Top Strategies for Product Led Growth with Jennifer Smith, #215

How do you 10x your company's growth in under a year? That's a hot topic for debate, especially among software and technology companies. But, you won't have to look far to find the answer.

Because whether you explore the business model of leading productivity tool companies such as Slack, Grammarly, Loom, or Calendly – one thing becomes abundantly clear.

Product Led Growth is THE way to rapidly scale your company to not only attract users by the hundred thousands but to position your business to secure funding and next-level sales.

But, the larger question becomes, what's the best strategy to implement a product lead growth strategy that truly enables a company to scale and enhances the user experience to create consistent sales.

That's the focus of this episode of the Modern Selling Podcast, with a CEO guest who is one of the leading experts in the industry.

Jennifer Smith is the cofounder and CEO of Scribe, a modern software solution that helps to capture, document, and streamline processes in minutes. With a background in sales and marketing, having worked with McKinsey, she has helped the largest companies redefine information sharing. With a passion and gift for efficiency and productivity, Jennifer searched for a solution that would make it easier for people to share multi-step processes within teams and organizations.

How do you define product led growth?

Even though product led growth has been a buzzphrase for over a decade, how it often is defined may change depending on who you ask. I was curious to hear Jennifer's take on what product lead growth is and why it's such a powerful strategy to scale.

She shares, "With product led growth, you're focused on the end user, which is oftentimes not the buyer. It's not the person who holds the budget, instead it's the person using the product on a continuous basis who can share it with others which helps to spread the individual user base even faster."

This is such an important distinction that has even powered the rapid growth of our productivity tool, FlyMSG.io. We've gone from a few beta users to over 5,000 active users in a little over a year with no marketing. That's the power that a compelling product can have in driving adoption and quickly positioning a tool as a must-use across a host of different industries.

If you have a product and you're not at least tripling the size of your user base every three to six months, then you'll want to download this episode and listen carefully to the growth strategies Jennifer outlines.

How does product led growth really drive sales?

It's clear that product led growth does just that… leverage your product to grow your user base. However, unless a monetization strategy is used, having a large user base won't translate into overall sales growth for the organization.

With FlyMSG.io, our text expander and personal writing assistant, we've been able to offer upgrades for paid users as well as enterprise contracts to generate consistent (and sizable) revenue from those who use our tool. But, I wanted to hear the strategies that Jennifer uses to convert Scribe users into long-term and loyal customers.

She shares, "It's one thing to see your user base grow exponentially, but then the challenge is, you have to shift your focus from user growth to sales growth. In other words, how do you turn an individual user into a bigger contract or get free users to want to swipe their credit card. For us, we looked at our user data. What companies were users coming from? Where were our Scribes being shared? How could we find large groups of individual users that made it worth us reaching out to their companies to pitch an enterprise solution?"

This is a brilliant strategy and one we've used at Vengreso with great success as well. In fact, in one day alone we saw over 20 free users from a single online pharmacy sign up for FlyMSG.io. That told us immediately that there was a potential sales opportunity there to create a corporate account.

Listen into the conversation to see what other "signs" you should be looking out for when trying to monetize a product led growth strategy.

What specific strategies turn users into buyers?

It's one thing to build a product, but it's another to create a product that users want to use and will pay for. Jennifer is the expert in this field and was clear on how she was able to position Scribe to quickly scale users and sales.

She outlines three specific strategies:

1. Build a magical product – your product should be magnetic and have instant value to your users. The faster you can get them using your product, the easier it will be to convert them into a paying customer.
2. Create viral sharing loops – the key in product lead growth is to generate immediate sharing of the tool. For Scribe, a user creates a Scribe that is then easily shared with others via a link or through integration. The more sharing that takes place, the more eyes are placed on the tool and its usefulness – compounding the user growth over time.
3. Give value away as often as possible – a product led growth strategy only works if people see value in what you're offering and want to use it. The best way to do that is to get people into the tool as quickly as possible, with a low barrier to entry, and no user friction.

Want more product led growth strategies and how you can use them to drive sales? Tune into the full conversation with Jennifer and get ready to take notes!

And, if you want to try Scribe out for free, head over to: https://scribehow.com/home and use promo code: ModernSelling to experience this robust tool. And, while you're at it, make sure to download FlyMSG.io so you can type less and do more!

This episode of the Modern Selling Podcast is brought to you by Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry transforms sales teams using their world-class Miller Heiman, methodology, employee assessments, benchmarking and talent advisor capabilities to increase win rates and quota attainment. Korn Ferry offers Korn Ferry Sell, a sales effectiveness app available in App Exchange and app source that helps your sales team develop and replicate powerful sales strategies that help sellers win more deals and crush their quotas. Learn more at kornferry.com/saleseffectiveness.