The CRO, not product marketing, is closest to the customer and knows what they will buy. The product roadmap should be a collaborative effort driven by the CRO, who can directly tie feature delivery to ICP expansion and revenue forecasts. This creates accountability and predictable growth.

Executives don't care about tactical benefits like 'five fewer clicks'. A crucial skill for modern sellers is to extrapolate that tactical user-level gain into a strategic business outcome. You must translate efficiency into revenue, connecting the dots from a daily task to the company's bottom line.

In a project-based company, salespeople are heroes for closing large, complex, custom projects. This incentive structure is directly opposed to a product model that requires standardization. The transition to product will fail unless sales compensation and culture are realigned to favor standard product sales.

A more effective mental model than PLG vs. SLG is analyzing which activities create new demand versus which ones harvest existing demand. Both sales and product can serve either function. Creating demand is always the harder, more critical challenge for any revenue engine.

Vercel COO Jean Grosser's litmus test for a great salesperson is that engineers shouldn't be able to tell they aren't a PM for at least 10 minutes. This requires deep product knowledge, enabling sales to act as an R&D function by translating customer feedback into valuable product signals.

The growth role has evolved from a narrow focus on media buying to a strategic function involved in all business expansion, including new markets, sales channels, and product categories. Growth teams offer a critical viewpoint on customer spending and market trends, acting as thought partners for the entire business.

At the $1-10M ARR stage, avoid junior reps or VPs from large companies. The ideal first hire can "cosplay a founder"—they sell the vision, craft creative deals, and build trust without a playbook. Consider former founders or deep product experts, even with no formal sales experience.

Don't hire more reps until your current team hits its productivity target (e.g., generating 3x their OTE). Scaling headcount before proving the unit economics of your sales motion is a recipe for inefficient growth, missed forecasts, and a bloated cost structure.

A common OKR failure is assigning teams high-level business metrics (like ARR) which they can only contribute to, not directly influence. Success requires focusing on influenceable customer behaviors while demonstrating how they correlate to the company's broader contribution-level goals.