Introducing PLG in a Sales-Led Organization

How Carta launched their freemium product

Sponsor Shoutout 🎉

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Inflection.io, a modern marketing automation platform. Activate your product data and data warehouse to drive more pipeline, product adoption, and revenue expansion, all from one platform.

---

Sales-led or Product-led?

What if I tell you that the real opportunity lies not in choosing one over the other, but in understanding how these two approaches can coexist and amplify each other? 

Angela Winegar, the Head of Growth at Carta session, dives deep into this critical intersection, offering insights from Carta’s experience in blending PLG with a Sales-Led strategy. She explores how to leverage the best of both worlds to drive growth.

You can also watch the full session here 👇

Rather than seeing Sales-led and Product-led growth strategies as mutually exclusive, Angela emphasized how they can complement each other. For Carta, this blend allowed them to cater to different segments of their market effectively—leveraging PLG for scalability and low-touch onboarding while using sales-led tactics for more complex, high-value deals.

Introduction of PLG and freemium products: How it started

Carta began exploring PLG six years ago. Carta Launch, the company’s freemium cap table product, targets early-stage startups. Originally designed with paralegals in mind, the onboarding flow was later adapted for founders who did not have prior experience managing cap tables. This change marked a turning point, as Carta began to see significant demand for self-service onboarding, driving further investment in PLG.

As more users opted for self-service, Carta learned valuable lessons about user preferences. For example, founders preferred managing their cap tables but appreciated having experts available to review their work. 

This insight led to the addition of more support options within Carta’s paid products, highlighting the importance of user feedback in shaping product development.

Challenges of Integrating PLG with a Sales-Led Strategy

Integrating PLG into a fundamentally sales-led company like Carta has not been without challenges. Questions about how PLG impacts sales comp and how to best support freemium users have led to multiple iterations of organizational structure and strategy. Despite these hurdles, Carta’s PLG efforts have contributed significantly to the company's growth, with a third of new logos coming from the Launch product. 

These are the key learnings from their ongoing PLG journey:

1. Quarterly Buy-In Over Full Company Alignment

• Full company alignment is ideal but often unrealistic. Instead, focus on securing the buy-in needed for the next quarter.

• Prioritize the departments that will impact your goals for the quarter, especially when unforeseen needs arise, like hiring engineers mid-project.

• To achieve alignment between teams like Sales and Product that traditionally do not collaborate in a sales-led environment, ensuring that both teams are working towards the same goals and metrics will help.

• Cross-functional collaboration means that product teams could gain valuable feedback from sales on what features were resonating with customers, while sales teams could use product insights to tailor their pitches more effectively. This alignment improves customer experience too.

2. Be Ready to Invest in Product as You Transition to PLG

• For a sales-led organization, adding or transitioning to a PLG may need significantly ramping up product investment to support PLG efforts. 

• This investment isn't just in the core product itself but also in building supporting tools, onboarding flows, and features that cater to the needs of new users.

• As you shift to PLG, you'll likely discover new user behaviors and needs that require quick product adjustments. For instance, Carta realized the necessity of developing a pre-freemium product when they found that many potential users didn't have the required EIN (Employer Identification Number assigned by the IRS) for their primary product. This led to the creation of a new product to capture value earlier in the funnel.

3. Don’t Over-Optimize in B2B

• While optimization is important, be mindful that especially in B2B where data for A/B testing might be limited. B2B products often deal with smaller user bases, making it difficult to reach statistical significance in traditional A/B testing.

• Instead of endless tweaking, consider investing resources in building new funnels or entry points that can deliver more significant impacts.

• Leverage product data to inform these decisions. By analyzing product usage patterns, you can identify areas that are ripe for new funnels or entry points, ensuring that your optimizations are data-driven and impactful.

4. Incentives Matter—Especially in PLG

• Align pricing and product value carefully. Often, companies set arbitrary pricing thresholds when launching freemium or PLG models, which can become industry standards but may not always align with your product's actual value.

