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Alexa, CEO of Pocus, hosts Product-Led Sales (PLS) “Ask Me Anything” sessions with PLS experts to share best practices, frameworks, and insights on this emerging category. These AMAs are an opportunity to ask PLS leaders any question — ranging from hiring to sales compensation to tech stack — in a low-key, casual environment.
The PLS AMAs are for members of the Product-Led Sales community, the place to learn, discuss, and connect with go-to-market (GTM) leaders at product-led companies. The goal of the community is to bring together the most thoughtful and innovative GTM leaders to build the next generation of sales together.
Interested in joining? Request an invite here.
Now, keep reading for a recap of what we discussed with Sr. Revenue Enablement Manager at Webflow, Mercy Lee Bell, in our latest AMA chat.
Meet Mercy, Sr. Revenue Enablement Manager @ Webflow 👋
Mercy has trained more than 40 startup sales teams over the last decade — including teams at Meta, Outreach, and Onesignal. She also hosts Morgan Stanley’s podcast, Thriving Globally with Equity.
Mercy is always looking for ways to reduce the sales team’s stress and produce better results. She looks at her role as making people more successful and effective, not just from an operational standpoint, but also from a psychology perspective - to get folks excited and involved.
In this recap of our AMA conversation with Mercy we’ll share the high points of our discussion, including:
- Webflow’s Product-Led Sales motion divided by sales-led and sales-assist teams
- The role of revenue enablement in launching PLS
- Cultivating trust and excitement across go-to-market for the PLS motion
- Building the right methodology and playbooks
What does Product-Led Sales look like at Webflow?
Webflow’s go-to-market strategy serves various audiences via two main channels: a robust self-serve engine (bottom-up) and an enterprise motion (top-down). To support these channels, the company divides its sales efforts into two teams: sales-led, dedicated to enterprise, and sales-assist, designed to engage high-potential self-serve customers and help them unlock value.
The sales-led team focuses on economic buyers who aren't necessarily using the product, but make the purchasing decisions for large organizations. These decision-makers represent the target audience for Webflow's enterprise motion, and the typically longer sales cycles for these customers are handled exclusively by the sales-led team.
On the other hand, the sales-assist team supports those who sign-up via Webflow's self-serve channel, a considerable component of the company's early and continued success. Sales-assist caters to the self-serve user-base, aiding users in expanding value within the product. Once these users qualify for enterprise-level engagement, they are handed over to the sales-led team.
Identifying enterprise opportunities
Identifying the right opportunities for enterprise sales within the PLS motion is crucial. Two primary factors guide this process at Webflow: product behavior and business goal alignment.
For example:
- Certain product usage behaviors like multiple sites in a workspace, or active CMS usage among multiple users in one account can signal a good fit for enterprise.
- Sales acumen: Alternatively, if Webflow notices that a company is undertaking significant marketing initiatives where Webflow could provide support, this might also signal a good fit, even if the product usage behavior doesn't explicitly suggest it.
"Everything we do has to be around the customer experience. We could try to non-organically start conversations based on when we'd like them to turn into enterprise customers… But, we base our sales actions on all the research and data that we have about the natural levers that exist in our product; and when we know from a business standpoint, that coming on to our enterprise product can support goals the prospect is not even thinking about yet."
PLS ownership: The dinner table analogy
Imagine your PLS motion is a GTM dinner. RevOps owns PLS, so they sit at the head of the table. But, who’s deciding the menu? What’s going to be served and when? Those decisions (data points, usage signals, swimlanes for self-serve vs. sales, segmentation, messaging, etc.) are made by a combination of leaders from the growth team (marketing), data team, security and legal, revenue enablement, and of course, sales.
The role of revenue enablement in Product-Led Sales
Enablement plays a vital role in getting the right tools and processes into the hands of the GTM team. In a PLS motion, revenue enablement is responsible for sifting through data and workflows and deciding what should be integrated into your PLS tooling (in Webflow’s case, Pocus).
At Webflow, revenue enablement is part of the RevOps team. Their charter is - looking for ways to optimize all aspects of the go-to-market function. Mercy’s role is focused on launching new tools and tech, implementing new processes, and moderating adoption of anything new.
Mercy thinks of the enablement function as a product management role for PLS roll-out.
“Enablement should be thinking ‘what can human beings actually do with this?’ It’s not enough to just provide Pandora’s box — it’s about deciding the discreet plays that you’re going to run, like being a Product Manager — phasing what data is shown, when, where, and for what purpose.”
Harnessing the power of a tiger team
Mercy says the biggest mistake teams make when rolling out new tools or processes is leadership being the only voice championing the tool/motion. To get internal buy-in and team-wide adoption, she recommends enlisting a tiger team before org-wide roll-out.
What is a tiger team?
A tiger team is a small group of trusted individual contributors — usually SDRs, AEs, and CSMs. They test the motion, set up the initial playbooks, experiment with different strategies, and then roll out the tested and refined process to the wider team.
Why do you need a tiger team to launch PLS?
#1 Internal buy-in. PLS requires a significant mindset shift. You’ll need people who are actually running playbooks to build up excitement and trust around this new way of selling.
