During the London 2012 Olympics, the roaring crowd witnessed something for the first time. Something the world had never experienced before in the Men's 4x100m Relay.

It was a sweltering August afternoon.

The air was thick with anticipation for a race between eight of the world's best sprinting teams: Canada, Australia, France, Japan, United States, Jamaica, Netherlands, Trinidad & Tobago.

When the starting pistol fired and 80,000 voices erupted as one, they witnessed Jamaica's legendary quartet—Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Yohan Blake, and Usain Bolt—blitz the track in an astonishing 36.84 seconds.

For decades, the athletics world had wondered if any human team could break the 37-second barrier. Most believed it was the outer edge of what was physically possible.

To this day, Jamaica's quartet holds the world and Olympic record. Here's why:

Each runner has one job. And surprisingly, it's not about speed. It's about the baton handoff. Meaning: the handoff has to be flawless. No loss of speed. No break in momentum.

Because if the baton is dropped? The race is lost. No matter how fast each individual runner is.

So what does a 36.84-second record-setting relay have to do with how your growth motion?

In B2B SaaS, the baton is the product signal. It's the specific moment a prospect does something inside your product that tells you they're ready. Ready to convert. Ready to expand. Ready for a conversation.

And the handoff is what each team does the moment they receive the product signal.

What most B2B SaaS companies don't realize? This relay is already running inside your company. Four runners. One baton. Here’s what I mean:

Runner 1: Product. They create the signal.

Runner 2: Marketing. They amplify it.

Runner 3: Sales. They convert it.

Runner 4: Customer Success. They compound it.

The signal exists. The teams exist.

Most just don't see it that way. They see four separate teams, each running their own race, optimizing their own metric. Marketing chasing MQLs. Sales chasing quota. Product chasing features. CS chasing renewal. Four fast runners. Four separate races.

What's missing is the agreement on the handoff to make it one fluid relay.

Here's what each handoff looks like when it works. And what it costs when it doesn't.

The Product team runs the first leg:

Their job is to create the signal. The specific moment a user experiences something inside your product that makes them feel like they got something done.

Not everything. Just one thing. But the right thing. The thing that makes them exhale and think: I really like this.

That moment is the baton.

But getting it right is harder than it sounds. I've seen what happens on both ends: give too much away and the user gets what they need for free, never feeling the pull to convert. Give too little and they explore, feel nothing, and quietly move on to a competitor.

The signal has to be precise. Valuable enough to create genuine pull. Contained enough to leave them wanting more.

When the product team gets this right, the baton exists. And it's ready to be passed.

Marketing runs the second leg:

Their job is to pick up the signal and amplify it. By creating campaigns that drive the right prospects to the product, enabling them to experience that “done” moment for themselves.

Their top-of-funnel campaigns attract people who can genuinely use the product. Their onboarding becomes laser-focused on getting prospects to that moment of value as fast as possible. Not eventually. Fast.

Without the signal? Marketing is flying blind. I've seen marketing spend thousands on ad spend, driving the wrong prospects to the wrong experience.

The baton never arrives. And the race stalls before it's even begun.

Sales runs the third leg:

Their job is to receive the signal and convert it. Not from cold. From the momentum already built.

They open their dashboard and see exactly which accounts are using the product, which features they're going deep on, and which ones are nearing their usage limit. They know who is ready before they pick up the phone. The conversation isn't a pitch. It's a natural next step for someone who already loves what they've found.

Without the signal? Sales is back to chasing. I've seen sales fielding questions from accounts with no intention of converting. It's demoralizing. And it's expensive.

The baton hits the ground and the momentum built by product and marketing evaporates in cold calls and follow-ups that go nowhere.

Customer Success runs the anchor leg:

Their job is to compound the signal. To take a converted customer and deepen the relationship, expand the account, and create new signals that didn't exist during acquisition.

When CS has the signal, they watch how existing customers behave inside the product. What features they're adopting. Where they're going deep. And they reach out at exactly the right moment. Not to push, but to open a door the customer was already walking toward.

This is where B2B SaaS companies find their most capital-efficient revenue. Expansion doesn't carry the same acquisition cost as a new logo. No CAC. No long sales cycle. Just a customer who already loves the product, ready for more.

This is where the relay either compounds or quietly falls apart.

Without the signal? CS is guessing.

I've seen CS have no idea which accounts are ready for more. They don't step in at the right moment. Opportunities that were right there, sitting in the product data, get missed entirely. The race was almost won. And then the baton hit the ground on the final leg.

I often hear not resistance to the idea, but recognition of it.

“We know the relay exists. We can see it. But everyone is already running their own race as fast as they can. Nobody has the bandwidth to pick up something new. And we're worried the baton just... sits there. Not because nobody cares. Because nobody has space to be the one who carries it between teams.”

That feeling is real. And worth sitting with for a moment.

To move forward, here's what I've done, and what I've seen work every time:

I get the four runners in a room. And we work through two questions together:

1. What is our baton? The one specific product moment that tells us a prospect is ready.
2. What does each runner do the moment it arrives in their hands?

That's it. One agreed-upon signal. One clear action per team.

The handoff costs nothing. It just has to be designed. And designing it takes the right conversation, where your four runners finally agree on what the baton looks like and what they each do when they receive it.

And I’ve experienced when the relay runs fluidly, something shifts. There are no cold calls. No wasted ad spend. No accounts slipping through the cracks because nobody noticed they were ready.

Instead, the product creates a signal. Marketing amplifies it. Sales converts it. CS compounds it. Each runner passing the baton without breaking stride.

Just a motion that pulls on its own. Getting faster with every handoff. That's what Hybrid PLG actually looks like from the inside. One continuous fluid motion, finally connected.

And it all starts with the right conversation. Not about ownership. About the agreement.

Portia

P.S. Love to know: which runner are you? Product, Marketing, Sales, CS or another team entirely? Hit reply with just one word. 🏃

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