Thinking about a Product-Led Growth (PLG) Framework

From the time we started SmartCue, we envisioned it to be a self-serve platform. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it seems that we were thinking of what everyone else considers to be the holy grail of growth in SaaS i.e. Product Led Growth.

And I’m bombarded daily with people and ads pitching tools to help with ‘growth’. But before I dove into any of them, I wanted to pause and be deliberate about what I do.

I’ve been taking (or trying to take!) an hour a day to simply think about what that means for SmartCue as we build out a product roadmap. Admittedly, a lot of days are frustration-filled because there are a thousand things that flash across my mind and no coherent thoughts. But I’ve been scribbling down my thoughts and when I read them this morning, I think there is some coherence.
I’ll let you be the better and unbiased judge of that. My approach, not in any priority:

Who is my ICP?

Still figuring it out, but we think we have a fair sense of at least our first 1000 customers i.e. Sales team members (sales reps/BDRs/solution engineers, etc.) that do product demos at growth-stage companies (<100 employees) that have a maturing web-based software product that they sell to other enterprises.

What do they do?

Discovery, demos, follow-ups, negotiation, contracts

How can I demonstrate SmartCue’s value to them?

Reduced time spent in training, onboarding, referring to half-baked, handwritten notes, tailoring their demos to meet their client’s needs

What do they value?

Improved efficiency OR Reduced friction — They don’t want another ‘efficiency’ tool that simply adds more steps to their workflow and (perhaps) makes their boss’s life easier, maybe not their own.

Fast, continued delight

We need to constantly add features that add more value to my ICP and delight them thereby creating a loyalty/retention loop

Unlock added value

Create valuable features that they will willingly & happily pay more for resulting in increased ACV/CLV

Measure the loop

How do we measure that we are delivering & adding value?
a. Qualitatively i.e. customer feedback, reviews, referrals
b. Quantitatively i.e. increased usage, reduced churn, increased deal closures, upgrades, longer subscriptions i.e. monthly to annual to multi-year.

I expect that this framework can be our North Star as we build our product. Am I missing something here?

I’m sure there are a lot of tools to implement these frameworks and I’d love to know about them from folks. But it was important for me to think about the framework before thinking of tools to solve our problem.

What has worked for you when building a PLG product? What hasn’t?

#buildinpublic #productledgrowth #SaaS