Even successful PLG companies like Figma eventually burn through their early adopter market. To avoid hitting an asymptotic growth curve, they must proactively build a traditional outbound sales team to tackle the enterprise market before the PLG engine stalls. Don't wait until you need it.

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."

Instead of choosing between Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Sales-Led Growth (SLG), companies should treat them as a portfolio. Test both motions and continuously invest where you see incremental ROI, rather than treating them as mutually exclusive strategies.

The "PLG Trap" occurs when founders assume moving upmarket is just a pricing change. In reality, shifting from PLG to enterprise sales requires a difficult, company-wide transition across product (e.g., SOC 2 compliance), organization (e.g., sales engineers), and culture.

Directly approaching large organizations is often ineffective. Instead, emulate Slack's growth model by getting individual employees to use and love the product. This creates internal champions who advocate for wider organizational adoption, pulling the product in rather than pushing it from the outside.

Pendo's CPO advocates for a blended approach in enterprise B2B. The product must enable self-service and stand on its own (PLG), but a skilled sales team is crucial for navigating complex procurement, building business cases, and establishing trust with large, regulated customers.

The traditional sales discovery question "How do they buy?" focused on the procurement process and economic buyers. In a Product-Led Growth (PLG) motion, the crucial question is about the *usage journey*. Sales must analyze user behavior signals within the product—like downloads or manual views—to understand when and how to engage effectively.

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.

While many product-led growth companies delay building a sales team, this is often a mistake. Waiting until bottoms-up growth stalls forces a painful "whiplash moment" as the company scrambles to adopt a new GTM motion. Building both motions in parallel creates a more resilient business.