PLG: how to know when you're ready, and how to approach it

Product-led growth means the product does most of the work of winning, converting and growing customers, instead of every deal running through a salesperson. Slack, Calendly, Canva, Figma and Notion are the examples everyone uses.

I see a lot of companies treat it as something they can bolt on. A sales-led business adds a free trial, conversion is poor, and the conclusion is that PLG doesn't suit them. Usually the model was fine. The business wasn't ready for it, or started in the wrong place. Below are the signals to look for, and how I'd think about getting started.

Are you ready?

Six things tend to be true of companies where PLG works.

First, a new user can get real value in minutes or hours. If they need a kickoff call, a data migration or any integration or development work, and a week of setup before anything useful happens, self-serve will struggle. A good test is to ask how long it takes a stranger, with no help, to reach the first moment that matters.

Second, the person using the product can buy it, or at least push for it internally. PLG suits products where the end user feels the problem and has a card or a small budget. If every purchase goes through procurement, security review and a committee, pure self-serve will stall and you're looking at a hybrid.

Third, you have product analytics you trust. You need to see signups, the main setup steps, the activation moment and usage over time, ideally by cohort. Without that you're guessing.

Fourth, accounts have room to grow, whether through seats, usage, workspaces or paid features. The economics depend on cheap starts that get bigger. If a customer's first purchase is also their last, PLG is a hard case to make internally.

Fifth, the market is large. With 200 potential customers in the world, a sales team is probably the better answer. With 5,000+ then PLG is an optimal route.

Sixth, leadership will give growth work a real place on the roadmap, with an owner and a target. If it only gets done in the gaps between customer feature requests, it won't get done.

There are also some signs you're not there yet: onboarding only works when customer success runs it; nobody can describe the activation moment in a sentence; the pricing page says 'contact us' and nothing else; sales comp penalises reps when a deal closes self-serve; or nobody owns the path from signup to paid. None of these kill the idea. They're the list of things to fix first.

How to approach it

Start with what the new user is trying to get done in their first session and build the shortest route to it. Tours, feature discovery and upsells can wait.

Then define activation. Look for the early behaviour that best predicts retention, something like 'created a project and invited a teammate within seven days', and judge every onboarding change by whether it gets more people there, sooner.

Pick a model on purpose. The main options are a free trial, freemium, a reverse trial (full features for a limited time, then a free tier) and product-led sales, where usage data tells sales who to call. Most B2B companies end up with a mix. Choose based on your time to value and who buys, not on what a competitor does.

Map the journey from visit to signup, setup, activation, habit, paid and expansion, and measure conversion at each step. Put your effort into the biggest drop, even if another part of the product is more fun to work on.

Run changes as small experiments, each with a hypothesis, a metric and a date to decide. A run of small wins usually does more than one big redesign.

Get marketing, product, sales and customer success working from the same definitions and numbers. Product-qualified leads (users whose behaviour shows buying intent) help a lot here, because they give sales a reason to back the motion.

Finally, agree the timeline. Real change tends to take a few quarters. Set checkpoints at the start so nobody judges the project on week-three data.

A quick self-check

Score each statement 0 for no, 1 for partly, 2 for yes:

1. A new user can reach real value alone within a day.
2. End users can buy, or strongly influence the purchase.
3. We track activation and retention by cohort.
4. Our pricing gives accounts a clear way to grow.
5. Our addressable market is large.
6. One person owns signup-to-paid and has a target for it.

A score of 9 to 12 means you're ready and the work is optimisation. Between 5 and 8, go hybrid and close the gaps as you go. Below 5, build the foundations before pushing PLG hard.

If you want an outside view of where your product stands, a structured audit is the quickest way to get one. My next article sets out the framework I use.