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.

Founders must consider their sales motion (e.g., PLG vs. enterprise sales-led) when designing the product. A product built for one motion won't sell effectively in another, potentially forcing a costly redesign. This concept extends "product-market fit" to "product-market-sales fit."

Misalignment stems from sales and marketing using different numbers and narratives. High-performing organizations treat GTM as a single, unified motion. They focus on seamlessly passing the customer from one stage to the next, prioritizing a collective win over defending individual functional metrics.

A one-size-fits-all sales role fails in consumption models. Success requires segmenting the team into specialized roles—new business acquisition, customer onboarding, and account management—each with distinct incentives aligned to their specific function, from initial sign-up to value realization and expansion.

Don't force your sales team to learn and sell a completely new product. Instead, integrate the new capability into an existing, successful product, making it "first" or "default" for that channel. This reduces sales friction and complexity, leveraging established momentum for adoption.

Google's Ads team structured its sales force into three specialized units. The acquisition team was paid on getting a customer to start, the onboarding team on setup success, and the account management team on growing spend beyond a predicted baseline. This aligns incentives with each stage of the customer's consumption journey.

Don't expect the parent company's sales force to sell your nascent product. Their focus on core business means they will ignore emerging tech. An internal incubator must have its own dedicated go-to-market team to find new personas and develop sales plays before a handoff.

Merging business units is challenging when one operates on fast, transactional sales cycles (IDG) and the other on long, complex solution sales (ISG). While customers see a single IT solution, the internal sales motions, skills, and incentives are fundamentally different, creating a major integration hurdle.

A common PLG pitfall is assuming the user base will naturally springboard into enterprise deals. Often, the enterprise buyer is a different person with different problems. This oversight can cost companies years, as they have to build a second, separate sales motion from scratch.