Three examples of ‘moments that matter’ in PLG
This week I experienced three fantastic Product Led Growth (PLG) onboarding experiences.
All three of them got me to a ‘moment that mattered’ within just a couple of minutes.
A moment that matters occurs when your buyer gets to a core piece of value from your product - they move from being an explorer to a user.
With more complex platforms like a database you might be an explorer for many weeks or months while you learn your way around.
For PLG SaaS products, you have just a couple of minutes to get your customer to a moment that matters before they get bored, distracted and move onto something else - never to return.
Here were the three moments that mattered that I experienced.
HubSpot - creating my first opportunity
I had five minutes before I needed to do a school pick up.
I’d just been on a call with someone talking about how they used Hubspot for their consulting business (peer referral) and thought I’d quickly look at the website.
Within that five minutes I spun up a free licence by using automated sign up with Google - no email or password required.
I connected Hubspot to my email and calendar via the automated onboarding.
Hubspot automatically pulled in my profile photo and details to make it feel like ‘my’ account.
Hubspot directed me to create my first opportunity and add in the value, close date and contact details.
Within five minutes I had a working CRM with a live opportunity.
A moment that mattered (and I wasn’t late for school).
Reveal - contacting potential partners to work with
Reveal is a partner platform - it helps companies to find and connect with partners via shared opportunities and accounts.
In another “I have five minutes before my next call” situation I visited Reveal’s site, and saw they had a free tier that I could sign up to.
Using the Google sign up flow I was into the platform immediately.
The onboarding flow guided me to connect up to my CRM (my recently acquired Hubspot) and upload my open opportunities.
I was then guided to search and find potential partners that I might want to work with - being able to put in partner connection requests based on the strength of the overlaps in our accounts.
A moment that mattered within five minutes.
Aligned - branding a digital sales room
Aligned helps sellers and buyers to digitally manage their interactions through the sales process - including sharing content, mutual action plans and customer collaboration.
Once again I had a spare five minutes and was on the site - and saw a “Start free” button which gave me my favourite “Sign up with Google” when I hovered on it.
Having spun up an account I was immediately guided to set up my first digital sales room using a template that was already populated with some of the key items.
The onboarding encouraged me to search for the logo of the client and got me to a moment that mattered - branding a digital sales room without having to go to Google, search for a logo, download it, upload it and so on.
Within just a couple of minutes I could see how I would use this platform, develop a mutual action plan and share content out to customers.
A moment that mattered in under five minutes.
Get your buyer to the core value as fast as possible
As a buyer there are three things that really stand out to me for these three experiences.
Sign up with Google (or Microsoft, or Apple). It is 2023. I do not expect to have to type my email address and invent a password. Single Sign On gets me into your product in seconds.
Point me in the right direction. A simplified onboarding flow that orientates me around the most important things - leave the details. Do the hard work for me - pull in my profile picture, pull in my company brand and colours from my website, one click integrations with my other systems.
Get me to a moment that matters quickly. Interview your users and determine what is the one thing that would be the core use case for a first time customer to move from explorer to user. Creating an opportunity, contacting a partner, branding a digital sales room…what is yours?
Product Led Growth is a hot topic right now as tech companies drive for more efficient growth.
Do this onboarding phase well, and your sellers will have a much easier experience later in the process when buyers start exploring your paid offerings.
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Whenever you are ready, there are two ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.
Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your Revenue Operations strategy.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.