How LinkedIn & Cameo Built Their PLS (Product-Led Sales) Motion - Karen Chi, Founder of Karen Chi Consulting

B2B Revenue Rebels

Many people don’t realize this but quite a few of your favorite platforms, including LinkedIn and Cameo, have implemented a product-led sales (PLS) motion a long time ago.

In short, product-led sales is a go-to-market approach that relies on existing users of the product to drive revenue.

Here’s the problem - if your PLS motion is implemented without a strategic approach to customer experience and enablement, you’ll end up in a worse position than if you gated the platform from the get-go.

Today’s episode welcomes Karen Chi - Founder of Karen Chi Consulting and former GTM leader of LinkedIn and Cameo. She’s also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of inVest Ventures - a Community VC fund investing in LinkedIn alumni founders building great companies.

There’s a common theme between signal-based GTM and product-led selling - interpreting data and predicting behaviors. Even though the concept of signal-based sales and product-led platforms started making waves recently, the concepts have been around for a long time. Karen recently attended the PLGTM conference and she’s ecstatic to see that there’s a passionate community around product-led companies.

Building a successful product-led sales motion requires a huge paradigm shift in how you think about your go-to-market. Karen says that you can’t expect your product-led motion to carry the weight throughout the whole sales process. Instead, you need to approach it with the mindset of “how do I build my product so our customers can get from 0-1 themselves” and then sales can take them from 1-100. The self-service experience can’t be just a glorified lead generation tool, as you end up creating a situation where your potential client lowers their expectations of the value of the platform effectively disqualifying themselves early in the process.

Check out the full episode to learn more about product-led go-to-market!

Connect with Karen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenychi/
Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/
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• (05:32) - Starting a Venture Capital fund
• (08:32) - What is Product-Led Selling & Signal-Based GTM
• (10:31) - How to set up your PLG/PLS motion
• (14:05) - When to involve salespeople into your PLS motion
• (16:33) - How to educate your users
• (20:46) - Using the right channels to convert clients
• (22:57) - How to serve your free tier users
• (25:51) - Growing Cameo's PLS motion
• (31:10) - How to become a great PLS sales rep