Growth and monetization
GTM failure modes
Two funnels that do not talk, sales habits inside a PLG product, and comp plans that fight the motion.
Copying another company's go-to-market without looking at ACV and time-to-value is the usual way this goes wrong. The failures below are more specific, and they show up in routing, habits, incentives and sequencing.
Two funnels that do not talk
Marketing generates MQLs; product generates signups; sales ignores product usage and works a parallel outbound list. Customers get conflicting outreach while PQLs rot. Fix: one account journey, shared dashboards, and routing rules based on usage.
Sales-led habits inside a PLG product
Requiring a demo before trial, hiding pricing, or forcing "talk to sales" for every upgrade reintroduces friction the product was designed to remove. Use sales for complexity, not for basic curiosity.
PLG dogma inside a high-ACV market
Refusing to hire sellers when deals are $80k+ and security questionnaires take six weeks leaves revenue on the table. The product can still be the wedge; humans close.
Comp plans that fight the motion
If AEs are paid only for new logos, they will steal self-serve expansions and poison the PLG motion. If nobody owns expansion, NRR stalls. Align incentives with whether the motion is land-and-expand or hunt.
Building enterprise features too early
SSO before activation is solved burns runway. Conversely, ignoring audit logs when five Fortune 500 trials are blocked is also malpractice. Sequence with actual deal blockers, not blog-post checklists.
Example
A team ships a generous free tier and celebrates 50k signups. Paid conversion is 0.8%. Sales is hired to "work the leads" and cold-calls free users who never activated. Conversion stays tiny; NPS among free users drops. Rewrite: define activation, fix time-to-value, define PQLs as "activated + 3 seats + integration connected," and only then route to sales-assist. Signup volume stops being the north star; activated-qualified accounts become it.
Common mistakes
- Treating all signups as sales leads. That is the 50k-signup trap above.
- Comp that pays only for new logos. Expansions get stolen; NRR stalls.
- Enterprise checklist from a blog, not from this quarter's blocked deals.
Check yourself
AEs are paid only for new logos in a land-and-expand PLG company. What happens? They steal self-serve expansions. The product motion and the comp plan fight.
50k signups, 0.8% conversion, sales cold-calling never-activated free users. First fix? Activation and a real PQL definition. Stop treating signups as leads.
Key takeaways
- One account journey: usage routing, shared dashboards, PQLs that sales actually works.
- Use humans for complexity, not for curiosity. Hire them when ACV and questionnaires demand it.
- Align comp with land-and-expand vs hunt. Sequence enterprise features from real deal blockers.
Further learning
Elena Verna on product-led sales:
Map: PLG vs sales-led.
Related
Product-led vs sales-led growth
When self-serve wins, when you need a sales team, and how hybrids work.
Product-qualified leads
Usage predicts buy intent. Sales arrives with context, instead of restarting from a cold form fill.
GTM and the roadmap
PLG prioritizes activation and billing. Sales-led prioritizes SSO, audit logs and SE tooling. Hybrids need both.