Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Building a Product-Led Growth Engine | Yoni Tserruya - CEO of Lusha

Transcript

Lessons - Building a Product-Led Growth Engine | Yoni Tserruya - CEO of Lusha · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, we explore product-led growth and its impact on B2B company.
• 0:05
  Discover how self-service options can drive customer acquisition and brand awareness
• 0:09
  while optimizing sales processes, learn strategies to prioritize sales activities,
• 0:14
  and enhance data-driven decision-making for maximum productivity.
• 0:18
  Describe to me through LUSHA like, what is product-led growth?
• 0:33
  What does that mean and how did LUSHA adopt that strategy?
• 0:36
  And also, why did you know that that was a strategy that you should take?
• 0:42
  How did you know that?
• 0:44
  The beautiful part is that we didn't know at the beginning,
• 0:47
  with the good sense of honesty and voice.
• 0:49
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, as you understood, my background was B2C product.
• 0:56
  So when we thought about building the product, my intuition was, okay,
• 1:00
  so let's build something simple, which anyone can start using for create.
• 1:04
  And if you want to buy, you can upgrade, premium, because this is what I knew from
• 1:07
  mobile work. I didn't know that it is so rare in the B2B world back then.
• 1:15
  After several years, after three years, I think we learned that there is a name for that,
• 1:25
  which means product-led growth, and we suddenly did it without even thinking.
• 1:30
  But I think the benefit of product-led growth is exactly what we thought.
• 1:34
  We just didn't know how to say it.
• 1:35
  So let's go back to that.
• 1:36
  And the idea is that if you're not doing product-led,
• 1:43
  your classic B2B company means that once a visitor goes to a marketing website,
• 1:48
  and he reads the value proposition, let's say he understands that,
• 1:52
  because in a lot of cases, he just doesn't understand.
• 1:55
  And then you want to use it.
• 1:56
  What you see is that you have a form, which you need to fill up the form,
• 2:00
  and then schedule a demo.
• 2:02
  And today, and I as a consumer, but I think 75% of the people today,
• 2:08
  doesn't want to talk to a sales rep before they know the product.
• 2:11
  They want to talk to someone after they know the product and when they have questions.
• 2:16
  So the idea of product-led growth is that just open the funnel.
• 2:20
  Let the user try before he buy. Let him even buy, but only if he needs
• 2:25
  scale and only if he needs or have any questions, he will go to the sales team.
• 2:29
  And so what product-led is doing is that the product is out there.
• 2:34
  Anyone can use it.
• 2:35
  You go to a marketing website, you can sign up for free.
• 2:38
  You can start using it for free.
• 2:40
  You can even buy itself service.
• 2:42
  You don't need to talk to anyone.
• 2:44
  And if you need to talk, you can do that.
• 2:46
  And I think at the beginning, a lot of sales people,
• 2:48
  even those we hire here in Lucia,
• 2:51
  they don't use it.
• 2:55
  They use to talk to everyone.
• 2:56
  They want to manage the sales cycle.
• 2:59
  And the idea is that when the sales team manage the sales cycle,
• 3:03
  you might bring bigger deals at the beginning,
• 3:05
  but you're not bringing or you eat very hard to create a big brand awareness
• 3:12
  without many marketing resources.
• 3:14
  Because the funnel is closed by a rep,
• 3:17
  and you need a lot of reps to talk to a lot of people to tell them the value.
• 3:22
  And when you do product-led, you actually put the product out there.
• 3:27
  Anyone can use it.
• 3:28
  You create brand awareness by the product.
• 3:30
  I mean, if the product is good, it just works for you.
• 3:33
  And when the sales people just talk to people,
• 3:36
  they are actually talking to users.
• 3:38
  They are not talking to prospect, which means that doesn't need to
• 3:42
  explain the value proposition.
• 3:44
  The user already know the value proposition.
• 3:46
  He know the product.
• 3:47
  He know the service, the conversation is much further than that.
• 3:50
  It's about how much it's cost,
• 3:52
  or maybe I didn't understand some feature.
• 3:54
  But the job of the sales rep is to connect the dots,
• 3:58
  and just go to the sales conversation to the negotiation area much quickly,
• 4:04
  then talk about the product composition.