• To avoid this, it’s important to thoroughly analyze how your product delivers value and set pricing that reflects this.

• Figuring out the sales comp structure might take a few iterations. 

• When designing sales incentives, be mindful that misaligned incentives can lead to behaviors that are counterproductive to your PLG goals. For instance, if your sales team is incentivized solely on immediate sales, they may neglect long-term customer success, which is vital in a PLG model. Instead, use product data to create incentive structures that reward behaviors aligned with your company’s growth objectives—such as upselling to higher tiers based on user engagement data. 

5. PLG Isn’t Synonymous with Freemium

• PLG strategies may extend beyond freemium models. 

• A successful PLG strategy might involve various other approaches, such as leveraging core product features to drive upsells or overall customer adoption. Evaluate how different product features can drive value at various stages of the customer journey and use this insight to design targeted upsell strategies.

• Focusing solely on freemium can sometimes limit your growth potential if it’s not aligned with your broader product and business goals.

• Don’t overlook the potential of in-product real estate for upselling and cross-selling. Your product is some of the most valuable advertising space you have—users interacting with your product are already engaged and have demonstrated interest, making them prime candidates for additional offers.

  

• Product data can be a powerful tool in these efforts. By analyzing how users interact with different features, you can identify the most opportune moments to introduce an upsell or suggest a premium feature. Empower your sales team with this data so they can approach customers with personalized offers that align with their usage patterns and business needs.

Experimentation and Continuous Improvement

A key message from the session was the importance of experimentation in integrating PLG with a sales-led strategy. Carta’s approach involves continuous testing and iteration, whether it’s refining onboarding flows, adjusting sales pitches, or experimenting with pricing models.

By maintaining a feedback loop and adapting to what works best, Carta was able to optimize its strategy over time and continues to do so. This iterative process is crucial, as it allows for ongoing improvements that can lead to better results and a more efficient growth model.

---

PLGTM Summit 2025

The 2024 Summit was a massive success with over 230 joining us live. Excited to share that PLGTM Summit 2025 is happening again in San Francisco! Now 3 days long on May 13 - 15, 2025 with dedicated days for sales, marketing, and ops. Also new for 2025 is a dedicated executive track/offsite.

Tickets start at just $240 when you use code EARLYBIRD. See you there!

---

PLGTM Jobs

1. 🆕 Marketing Operations Manager | BILL | Hybrid | Draper, UT ; San Jose, CA

2. 🆕 Head of Marketing - PLGTM | Inflection.io | Remote | Bangalore, India.

3. PLG Operations Manager | Open AI | Hybrid | San Francisco, CA

4. GTM Operations Manager, Expansion and Retention | Vercel | Remote | USA

5. Senior Marketing Operations Manager | Pinecone | On-site | San Francisco, CA and New York City, NY

6. Demand Generation Manager | SonarSource | On-site | Austin, TX

7. Growth Operations Manager | Sendoso | Remote - US | San Fransisco, CA.

8. Senior Event & Field Marketing Manager | Inflection.io | Remote | Bangalore, India.

Are you hiring for a GTM job in a PLG company? Fill in the form and we’ll feature your job post in the next PLGTM Insider newsletter. 

---

Candidate Profiles

1. 🆕 Milad Bonyab | Revenue Operations Leader | Los Angeles, CA.

2. Subhashree Durai | Marketing | Remote or In-person | Chennai, India.

3. Christopher Haywood | Marketing | Remote | Barcelona, Spain.

4. Dave Reinke | Marketing | Remote or In-person | Spokane, Wa.

5. AJ Sedlak | Ops | Remote | Pittsburgh, PA.

6. Kacyn Goranson | Marketing | Remote | Denver, CO.

7. Cassandra Schwartz | Marketing | Hybrid | Seattle, WA.

Are you looking for a GTM role at a PLG company? Fill in the form and we'll feature your profile in the next PLGTM Insider newsletter. 

---