#2 Deployment efficiency. This small team has deep knowledge about their customers. They will be able to iterate and refine your scoring and signals quickly, before getting everyone else on board. Bonus: they can help you train the rest of the team!
“SDRs, expert AEs, CSMs… Folks that will validate the data, the playbooks we’re thinking about, and use the tool. After that pilot period, they will go out and evangelize across the company. It’s so much more powerful for a tiger team — a small group of trusted ICs — to be the voice building excitement and buy-in around the launch.”
Balancing strategic and tactical plays
Mercy recommends planning your motion with a 50/50 split between tactical and strategic plays.
Tactical: A specific action measured against a specific goal “if X, then Y”.
For example: If a senior IT user signs up via self-serve and the account has X users, reps should start outreach to the IT user outlining enterprise incentives.
Strategic: Experimenting with different scoring models, surfacing insights, and letting AEs/SDRs explore their data and choose their own actions.
For example: Encourage reps to do some data exploration by creating their own account lists and filtering for different signals that might be helpful in their sales motion.
Caveat: In order for your reps to be strategic, you need to provide them with a single source of truth for all customer and usage data — that they can easily visualize, analyze, and action.
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“How much space do you want to give your team to run experimentally? PLS should be a mix of a playground and a battle ground. Do what works, but also explore the data and experiment with what you can do.”
Cultivating trust and excitement for PLS launch
As Webflow invests heavily in PLS, generating excitement and trust in the process is essential. Here are three ways Mercy has ensured the team adopts this new way of selling (and believe in it!)
#1 Separate workshops for customer success and sales
Focus your training on the benefits for each team member. As you explain the new process, highlight how your reps will save time and all the ways it will help them hit (or surpass) their quota.
#2 Celebrate wins publicly
It’s super important to be loud about achievements — even more so when launching a new motion. Call out reps who are crushing it, announce when a deal closes on Slack, and keep up the momentum.
#3 Gamify playbooks and experiments
A little competition is always fun, especially in sales. Think of contests that will push reps to speed through their inbox, spot undiscovered PQL/PQA triggers, or craft compelling outreach messaging using product data. Webflow runs SPIFFs for Pocus-influenced revenue opportunities.
A note on culture - PLG vs SLG: For Product-Led Growth (PLG) companies, a culture of usage data already exists, so the shift to PLS is a little easier. In sales-led companies, especially those targeting enterprise-level executives, more internal selling of PLS is needed. If that’s your case, the above advice still stands, but you might run into a steeper learning curve. However, it’s worth it! PLS gives you more options across the funnel and usage data can help your reps be significantly more effective.
Building the right methodology and playbooks
Webflow has created playbooks for each stage of the customer journey. Based on what playbook the PQL/PQA belongs to, sales-assist reps know what actions to take.
For example: if a PQL is surfaced for free-to-paid conversion, sales-assist reps will reach out to point out additional features in the paid plan that could help them unlock more value. But, if a PQA is surfaced for expansion, sales-assist will check in on the account, do some discovery, and pass along to enterprise reps if there’s potential.
With playbooks, reps can get the full context of each opportunity, customer fit (industry, ACV), product behavior and engagement, and product milestones reached. These insights should guide their outreach.
A note on alignment
All of these data points provide a holistic view into the opportunity and guide the sales motion. But, sometimes they can overlap and cause confusion. To prevent misalignment and cannibalization Mercy recommends:
#1 Align incentives to your playbook goals. For example, sales-assist reps should be rewarded based on increased usage or # of users helped. Enterprise reps should be rewarded based on hitting enterprise license quota.
#2 Create thorough documentation that specifies the guardrails between each playbook — this can be in a Google sheet! A tip for guardrails? Base them on ACV. For example, deals under $X belong to sales-assist, deals over $X belong to enterprise. Copy the playbook template in our PLS guide on Notion.
#3 Establish consequences for ‘misfires’. These consequences aren’t meant to discourage experimentation, but it does up the stakes for reps to focus on the right accounts.
Experimentation: The art of PLS
For orgs getting started with PLS (and even those further along) experimentation is crucial. Begin with a goal, and a few hypotheses of the signals that make up the ideal PQL/PQA for your playbook. Allow room for changes based on what you learn, setting the expectation upfront that the process will likely evolve.
Map out your playbook experiments like this:
- Goal: i.e. upsell, free-to-paid-conversion, churn prevention, etc
- Target: who is eligible for this motion?
- Outcome: what is the outcome the playbook is driving toward?
- Triggers: what criteria qualify a lead to be surfaced to a rep?
- Action: what rep or automated actions should be taken?
Mercy emphasizes that PLS is not just a science, but also an art. While data provides a guide, human expertise from talking to customers, understanding their pain points, and incorporating those insights into decision-making is equally important.
“We take ourselves so seriously in SaaS… there should be a lot more experimentation, play, and joy in how we launch our PLS strategy into the field. It’s impossible to make it perfect on the first try, there needs to be a little bit more levity. Invite the team to experiment, fall down, and try new things. Product-Led Sales is not a science, not yet, it’s a lot of art.”
Launch your PLS motion with Pocus
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