Is your sales team still using traditional selling strategies? Are they chasing cold leads in hopes of closing a sale before prospects experience the value of your product?
A sales-first approach is how companies focus on Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQLs). But research shows that only 2% of MQLs convert to paying users.
Traditional outreach isn’t the best use of your team’s time. It’s inefficient, expensive, results in dismal closing rates, and demotivates your reps. On top of this, most prospects aren’t ready to speak to sales about your product since they haven’t even tried it yet.
Instead, the solution is to create a Product-Led Growth (PLG) funnel where sales reps target Product-Qualified Leads (PQLs) — leads that convert up to 15x better than MQLs.
You'll learn how to build a PQL funnel in this article.
To identify your PQLs and provide qualified leads to your sales team, you need to capture relevant data and define what a PQL is for your company.
First comes your tech stack. You’ll need:
These are the absolute basics, but there are many other platforms you can use to improve your PLG processes:
When your data stack is ready, it’s time to define your PQL criteria. Most companies define PQLs based on firmographics and usage data, but adding traditional MQL scoring is possible if you want to refine your funnel and optimize your product marketing.
Your PQL scoring and criteria will be unique to your product, but they’ll fall under three major categories:
You want to be strict with your PQL criteria rather than have sales waste their time with the "spaghetti at the wall" approach of cold outreach. You want your team to know what to address for a prospect to upgrade to a customer.
A sales-centric PLG marketing funnel needs to highlight leads that are ready for interaction.
Here’s how:
For most companies, MQLs are the predominant lead type that sales reps receive. But with a PLG approach, you must focus on product-related interactions rather than marketing interactions.
Examples of product-related interactions include:
It will depend on your product, but usage criteria always revolve around the main features users can access. Some marketing-centric criteria are still relevant for PQLs, though. For example, viewing a pricing page, help docs, or content related to your product — especially if viewed after a user signs up.
Next, you’ll need somewhere to view the status of your leads. Not everyone will immediately become a PQL, so it’s still crucial to highlight MQLs that may be ready for the next step.
Depending on your CRM, you may be able to view this data with some additional development, or you may need a different platform. Either way, the main information you’ll want to see includes:
Merging your PQLs and MQLs into a rolled-up Account (PQA) view in your CRM gives your sales and marketing teams a comprehensive way to understand intent beyond the individual level. Stitching product usage intent signals with marketing behavior gives you the full picture.
The final step is to have a smooth process for PQL assignment. If you have a small team, you can do this manually, but it’s a good idea to use automation to assign leads if you want your system to scale well.
Alternatively, you can pre-assign leads to reps and set up notifications when a lead is ready for contact.
Whenever you assign a lead or it becomes ready for contact, you must provide your reps with insights about the prospect. This information should include:
A PLG marketing funnel is much like the traditional sales funnel, except the product plays a significant role in moving prospects down the funnel.
Here's how a PLG approach works in a typical sales funnel:
While most PLG sales funnels follow the general structure above, there are differences in when and how reps interact with prospects. There are generally four different approaches:
Product signals are vital for moving users down your PLG funnel. You can also use them for retargeting and nurturing campaigns when you feel a prospect is losing interest or as signals for SDRs to contact a customer.
You can trigger outreach tasks for SDRs using certain product signals. For example:
Other signals can trigger automated lead nurturing. For example:
Finally, you can target other signals with in-app prompts. For example:
A PLG funnel streamlines the sales process for your team. It also highlights the most engaged prospects to target, leading to increased conversions and faster sales cycles. So sales reps can spend more time selling and problem-solving rather than educating prospects.
Want to make the switch to product-led growth but don't have the time to implement it?
At Matter Made, we help B2B tech companies reach unicorn status through tailored product-led growth and RevOps programs.
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Ren Fischer, Director of Demand Generation
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