SHOW SUMMARY

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, Joshua talks to Userflow Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer Esben Friis-Jensen. Esben talks about product-led growth and how the shift from traditional sales-led operations is changing the game for B2B Software as a service (SaaS) companies. 

Through strategies such as freemium models or limited free trials, SaaS companies are redefining the roles of sales and customer success departments and may even indicate the need for a new type of CRM better suited to subscription-type revenue models. If Esben and other product-led growth evangelists are right, we may be already underway to a disruption that will change how we do business altogether. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Transitioning from a product-led to sales-led organization and back again
• How product-led growth is the future of SaaS 
• Product-led models still need sales and customer success people
• Silos impede the connectivity of data in many companies
• The case for a software as a service CRM
• How the product-led model is changing procurement conversations 
• Should we merge sales and customer success? 

QUOTES

Esben: “Product-led growth is reducing the need to have sales and customer success involved in certain aspects,  but it’s not removing the need. I would say it’s changing the role of sales and customer success to basically be a bit different and I think it’s still a journey that many companies are going through.” 

Esben: “In my experience, even in a sales-led modeling, the best AEs were the ones who understood the use-cases, understood the product. Like if there was a question about the product, they didn’t have to go and ask a solutions engineer, how do I do this, right? They really knew the product inside-out and if the customer had a use-case, they could say, yeah that’s how you do it because that shows integrity.” 

Esben: “I think there’s a need for a new player to come in and actually build a software as a service B2B CRM. Today, with Salesforce and Hubspot, they’re like legacy solutions. They were built for another era, they were not built for software as a service. Today, you can mention many things but they don’t do well with handling product data. They don’t do very well handling subscription-based models and user-based models which are like the most popular pricing models in SaaS.” 

Esben: “I’ve always been a big spokesperson for to some extent, merging sales and customer success. Because I think the best customer success people are the ones who can do sales, and the best salespeople are the ones who can answer the customer’s questions and give proper support.” 

Learn more about Esben and his work in the links below:

• Website (Company): https://userflow.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esbenfriisjensen/
• Community: https://productled.com/

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshwagneraz
• Company website: https://www.leadmd.com 
• Personal Website: https:///www.joshuadwagner.com
• Podcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com