MadKudu’s co-founder Francis Brero on unlocking the keys of product-led growth

You might be all about the user, but are you considering the full spectrum of your users' preferences? Today, we look into the broader context of product-led growth to understand how you can leverage product data and drive revenue.

Here’s the thing: there isn’t one single motion to scale a product-led organization, and forms and free trials alone won’t drive enough growth to keep a business afloat. Successful companies nurture a variety of customer journeys and revenue streams, from inbound leads and self-serve users to sales-assisted campaigns and ABM. The first step towards driving product-led growth? Understanding the different ways in which people want to buy software and aligning your go-to-market approaches accordingly.

For Francis Brero, co-founder and CPO of MadKudu, a platform that helps B2B businesses qualify and engage with their leads, PLG doesn’t work in a vacuum. If you want to cater to the full diversity of users and stakeholders throughout the journey and make your product actually easy for people to buy, it’s crucial to embrace the complexity and build excellence across these multiple funnels.

This isn’t Francis’ first podcast rodeo. Last time around, we invited him to talk about how AI can boost your conversational support. But today, we’ve got something else in store. For the past seven years, Francis has partnered with many PLG companies and learned what has worked well and what hasn’t. And just last July, he gathered a group of over 50 growth and marketing leaders to discuss how to leverage product data to scale revenue engines.

In today’s episode, we’re catching up with Francis to dive into his findings and talk about the four key ways to scale and monetize product-led growth.

If you’re short on time, here are a few quick takeaways:

• PLG is not a single-funnel way of acquiring customers. Different people buy software in different ways and understanding that broader context is crucial to monetizing your motion.
• Forms or product signups rely on self-input data. While it might look useful and easy to set up, it not only increases friction in the UX – it’s not as accurate as you might think.
• At the enterprise level, the user is rarely the decision-maker. Using product activity as a guide to monetize your business is going to skew you towards SMBs instead of larger organizations.
• When trying to sell to enterprise, take into account all the potential users and stakeholders and create a multithread, go-to-market strategy that aligns with the whole business.

Make sure you don’t miss any highlights by following Inside Intercom on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or grabbing the RSS feed in your player of choice. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the episode.

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The various funnels of a PLG business

Liam Geraghty: Francis, welcome to the show.

Francis Brero: Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Liam: Actually, welcome back. You’ve been on the show before, and we’re glad to have you back.

Francis: Yeah, it’s good to be back. Thanks for having me.

Liam: For anyone who hasn’t heard that first episode, could you give us a little flavor of your career trajectory so far?

Francis: Yeah, absolutely. So, I started as an engineer. My academic background is in fundamental mathematics. Then, I went into the dark side of sales – I was running all things revenue at MadKudu, but then I switched back to running product.

“One of the biggest challenges companies have when they start doing PLG is being a little bit too dogmatic about doing it one way or the other”

Liam: I’d love to talk to you about product-led growth from a blog post you have recently done. You’ve built a leading product-led growth platform for B2B companies – can you tell me a little bit about the five-stage methodology you’ve developed and how to scale and monetize product-led growth?

Francis: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at a high level, one of the biggest challenges companies have when they start doing PLG is being a little bit too dogmatic about doing it one way or the other. One of the elements that we encourage most companies to think about is that you have different funnels when you’re running a PLG business. You’re going to have people that come through inbound, they’re going to raise their hand, and you want to talk to them, which are regular inbound processes. You’re going to have people that interact with content like great podcasts like this one, webinars, and all that kind of goodness. There are people that are going to sign up for the product, and there are people that you’re going to reach out to through outbound. And, of course, there are people that are going to do all of the above, right? It’s really critical that you start thinking about your go-to-market motions and how they align with the way people want to buy your software.

Too often, PLG companies are going to be really, really deeply focused on “this is how we want to sell: we want people to go into the product and activate it, get value from it, and then swipe the credit card.” And unfortunately, that’s not how everyone buys. They’re going to look for education in some places. We’re also selling to B2B, so there are going to be people using the product and there are going to be people evaluating the product from outside.

“From the get-go, think about the fact that there’s a multitude of people looking to buy software in a great variety of ways and build your go-to-market strategy to align with that”

Being able to understand what the typical customer journey is is critical to make sure you align your go-to-market engine against that. Otherwise, you’re forcing your view of how people should buy onto the customer. That’s not an optimal experience. In today’s world, companies that win are the companies that are doing the best job at making it easy for people to buy their software. Software is getting easier and easier to create, so there’s always going to be competition for whatever you do within a short period of time. And so, competing and winning on go-to-market strategies is becoming a pretty substantial differentiator.

Liam: Is it something to be mindful of from the get-go?

