A Look At Product-Led Sales

As we looked at the Product-led Growth Vendor Landscape, the product-led sales category saw a meteoric rise starting in 2020 and 2021 with 9 vendors raising at least a Seed round to build Product-led Sales technology. Some have gone on to raise Series A with more than $20M in funding, so it’s safe to say it will be around for at least a while.

So just what is the category?

Product-led sales has emerged as a subcategory of selection and prioritization, specifically built for and targeting the sales team at product-led companies.

Like all selection and prioritization companies, the core of product-led sales is to:

1. Identify hidden accounts and users to be engaged by sales (lead/account scoring).
2. Surface those accounts and users via reporting, CRM integration, and visualization.

Product-led sales takes this slightly further, by, as mentioned, building specific functionality for sales teams such as sales workflows, CRM integration, integration with sales tools like Outreach, etc.

Where will things go from here? It’s tough to say since it’s such a new category, but the pain is real: I have so many customers signing up for my product, I don’t know which are the right ones to reach out to. We are already seeing some shifts in the category as it expands, with some vendors pushing scores to your existing systems vs others preferring to have their own UX and workflows.

With so many new vendors hitting on the same pain, will we see pivots or market consolidation? Possibly.