• 4:07
  So product-led grows company actually sells more,
• 4:10
  and grow much faster than classic B2B companies.
• 4:15
  The beginning of the journey might be different,
• 4:18
  but in the long-round, PLG just grow faster.
• 4:22
  Better user experience as well.
• 4:25
  And you were bootstrapped up until, I think,
• 4:30
  you've raised money, I saw you raised 40 million early February.
• 4:34
  Congratulations on that.
• 4:35
  Was that the first round?
• 4:36
  Was that you ever raised?
• 4:38
  Yeah.
• 4:39
  Yeah, it was the first round.
• 4:41
  Up until then, we are completely bootstrapped.
• 4:43
  We reached to almost 1500, 15,000 customers.
• 4:51
  Totally bootstrapped.
• 4:52
  And the reason we succeeded to do that was exactly because we did it product-led.
• 4:57
  So, a lot of our customers are completely self-serve.
• 5:02
  And those who need scale or want a bigger solution,
• 5:05
  well, we sell them via a sales team.
• 5:07
  But the sales team just speaks to those who want to buy.
• 5:11
  Just, you know, talking to people.
• 5:15
  And when you're doing product-led growth,
• 5:17
  you're focusing on the product.
• 5:20
  But also, you must have some sort of inbound or demand-gen.
• 5:24
  And if you're bootstrapped, I guess,
• 5:26
  somebody who's listening to this may wonder, like, okay,
• 5:28
  so it's a little bit scary for me to not depend on sales people.
• 5:31
  Where do I invest my limited resources so that people even know I exist?
• 5:37
  And where did you do?
• 5:38
  So, I mean, what we did at the beginning,
• 5:41
  we just tried to publish that there is a service called NUSHA.
• 5:46
  And, you know, Facebook recruiters groups and LinkedIn recruiters groups
• 5:50
  in some websites that cover recruiters.
• 5:55
  And we did it for like a week or two.
• 5:58
  We also brought, like, several influencers in the recruiting area.
• 6:02
  But mainly that's it.
• 6:04
  After the very first, you know,
• 6:08
  push that we did to the product,
• 6:09
  everything else happened organically.
• 6:13
  Because the product did deliver.
• 6:15
  And the value was good for the people.
• 6:17
  And the data was good.
• 6:19
  And so, people start, you know,
• 6:22
  telling about it to other people.
• 6:24
  And they were getting the word of mouth just word.
• 6:26
  And we had natural growth rate.
• 6:30
  But actually, most of the product that grows company,
• 6:34
  if you have a good product and you invest most of the resources in a good product,
• 6:37
  this is what it what's happened to.
• 6:39
  I have the word of mouth.
• 6:41
  You have the word of mouth.
• 6:42
  You have natural and organic growth,
• 6:44
  even without marketing spent.
• 6:47
  Now, marketing spend can definitely accelerate that.
• 6:50
  But it's not that without it you are not growing.
• 6:52
  You can still grow because the product is your marketing.
• 6:56
  The free mule is your marketing.
• 6:58
  And a follow-up on that in was there was there any,
• 7:02
  it sounds like you, you know,
• 7:04
  I think you're going to answer this question saying like,
• 7:06
  no, we actually, we didn't have a ton of issues,
• 7:07
  but it sounds.
• 7:10
  Well, in in this particular space,
• 7:13
  it seems like there's a lot of competition.
• 7:15
  So how did you do the way you differentiated was just having an incredible product?
• 7:20
  That was that was really how you did it.
• 7:24
  I think I think two things differentiate
• 7:26
  Lucia for the market.
• 7:28
  Firstly, the data quality is the data quality.
• 7:30
  At the end of the day, tell about the data.
• 7:33
  And we succeeded to provide very good result,
• 7:36
  the beginning of the journey.
• 7:38
  So the dinner was good.
• 7:40
  Better than the better than most of the competitors back then.
• 7:45
  And the second thing is how we sell it.
• 7:48
  So today, even if two companies are selling the exact same thing,
• 7:51
  but one company does it much more easily.
• 7:56
  With no friction, with self-service experience,
• 7:58
  we can just and this is the PLG.
• 8:00
  It is exactly what we did.
• 8:01
  Then it's going to succeed faster.
• 8:03
  And because how we sell it was much more simpler.
