Traditional sales discovery focuses on the formal procurement process. In a product-led growth model, understanding 'how they buy' means first analyzing how customers are using the product before any purchase. This pre-purchase engagement is the new starting point for the entire sales motion.
In a product-led growth model, initial sales outreach should be purely supportive. As user signals indicate deeper engagement, like moving into a testing phase, the conversation must shift to commercial topics like SLAs and managed hosting, aligning with the user's need to move to production.
The traditional sales motion requires securing an economic buyer's commitment before a lengthy proof of concept. At Datadog, because startup users were already actively using the product, the entire validation and commitment discussion could be compressed into a single, efficient call with a technical leader like the CTO.