When I was a kid, family road trips meant my dad pulling over the car and taking out this map booklet. Then running his finger along the page, trying to figure out where we were. We always knew where we were going. But without visibility into the route, wrong turns happened early. And by the time we pulled over to check? We'd already lost too much time. The trip felt harder than it needed to be. Sometimes we'd arrive exhausted, wondering if it was worth the drive. Sometimes we'd turn back to...
13 days ago • 5 min read
Going from pure SLG into a hybrid product-led company is one of the most exciting moves a senior sales leader can make. And also one of the most…disorienting. The skills are mastered. The track record is earned. But…something feels temporarily off. It's the quiet anxiety of knowing you've done so much just to get here...but sensing something still isn't quite fitting yet. Something that needs…recalibrating. Like a compass adjusting to a new environment. The needle is still working. It just...
20 days ago • 3 min read
“I don't know if that's the right move or not,” a seasoned sales exec shared with me. They'd just joined a hybrid product-led company. They've got decades of SLG experience and a track record to match. And the opportunity here? Mouthwatering. The product reached 8-figure ARR in just two years. With no formal sales motion. Which means that's just the appetizer. With the right enterprise play? There's a lot more on the dining table. So the hypothesis forms quickly: let the PLG motion handle the...
27 days ago • 4 min read
From the mid-2000s to the late 2010s, showing a hockey-stick growth chart of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) was how marketing executives proved to investors and the Board that their lead-generation engine was working. Remember those charts? I certainly do. Because I created and presented decks to rooms filled with suits and ties. Decks that included the most beautiful, jaw-dropping, convincing hockey stick you could ever imagine. Because if MQLs were growing quarter over quarter, everyone...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Here's a question I get often from Heads of Marketing: “What do I actually do with my MQL tracking once we start implementing a hybrid motion?” Marketing teams don't flip a switch. They can't. They can't stop MQL tracking on Friday night and start tracking Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) on Monday morning. Because the whole org runs on MQLs. They can't just abandon it. But there is a smoother way. And I've found it's one most in the industry never talk about. Because everyone is focused on...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
You're at a party and someone asks, what do you do? You give them the simple version: VP Product at W.Head of Growth at X.SVP of Revenue at Y.CMO at Z. Clean, easy, understood. But behind that title? Years of complexity, judgment calls, hard-won lessons. And the missed family dinners, the 3 a.m. lying in bed running the problem through your head, the weekends that were supposed to be with the kids that disappeared into work. It's the gap between how it sounds and what it truly takes to...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Next. Next. Next. Done. I bet you've done this too. Clicked through a product tooltip onboarding tour just to make it disappear and get on with your actual work. Pssst! Lean in and let me tell you a secret: Unashamedly, so have I. And guess who else? Many of your prospects. In my work with B2B SaaS companies making the transition from pure SLG to Hybrid PLG, I've seen this same pattern repeatedly. They build a free trial. They invest in a beautiful UX built on clean design, intuitive...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The first time Katie, my instructor, introduced the 'horse's gait,' it completely went over my head. It was my third time on a horse. The word landed, but the meaning didn't. So I made a mental note. As soon as I was done with my training, I typed those words online to find out what exactly a 'horse's gait' is. I kind of got it. Kind of didn't. It was a bit too abstract. It wasn't until a few lessons later that I literally made my horse Fred change gait — from a walk to a trot — that it all...
2 months ago • 2 min read
“60 days. 90 days. Sometimes 180 days or more. That's how long it takes to close our deals.” Depending on the product and the size of the account, that's the reality for most sales-led B2B SaaS companies. This is where leaders come to me. “Is there a way to shorten this?” Some of that length is unavoidable—buying committees, procurement, legal review. That's just enterprise reality. Lean in… here's the good news: There is a way. Some of that length is compressible. You can have shorter sales...
2 months ago • 2 min read