• 8:07
  So yeah, I think I think the data quality and the way of selling it,
• 8:12
  that we are we we we sold to the end user to their to their AE or to their DR,
• 8:19
  the city in the company.
• 8:20
  And you don't need to create a big deal with the procurement.
• 8:24
  We used $25,000 annual contract.
• 8:26
  So anyone could just download and start using it.
• 8:29
  So people just started.
• 8:31
  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 8:32
  And then now you've raised some money.
• 8:34
  So what is your vision for the company?
• 8:37
  Where do you want to take it next?
• 8:39
  Because now you actually have some capital funding you.
• 8:41
  So what are what are next steps for LUSHA?
• 8:43
  Yeah, so the capital is basically accelerating everything we're doing,
• 8:48
  starting from headcount.
• 8:49
  And we now do have marketing budget.
• 8:52
  That we are we're we're increasing because of the fund.
• 8:57
  But the main division is to build the largest
• 9:02
  community of sales people in the world.
• 9:04
  Because we believe that the sales industry needs to be much more data-driven.
• 9:10
  And and and be more focused about the people that want to buy when they want to buy.
• 9:14
  And just make sure that the people are spending more time selling.
• 9:18
  So instead of trying to, you know,
• 9:22
  spray and pray to everyone with cold calling or
• 9:26
  whatever other approach a lot of companies are doing today,
• 9:28
  we want to provide them really accurate data.
• 9:30
  So they want to spend time on just, you know, those who doesn't want to buy
• 9:35
  and try to provide the best intent and timing to do that.
• 9:39
  Both for sale and but also in the future for customer success.
• 9:42
  Well, go ahead.
• 9:43
  Hey, no, it's it's very smart.
• 9:48
  And then I guess just to follow up as you're in the industry,
• 9:52
  what are what are the trends that you're seeing with the best practices in sales
• 9:58
  that if somebody's listening and they're perhaps in a more legacy organization,
• 10:03
  or they're not sort of, you know, up to times with with what works,
• 10:06
  what do you recommend people start to do as a sales rep or as a sales leader?
• 10:10
  I think what we see as trend is that more and more companies are not trying to
• 10:19
  necessarily talk to as many people as possible.
• 10:24
  Like I said, it's a spray and pray.
• 10:28
  It's more going to be to super prospecting, to be very, very accurate about
• 10:33
  what you want to spend the time on.
• 10:36
  And this is exactly also what you're doing in ABM.
• 10:39
  But you just want to know what you want to run after and then work there and get deeper
• 10:45
  in the organization.
• 10:46
  So you need to know where you want to reach out and not just spend time and a lot of cut.
• 10:51
  So we see that we see the trend in sales teams going to that direction.
• 10:57
  And this is what we enable and trying to to provide even better data play to do that.
• 11:04
  And one thing one thing that you did touch on,
• 11:06
  I just want to sort of reinforce while we're on the topic,
• 11:09
  you mentioned about getting people to spend more time actually selling.
• 11:14
  Like I'm sure, you know, even the fact that you installed, you created this initial
• 11:18
  iteration of the product as a Chrome extension so that people aren't navigating to a web app
• 11:23
  or some other other application and taking them away from the prospecting.
• 11:27
  It's meant to be seamless with their workflow.
• 11:30
  Speak to the issues that sales reps have.
• 11:32
  So I know you see them with spending too much time on non-sales activities and how this solves for that.
• 11:39
  Yes, I think salespeople today spend a lot of time on admin work and identifying
• 11:46
  who they need to talk to next and you know, understanding the trends in the company.
• 11:51
  So the conversation would be more sleek and they will know what to discuss about.
• 11:56
  And honestly, what happened in this data is according to southwards.com.
• 12:01
  Salespeople are actually selling 33% of their day.
• 12:06
  So the rest is about admin and prioritizing and getting data.
• 12:12
  So if you provide them higher quality of data or you help them prioritize the lead based on,
• 12:21
  you know, some criteria like industry, number of employees or technologies or stuff like that,
• 12:27
  they can spend more time selling because you actually help them with automation and data to prioritize their work.
• 12:34
  So I think that the industry is going that direction, how to optimize,
• 12:40
  and the optimization is based on data like making a lot of other areas in the world today.
• 12:56
  Watch the full episode. See you in the next one.