Francis: Absolutely. From the start, you should embrace that everyone has a different way of consuming or engaging with your product and, therefore, procuring your product. Every company should have the ability for someone to request to talk to sales the same way that, ideally, you would want to have the ability to sign up for the product. And that depends on if your product is easy to get into and get value from. You don’t want to create an experience that’s detrimental to the value. But I would say yes, from the get-go, think about the fact that there’s a multitude of people looking to buy software in a great variety of ways and build your go-to-market strategy to align with that.

The siren call of self-input data

Liam: I know a particular event – I think it was Mutiny’s The Second Lever – gathered a group of 50+ growth and marketing leaders for a discussion on how to leverage product data and scale your revenue engines. You came away with four key learnings. I’d love to just go through them because I read them on your blog recently and I think they’re super useful. The first one was that product-led growth doesn’t work in a vacuum.

Francis: Yeah, and that’s exactly what we’ve just talked about. You can’t think of product-led growth as a single-funnel way of acquiring and growing customers. It’s one go-to-market strategy that has a set of calls to action, but it lives within the context of people looking for education through webinars, case studies, and potentially, even talking to sales. It’s a very common thing – someone from a company will engage in the product and someone else is going to come and request a demo. You have the difference between that champion who’s using the product and the economic decision-maker who potentially is going to be the one requesting a demo. Understanding that there’s a broader context to product utilization than just the usage of the product is critical to monetizing it to the best of its capabilities.

Liam: And then, the next one is that self-input data is garbage. Tell us about this.

Francis: Yeah, that’s another one that’s really interesting. When people sign up for your product, you’re usually going to have a form where you ask for information such as job titles, what kind of company size they’re at, and all that good stuff.

“You’re doing that to provide a relevant experience, but the problem is that the data you’re acquiring is not reliable”

What we found through all of the studies across our customers is that that data is highly inaccurate. There’s actually a pretty interesting experiment run by Atlassian a couple years ago where they had everyone signing up for Jira to pick one of the values from a dropdown menu. And what they found was that the distribution of values was very skewed towards the first value. Then, they scrambled the order of the dropdown values, and they found that no matter the order, the first value was always picked. What was interesting is that the cohort of signups week over week was pretty much the same, but the results in terms of what was being declared by users as their main job title would completely differ. It’s not very reliable to depend on that. And if you’re depending on it a little too much – let’s say that’s going to drive your onboarding – you might actually create a suboptimal onboarding experience because you’re too heavily relying on that information. That’s a big thing to bear in mind. Looking for third-party information about your users is generally going to be much more reliable and allow you to tailor the experience a lot better than trying to rely on first-party data. And I think too many companies over-index on that.

Liam: How quickly do you think that is happening? It seems like it’s taken a while for us to even get to this point. Do you know what I mean?

“You’ll go to some websites and see signup forms with seven, eight, maybe even 10 fields to fill in. And by that time, I usually have given up already”

Francis: I mean, it’s one of those where it’s so easy to set up and ask for that data that, obviously, everyone wants to do it. You feel like people are going to be honest. And what’s interesting is that it’s a two-sided problem. On the one hand, I think it’s terrible from a user experience. The more fields you have in a form, the lower your fill rate and conversion rate. You’re just adding more friction to the experience by adding questions. And you’re doing that to provide a relevant experience, but the problem is that the data you’re acquiring is not reliable.

It’s this thing where it feels comfortable because it feels like you’re gathering more information that you’re going to provide to your sales team. Everyone feels good about it and wants to do it, but at the end of the day, unfortunately, it’s just not that valuable. It’s one of those things that tend to slow you down. People are going to ask for more data to compensate for some of the inaccuracies, and then, you just create more and more friction. And unfortunately, you’ll go to some websites and see the signup form has seven, eight, maybe even 10 fields to fill in. And by that time, I usually have given up already.

Going up the ladder

Liam: The third learning was that product usage skews towards SMB.

Francis: Yeah, that’s a really interesting one and something we found a while ago that was re-shared by Tomasz Tunguz from Redpoint. One of the things he found that he mentioned, and he had seen this at Google, is that when you look at product activity, usually, what you’re going to see is that the companies that are the most likely to adopt your free version of the product are going to be companies that are in a less regulated industry or are a less regulated company. Because if you think about it this way, someone from Bank of America is much less likely to sign up for free on Intercom, put Intercom on the website, and start having chats with Bank of America customers, right? On the flip side, someone from a smaller company, even Paddle or something like that, is likely to add Intercom on one of their landing pages and start getting responses and adopting the product.

