Choosing the Right Sales Motion

Promising startups often fail by taking good ideas and applying them in the wrong context. 

Even the best ideas have a zone of validity: They work in a certain range of situations, but not outside that range. This creates risks, particularly for non-specialists. Picture a technical founder who hears about an exciting sales idea and tries to deploy it, only to find that it doesn’t apply in their situation. 

In sales, everything has to fit together: Your sales motion has to match your customers and your product. You have to choose a sales team and lead generation methods that complement them. And your sales motion has to lead to an annual contract value that justifies the effort you’re putting in.

The concept of fit should drive your strategy. Deploy the simplest sales motion you can, but not one that’s so simple that it doesn’t fit your product. Aggressively generate leads, but don’t choose lead generation methods that don’t match your annual contract value. Change your target customers when you see new opportunities, but remember that changing one aspect of your approach likely requires you to change others to maintain fit.

In this article, we’ll examine three common sales motions, each of which describes a general pattern of how your company engages and converts potential customers. We’ll discuss when each sales motion fits and common ways that companies get each sales motion wrong by neglecting the need for fit.

Product-Led Growth

Product-led growth (“PLG”) is the model that founders love: The product sells the product, which means there’s much less need for a pricey sales team. 

File sharing is a good example of a PLG motion: An existing user wants to share a file with a potential user who isn’t currently using the product. They send them a link. The potential user opens the link and has to sign up to view the file. 

Once the new user is signed up, the file sharing platform offers them the chance to store and share their own files. The new user gets some capacity for free. If they want more, they have to pay. They can get a bulk discount if they bring all their coworkers together for a team package. 

Where this sales motion fits, it’s hard to beat. Build a good product, watch your existing users spread the word, and let the product itself handle most transactions.

PLG fits for products that have a short time to value and are low risk, like productivity apps. You can quickly try them to see if they work; if they don’t, just don’t use them again. It fits simple customers like individuals and small teams. They have straightforward decision processes: If they like the product, they’ll swipe their credit card and buy it. 

PLG sales teams are typically small… if they exist at all. At most you’ll need a few very junior sales reps to help customers complete transactions. The process is really run by product, growth, and data teams that design and optimize the product and conversion flows. 

Leads come from customer referrals (often called “virality”) and consumer-like marketing. That means PLG economics work even with small contract values: $1,000 a year, just a few hundred a year, or even less.

The trouble with PLG is that companies often try to apply it in situations where it doesn’t fit. 

PLG struggles with complex products that require a lot of configuration and high-risk products that cause big problems if they fail. Customers need a sales team to show them how to use those products and a customer success team to be sure they’re delivering. 

PLG also struggles with complex customers who need signoff from many stakeholders and have complex legal and security requirements. With these buyers, a good user experience isn’t enough to close a deal: You need a thoughtful sales person to tick a long list of boxes.

Low-Friction Sales-Led Growth

Low-friction sales-led motions put a sales rep in the driver’s seat but focus on making it as easy as possible for the prospect to buy.

Imagine a process where the sales rep does a software demonstration on the first call, shares pricing right away, and sends a contract for signature after just a couple of conversations.

Easy, right? 

But here’s the tradeoff: Low-friction processes aren’t tailored to the prospect’s specific needs. Why? They lower friction on the prospect by not asking for much information about their business goals or organizational structure. And they lower friction on the sales rep by not asking them to do much to customize the pitch or configure the product.

The things that make a low-friction process easy for both the buyer and the seller also make it generic.

Low-friction processes fit for simple products in well-known categories that require only a little configuration. There’s not much information to convey and not much tailoring to do. And they work for customers with simple buying processes, like a single decision maker who needs to get a few security questions answered and can sign your template contract.

It’s important to use a low-friction process if you sell a commoditized product. Being easy to buy helps you stand out from the competition. A low-friction process is also a fit for products that are nice to have but not essential; your buyers will only be willing to put in so much effort.

Run your low-friction sales team like a factory. Hire reps that are coachable and organized and give them a defined process. Control costs by hiring early-career sellers. Use data to drive decisions: Most important things can be measured and there’s enough volume to make analysis valid.

Low-friction selling usually requires ACVs above $5,000 to make hiring junior reps worthwhile. At the same time, low-friction selling is essential for low ACV products: You can’t afford more sales effort.

Lead generation methods depend on the annual contract value. Below $10,000, you should rely on marketing. Above $10,000, consider hiring sales development representatives (SDRs) who focus on making cold calls to set meetings for account executives (AEs) who then close the deals.

Low-friction processes can go wrong if you choose the wrong lead generation method. Companies often hire SDRs with an ACV that’s too small simply because a lot of other companies hire SDRs. Others pursue false economies, like asking AEs to generate all their own pipeline. That feels cheaper than hiring SDRs, but AE time costs more per hour and they’re less efficient because prospecting isn’t their sole focus.

You’ll also have problems if you try to use a low-friction sales process when the prospect has a complex buying process. A sales rep used to closing deals with a scripted pitch in a couple of calls will struggle if they have to persuade multiple buying centers that all have different needs and manage a process that stretches over many months. You can’t just give them a little coaching and expect them to figure it out; you’ve got to build a different sales motion.

Strategic Sales-Led Growth

Strategic sales-led motions spend extra effort to unlock deals that are extra large. 

Imagine a process where the rep diagnoses the prospect’s needs, customizes their pitch to address those needs, and helps the buyer organize a complex purchasing process. They educate the buyer about why the product is important (not just about what it does) and encourage them to consider additional use cases. The rep has resources they can deploy on qualified deals, like subject matter experts, solution architects, and customized product trials.

This leads to a thoughtful, tailored sales process. 

But it also imposes friction and cost. The prospect may ask to “just see a demo” on a first call. The strategic sales rep will push back: They want to understand the prospect first so they can present something that’s customized. Deal cycles take 3-12 months, are run by highly experienced (and paid!) sales reps, and require extensive cross-functional support.

Strategic selling is important for complex customers, like medium and large enterprises. These organizations require sign off from multiple stakeholders who all want different things: department heads with different objectives, IT teams that focus on security risks and compatibility with existing systems, and legal departments with onerous compliance and contractual demands. 

Strategic selling is also important for complex products that address important, high-risk needs. Sales teams need to help customers understand how they apply to their situation and provide the assurance that they’ll deliver.

Friction is inherent in these deals; you have to get through it with a strategic process.

Lead generation with larger companies is expensive… but worth it for deals that are $50,000, $100,000 or more. The approach is typically “all of the above,” meaning lots of marketing, SDRs, fancy events, and in-person visits.

Strategic sales-led growth goes wrong when companies try to apply it to the wrong products. Imagine a company that’s sold a simple product to small businesses and teams that decides to go upmarket to larger customers. It hires more senior sales reps but makes only minor changes to its underlying product. 

This risks failure by not addressing big-company blockers (like security, governance, and compliance needs) and by not addressing deeper business objectives. A product that makes a small team’s day-to-day work easier doesn’t address the kinds of needs that get senior executives to write six-figure checks. Running a strategic sales process can’t make a simple product provide strategic value. It’s likely to impose extra friction without corresponding benefits. 

Conclusion

Choosing the right sales motion and achieving fit across all aspects of your business is challenging. It requires knowing the difference between things that are good in general and things that are good for your company. 

But it’s worth the effort to get it right. Companies with strong sales motion fit systematically achieve great results.

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Want to see the other articles in this series? Check out our posts on targeting the right buyers and effective sales messaging.

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For more about the author, check out Mike's bio.