👓 AMA (And a Personal Update)

Hey folks! 👋

A short post today with a personal update and a request for your help!

Total reading time: 2 minutes

Let’s go!

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Personal Update / AMA

Last Friday, I had an operation on my left wrist for something called De Quervain's Tenosynovitis.

Quite a mouthful, isn't it?

It's a (f@$king painful) condition affecting the tendons on the thumb side of the wrist.

If you’ve been following me on LinkedIn for a while you might have a sense of deja vu - I had the same procedure on my right wrist in early 2023.

I'm really pleased to say that one's working brilliantly now.

So fingers crossed (pun intended) for a similarly good outcome here.

Anyway the good news is you shouldn't notice much (if anything) different about the frequency of posts you're getting from me.

But behind the scenes, I'll be relying on dictation, to help me out.

One finger typing is a bit difficult because I use a tented split keyboard (with a custom colemak-dh based layout for the geeks 👓):

Behind the scenes at GeekHQ

Anyway, this whole wrist situation sparked an idea:

Let's do an offline AMA (Ask Me Anything)!

Here's what I'm thinking:

You send me your burning questions about product-led growth, product-led sales, activation, retention, or really anything B2B growth-related.

I'll respond to you all individually with either:

  • A short video response for the first 10 questions I receive - which might be a nice change of pace

  • Written answers (thank you, dictation tools!)

Then I'll package it all up into an upcoming post (maybe more than one depending how many questions I get)

Not sure what to ask about? Here are some topics I love diving into:

  • Activation and Engagement

  • Metrics and benchmarks

  • Team-based engagement strategies

  • Learning for impact

  • Product Qualified Accounts (PQAs)

  • Monetisation approaches in PLG

  • The intersection of product-led sales (PLS) and traditional sales methods

But don't feel constrained by these suggestions!

I'm looking forward to hearing from you and helping you tackle whatever challenges you're facing - no matter how far along you are in your product-led journey’

The more specific you can be, the better I can help you with practical, actionable advice.

I totally get that you won’t want to share sensitive details publicly.

Just anonymise what you need to.

Here are a few examples of the kind of questions I can sink my teeth into:

  • "We're seeing high initial activation but poor retention after day 45. How should we debug this?"

  • "Our activation definition includes three key actions, but only 30% of teams complete all three within their first week. At what point should we consider simplifying our activation criteria versus doubling down on improving the user journey?"

  • "We're seeing teams at larger enterprises take 3-4x longer to reach our activation milestone compared to SMB teams. How would you approach customising the onboarding flow without creating a maintenance nightmare?"

  • "Our PQA model heavily weights product usage data, but our sales team believes we're missing expansion opportunities by not factoring in team size and company stage. How do you recommend balancing these signals?"

  • "We've noticed that teams who engage with feature X retain 50% better, but only 5% of teams actually use this feature. How would you approach this?"

And fair warning…..

If anyone asks me anything like this:

Our team is debating between focusing on user-level vs team-level metrics. What factors should influence this decision?

…then expect this reply:

I’ll share all the Q&A in the newsletter, of course (with sensitive details removed or anonymised).

Your specific question might end up helping loads of other folks facing similar challenges 🎉

And the more of you submit questions, the more helpful the AMA will be for everyone.

I'll gather all the responses over the next couple of weeks and share them in an upcoming post.

Thanks for being such an engaged part of The Product-Led Geek community.

It's your thoughtful questions and active participation that keep me writing!

Can't wait to see what you'll ask!

Cheers,

Ben

P.S. If you’re interested I’m primarily using Wispr Flow for transcription. Full disclosure that's my referral link, but I absolutely recommend the app regardless of whether you choose to use the link or not!

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THAT’S A WRAP

Before you go, here are 3 ways I can help:

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That’s all for today,

If you enjoyed this post, consider upgrading to a VIG Membership to get the full Product-Led Geek experience and access to every post in the archive including all guides.

Until next time!

— Ben

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