“Understanding the lay of the land of who all these different potential users and stakeholders are in the deal is critical to determine what your go-to-market strategy should be”

What you start seeing is that if you only look for product usage to determine who you want to hand over to sales, you’re never going to hand over Bank of America because they’re never going to hit that threshold of usage. And that’s why it’s dangerous to only rely on product usage data because it’s going to skew you towards the smaller side of the market. And that’s a pretty common mistake that a lot of companies are going to make.

Liam: And then, the final one was that selling enterprise deals at the lead level is impossible.

Francis: Right. And this is where we go full circle with the first point we were talking about. When you’re doing B2B sales, especially in larger organizations, the deal desk is more than one person, right? There’s going to be someone who’s using the product – potentially they’re using the product to bring it to other people. Intercom is a great example. One person might be buying Intercom, but it’s going to be deployed across different teams in the organization. And so, understanding the lay of the land of who all these different potential users and stakeholders are in the deal is critical to determine what your go-to-market strategy should be.

“At the end of the day, sure, there’s one person who’s going to carry it all the way into Mordor and destroy it, but all the other characters are playing crucial roles in that story that help move it forward”

Very often, in PLG, we think very much about the user – who the trial user is, who the freemium user is, and all of that. And that works well in vSMB or SMB deals where one person can be the hero and use the product, test it, adopt it, buy it, and then bring it to the rest of the company. But at larger companies and enterprises, you’re usually going to have a lot of different people that you have to convince. Some of those are potentially going to try the product, but a lot of them are going to be like a CFO or a procurement-style person that might be reading content around your security standards or case studies from competitors or similar companies in the space. And understanding that is critical to align your go-to-market strategy with the company you’re trying to sell to.

One of the analogies I use very frequently is thinking of the journey of selling in B2B as the story of the Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is a pretty simple story, right? It’s a fellowship that’s getting together to destroy a ring. At the end of the day, sure, there’s one person who’s going to carry it all the way into Mordor and destroy it, but all the other characters are playing crucial roles in that story that help move it forward. And what’s even more interesting is that the instigator of all of this, Gandalf, is someone who’s never really at the forefront of what’s going on. He actually comes at the very end, swoops in for the victory, and is also the person who starts everything.

And this is very, very common in B2B sales – you’re going to have the boss of someone who’s starting this initiative, and they’re going to come in and be the person who signs the DocuSign at the very end, but you almost never see them in the deal. They are in the background fighting enemies internally and making sure this project is going to be prioritized, that the company allocates budget and all. And then, you have the Boromirs, the people that have a little bit of a competing interest and want to take this budget for themselves and for their own initiative. And understanding and embracing the complexity of B2B sales is what helps companies succeed because when you acknowledge it and embrace it, you can build a go-to-market strategy that aligns with the reality of businesses.

Playing in the big leagues

Liam: Lastly, what kind of plans or company plans for the next few quarters? Anything you’re excited about?

Francis: Yeah, we’re super excited about the growth plans. We’ve had some really awesome developments in the last few weeks. There are going to be some public announcements happening soon, and the main plan is going to be accelerating our growth, helping product-led companies embrace the complexity of their sales cycles better, and actually providing them with the tools to do that.

“I see it as: we won the championship of the second division, and now, we’re looking to play in the champions league”

We’re going to be expanding our engineering team, in Paris, and we’re going to be expanding our go-to-market team. I mean, overall growing the company, which I’m super excited about because we’re hitting that inflection point where we’re now starting to accelerate a lot more. It’s a different ballgame. It’s a different league we’re entering. I see it as: we won the championship of the second division, and now, we’re looking to play in the champions league. It’s a different kind of practice and training. It’s a different level of games. I’m super excited about that.

Liam: And where can people find you online?

Francis: I’m mainly active on LinkedIn, sometimes on Twitter, but Twitter is more for music and things like that. LinkedIn is the best place to follow.

Liam: And then, for people who have listened to the previous episodes, something I have to ask is Nicolas Cage. Since last we had you on, have your favorite Nicolas Cage movies changed? Because he’s done quite a lot of interesting stuff in the last two years.

Francis: Yeah, unfortunately, very few of the movies he’s made in the last few years are contenders for the top spot. It’s the joys of just shipping products en masse. No, the order hasn’t changed. Vampire Kiss is still my favorite. And yeah, we still ask any person joining MadKudu about their favorite Nick Cage movie. We have a Notion document that ranks all the Nick Cage movies, and I’m still very passionate about the topic. I love the fact that it’s a very controversial topic that is not offensive to anyone, and it’s rare these days to be able to debate something so vehemently without hurting anyone’s feelings.

Liam: Well, Francis, thank you very much for joining us.

Francis: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me again.