serve

[33:04] How his testing process has evolved over the years

[34:50] Why every company should try to start with product led growth

About Jeff Hardison

Jeff Hardison is the head of product marketing at Clearbit. Clearbit is a business-data and marketing software company relied upon by leading SaaS clients like Asana, Segment, and Stripe. Profitable since their fourth month, Clearbit is considered a great example of an exceptionally managed company.

Links

• InVision
• Reflect Technologies, Inc. (Acquired by Puppet)
• HP
• Shopify
• Google Tag Manager
• HubSpot

Profile

• Clearbit
• Jeff on LinkedIn