Product-led Sales

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A large proportion of our paying customer base sign up to a paid plan without ever talking to the Sales team. We don't want to force these customers through a sales process if they don't need it, but we also know that having a human to help them through the process on hand is likely to maximize the chances of retaining them as a paying customer long term.

We think that product-led sales is going to be extremely important to how PostHog goes, so we will be iterating on this process a lot as we learn. Feel free to edit this page at any time with things that you have found work/don't work.

Product-led lead generation

Product-led leads can be generated in different ways:

  1. Customers with an active subscription in Stripe who are forecasted to receive a first time bill of $500 or more.
  2. Customers with a high lead score (>=20) who have 50+ employees, more than 1 user in the organization, and have started sending events but haven't yet subscribed.
  3. Customers who have used most of their startup credits and are expected to have significant spend after the program ends.

They follow the normal territory assignment rules in Salesforce.

Note: Some product-led leads might have already chatted with someone on our team. Before reaching out, take a quick look in Vitally to see if there’s any prior activity, and check in with the AE or team member who was involved to get the full picture if needed. Every lead has a "Vitally account URL" field in Salesforce which links directly to their Vitally profile for easy review.

Working with the customer

Just as with the inbound sales process, it's on you to decide how you qualify the lead. If you think they have potential to end up paying more than $20k a year then you should reach out to introduce yourself and offer help. As they have likely done a lot of research themselves, they may not need a demo so a 30-minute discovery is probably more appropriate here.

Getting people already happily using PostHog to talk to you can be challenging - here are a few things you might want to try.

If it's a viable opportunity then you should convert the lead to an opportunity and then follow the New sales process. Bear in mind that you can join it at any point depending on where the customer is at in their buying journey (e.g. you might skip product evaluation if they are ready to buy).

Even if after speaking with them you think they may end up at $20k+, you should educate them on how to get help, as well as the value of adding our Teams and Enterprise plans.

Getting recognized on the deal

As they have already shown intent by signing up/subscribing, you will need to demonstrate that you have actively worked on the opportunity to include it in your book of business. We will use a common sense approach here but sending a couple of emails and 1 call won't be classed as 'actively working'. Simon will make the call here, escalating if needed.

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