Welcome folks! 👋

In this edition of The Product-Led Geek I’m publishing an excerpt from Chapter 5 of Dave Boyce’s upcoming book ‘FREEMIUM’. I wrote this chapter with Dave and it focuses on the practicalities of building impactful growth functions.

Todays post will take 4 minutes to read and you’ll learn:

• Why a Product Growth Model should guide all growth initiatives across teams.

• The five growth motions from no-touch PLG to dedicated-touch account-based sales that drive business success.

• Why your growth team's success depends on company-wide alignment rather than isolated efforts.

There’s also a really cool NotebookLM discussion about the full chapter over on Dave’s Substack - well worth a listen!

Let’s go!

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GEEK LINKS

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GEEK OUT

The Product Growth Model - The North Star for All Growth Efforts

A growth team is tasked with optimising one or more aspects of growth related to their product.

At the highest level, in any Product Growth Model, there are four growth levers: Acquisition, Retention, Monetisation and Expansion. 

Every business needs to be able to answer the following questions:

• How do we Acquire users/teams?

• How do we Monetise users/teams?

• How do we Retain users/teams?

• How do we Expand usage?

Put more simply, how do we grow?

With answers to these questions, a company can construct a set of planning assumptions and combine them into an overall picture of the company’s trajectory.

This results in what we refer to as a Product Growth Model. 

• Are Expansion initiatives delivering the expected results?

• Is the new customer Acquisition engine performing better or worse than the assumptions in the Product Growth Model?

• Do we need to make adjustments in targeting – given Renewals are underperforming expectations?

Within each of the domains above, a business will have primary (and sometimes secondary) growth motions including:

• No-touch (product-led growth, or PLG)

• Low-touch (product-led sales, or PLS)

• Medium-touch (inbound marketing-led, “Inbound”)

• High-touch (outbound sales-led, “Outbound”)

• Dedicated-touch (account-based sales, or ABS)

When users realise Impact from a product, it’s unsurprising that most companies’ primary motion for retaining users and teams is product-led.

Many businesses also either have—or aspire to have—product-led motions for Acquisition, Monetisation and/or Expansion.

The Product Growth Model ultimately describes and quantifies how a product grows.

A founder or first Growth hire might create the initial iteration, but over time, growth teams typically own the Product Growth Model.

They ensure it is kept up to date with feedback that incorporates the observed performance of Growth Loops, learnings from the growth team, evolution of the product, and shifts in company strategy or the wider market.

The growth team uses the Product Growth Model to plan and execute the strategic opportunities on which they focus.

Ultimately, the Product Growth Model should inform plans not only for the growth team, but for teams across the company: R&D, Marketing, Customer Success and beyond.

Without this dedicated team, there is often no ownership of the Product Growth Model–or worse, the Product Growth Model isn’t created or quantified at all.

This can lead to prioritisation decisions being made without strategic input.

Inevitably, competing priorities such as building feature X to help close the next big deal can mean important product growth initiatives are inadequately funded, under-resourced, or passed over entirely.

Standout PLG companies have growth built into their DNA.

Product teams prioritise capability development based on whether the resulting motion supports the overall Product Growth Model, and whether it fuels or inhibits micro and macro Growth Loops.

The criteria for judging the initial and ongoing success of new features can include relevant growth metrics at the feature level and at the product level.

When that is the case, having a growth team can be an additional superpower, as the growth team can focus on:

• Core constraints within the Product Growth Model,

• Finding and alleviating those constraints,

• Getting Growth Loops spinning faster,

• …and where and when appropriate, layering on new Loops

When growth is not programmed into the DNA of the whole company, and the business effectively delegates PLG success to a single team/org, that team will unlikely be set up for success.

Is this is an interesting topic area for you? Let me know and I’ll write a follow up with a deep dive into growth models.

THAT’S A WRAP

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That’s all for today,

If there are any product, growth or leadership topics that you’d like me to write about, just hit reply to this email or leave a comment and let me know!

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Until next time!

— Ben

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