6 Ways to be a Product led Organization Inside Out

January 27, 2023
Data Analytics

When it comes to running a business, it isn't always a smooth sail. There are both low and high points during which you can try out different strategies and implement unique techniques. Many companies stick to a single approach and consider only sales led growth at every phase but when they don't see high growth for a very long time, they usually shut down their services.  

The wise thing to do when you're facing higher bounce back and lower sales is to reduce your efficiency to a minimum until you reach the next growth wave, which is referred to product led growth. 

One of the biggest challenges that come across when you want to switch to a product-led strategy is knowing the starting point and correct technique. 

Product led growth is all about higher retention rates, decrease in acquisition costs and constructive feedback from the users. But is it possible to make a successful transition from sales to product led approach?

In this blog, we'll be discussing different characteristics to be product led companies inside out and how to become one of the product led companies.

What Is a Product Led Company? 

Before becoming a product led companies, it is important to know what product led companies actually are. Such organizations consider their products as their hero thus they channel their products to gain, engage, and retain customers. The main aim behind this is for the sales and marketing teams plan their strategy to resolve user issues by bringing an innovative product and improving all your existing product flaws.  

In product led growth, you don't only base your decisions on the numbers your company is perceiving but you also consider the customer behavior patterns and direct feedbacks to know the actual product value and the areas for improvements. 

If you want to come up with a success product led growth started, here are three simple steps that are built on one another: 

  • Initially, your organization should be clear about the value they're going to deliver their user or the problem they're going to solve with the product. 
  • Next the value or the key feature must be thoroughly marketed by the organization. 
  • At the end, the organization must be able to execute and deliver the claimed value. 

Switching from a sales-based organization to a product-led companies doesn't only mean the change in strategy, but it also requires transforming the entire working scenario, team behavior, and even system of the entire organization. 

How to Be a Product Led Company

Every product led company's purpose is to bring the main focus towards the value they bring for users. One of the aspects that drive growth is matching the value with right consumers delivering high-end customer experience. The sales team have to ensure that product success is dependent on customer base and products with mediocre shelfware potential cannot impact on companies' product led growth.

Align Goals Around the Product 

Instead of searching for multiple software product adoption channels for retaining customers or driving growth, most sales led organization have switched to product led growth strategies by putting product first as a communication medium. In all its wisdom, leveraging products help customer success teams to plan their processes based on product to improvise user journey funnel and sustain existing users, while marketing teams can focus on the in-app notifications to gain cross or upsell opportunities.

By acquiring product as an engagement channel for smooth customer feedback, product led growth decrease any manual effort to assist user and build better customer experiences specifically for users seeking guidance or support.

Make Decisions with Data over Gut Feel 

Successful companies today know how to balance the art of product management with tactical mindset shift, influencing other product led organizations to implement customer centric techniques. They work to know every part of their product, the part where users find difficulty or the feature that have been used the most. For product led approach, you must know the requests on which you are getting the most attention which is possible with the help of product led analytics tools.

As valuable software companies grow their sales team also scale thus making decisions on gut feeling doesn't stay an option which may lead to expensive consequences. To keep up with your product led engagements, you need relevant data that can also assist in decision making. Most product leaders and product team can compile effective strategies only with the help of data.

Use Product as a Marketing Channel for Product led Growth

The main vision of product led companies is showing your products effectively. To keep up with the evolving needs of the world, you have to look for futuristic approach to drive revenue. Previously, most organizations used email marketing to connect with their customers. However, not everyone was a fan of them. Instead of bugging the customers at every instance, you can switch to product led growth by leveraging in-app messages through which you can get full access to customer segmentation, and campaign strategies. The product leader can even deliver a great advice, or any essential read based on contextual format for updates or events.

Create Incredible Onboarding Experiences 

Product-led companies are all about first impressions and create a positive impact over their customers by remarkable new customers onboarding experience. Although customer feedback and customer experience depend a lot on the support they receive, modern tech companies are familiar with limited scaling of such one-on-one enablement approach. So, product led companies believe in sales process putting product on the front instead of human led programs.

When the entire process is automated influencing organizational priorities from training to engagements, sales teams get the liberty to offer more meaningful assistance and dedicated support to those customers who actually need it.

Help Users to Assist Themselves 

Nowadays not only individuals but most valuable software companies like to resolve their issues on their own, without needing any help from product teams or representative. If you are creating software to cater any customer issue then in order to drive growth, you need to completely automate it. The prime example of this is Amazon Go which is operable without any human resource on site.

Product led companies make use of their built-in product led features to support their customer and deploying various tools to meet them wherever they are. It helps you win the loyalty from customers by giving them the solutions for problems before they happen, making it a priority over sales led organization. This way product managers are more focused on strategic work by following different ways:

  • Deep insights based on interactions to train the system.
  • In-app help center to gain desired outcomes from customers.
  • Personalized company onboarding flow.
  • Product updates and customers related event announcements.
  • Knowledge base product led integrations.
  • In-app tooltips and tutorials

Collect Feedback and Communicate Back 

The first and foremost responsibility of a product manager is to

In the past, product ideas mostly came from the top down—leaving users feeling unheard and underrepresented. But product-led organizations understand that user feedback is critical for building the best product possible. They use tools like Pendo Feedback to centralize and prioritize their customers’ feedback—and to communicate roadmap and feature request updates back to users. Product-led organizations also typically have a product feedback policy in place that clearly sets expectations with their users and tells them where to go to share their thoughts. 

Tips to Start Your Product-led Journey 

Most successful companies prioritize product led decisions over sales service strategies. They make use of different resources from customer usage data for practical understanding about your product to influence organizational priorities. Here are a few tips for getting started on your product led journey: 

Product led Growth Hub

You have to look for a reliable product led hub which can be your ultimate stop to acquire product led growth and making use of a product led approach.

Research about Product Led Companies

Since rich stories related to product experience is more demanded than product itself. In order to become a product led company, it is important to think about creating feature-enriched products that deliver remarkable experience.

Drive Growth by Putting Product at Front

If you want to drive growth by putting product at the front, then it is important to showcase your product in such a way that it automatically supports your existing users and gain new ones. A product led support team has their focus directed to implementing tactical approach. 

Aligning Customers Care around Product Metrics

Align your product led team in such a way that it complements your metrics and ensure a mutual connective element to analyze success across multiple departments.

Summing Up

To sum up, for the past few decades, product led strategy wasn't quite prominent, until recently most sales led organization are aiming to become product led or customer led organization because many customers led organization use marketing campaigns as a smokescreen to conceal any shortcomings of their products, showcasing their product as hero. Product-driven businesses last longer because their clients are more devoted, and they focus on emphasizing devoted customers so that new customers will eventually catch up.

Sadaf

Sadaf is a professional content writer at Sudofy with expertise in IT and data science domain.