When Product-Led Growth Works, When It Fails, and What to Do Instead
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There's an ongoing debate in B2B tech: should you let your product sell itself through product-led growth, or invest in a traditional sales-led approach? What if the answer isn't binary?
In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd speaks with Gary Gonsalvez, Marketing Director at Coveo, who brings over 20 years of experience delivering 10x growth through strategic marketing. Unlike many marketing leaders who stay in one lane, Gary has successfully operated in both sales-led organisations like SAI Global and Coveo, and product-led growth companies like Pledge.
From understanding which customer tasks suit each model to navigating the organisational challenges of hybrid approaches, Gary provides a framework for choosing the right growth strategy based on customer behavior rather than industry trends.
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KAREN & GARY
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ The fundamental difference between product-led and sales-led growth; where you place the burden of education and value demonstration
✔️ How to determine which growth model suits your business based on three critical questions about customer tasks
✔️ Why PLG requires rapid iteration and testing capabilities while sales-led demands sophisticated relationship management
✔️ The organisational challenges of transitioning from PLG to sales-assisted models for enterprise customers
✔️ Why transitioning from PLG to sales is significantly easier than going sales-to-PLG
✔️ The hidden costs of PLG that many companies underestimate, from continuous UX investment to product analytics
✔️ How different KPIs drive each model, from trial conversion rates in PLG to pipeline quality in sales-led
✔️ Cultural considerations for international expansion and why localisation requirements differ dramatically between models
EPISODE OUTLINE AND HIGHLIGHTS
[02:01] The fundamental differences: where you place the burden of education in PLG vs sales-led
[05:14] Which business types are suited for each growth model, understanding customer tasks
[07:15] Can product-led growth truly scale with enterprise customers?
[11:55] Why PLG-to-sales is easier than sales-to-PLG: organisational capability and culture
[15:49] The capital efficiency of PLG vs the predictability of sales-led growth
[17:21] Key performance indicators: what metrics really matter for each model
[20:52] How to accelerate sales cycles: ABM, advocacy, and closing strategies
[22:33] Building competitive advantages through network effects vs relationship moats
[24:27] International expansion: cultural differences and localisation requirements
[25:43] Gary's framework: three critical questions for choosing your growth model
THE THREE QUESTIONS FRAMEWORK FOR CHOOSING YOUR GROWTH MODEL
Based on decades of experience across both models, Gary has developed a practical framework that cuts through industry hype and focuses on customer reality. Rather than following trends or investor preferences, he recommends starting with deep customer understanding by asking three critical questions.
Question 1: What specific task is your customer trying to complete, and can they self-educate about both the problem and your solution?
"If sustainability managers already knew that they need ESG reporting and can evaluate tools independently, PLG works. But if you're educating them about problems they didn't realise they had, you need more of that consultative sales," Gary explains. At Pledge, sustainability managers had a clear, urgent need—they needed to produce an ESG report for the board in six weeks. They could easily evaluate whether the platform helped them complete that task.
The key insight is understanding the customer's mental model of their task. When customers know what they need and can articulate it clearly, the product can guide them. When the task is ambiguous or requires problem discovery, human expertise becomes essential.
Question 2: How complex is the task they're trying to complete?
"If they can make meaningful progress in the first session, lean on PLG. If they need organisational change, stakeholder alignment, or complex implementation, you need human expertise," Gary emphasizes.
At Coveo, customers might express a desire for better search, but implementing AI search across enterprise systems isn't something that can be completed in a trial period. It requires change management, stakeholder alignment, and technical consultation, all distinctly human capabilities.
Question 3: What organisational capabilities do you need to excel?
"If success requires rapid iteration, A/B testing, exceptional product experience, align product and marketing tightly around the PLG model. But if you need relationship building, domain expertise, complex deal orchestration, align product, marketing, sales, and alliances around that sales-led approach," Gary advises.
The framework acknowledges that the fastest-growing companies combine both approaches, using PLG for initial efficiency, then layering in sales to accelerate growth in higher-value segments. The key is being honest about what organisational capabilities you need to excel at each model and building those systematically rather than copying what worked for another company.
WHY THE TRANSITION FROM PLG TO SALES IS SIGNIFICANTLY EASIER
One of Gary's most counterintuitive insights challenges conventional wisdom about growth model transitions. While many assume it's easier to add self-service capabilities to an existing sales organisation, Gary's experience proves the opposite is true.
"I believe PLG to sales is significantly easier than sales to PLG. And the reason is it comes down to organisational capability," Gary explains. When you start with a PLG model, you build strong foundational muscles for understanding customer behaviour through data and direct feedback. You're constantly conducting customer calls, testing assumptions, and iterating based on what you learn.
At Pledge, product and marketing worked together daily, reviewing data, listening to customers, and testing solutions collaboratively. This customer-obsessed culture created a powerful advantage when adding sales capabilities. Sales representatives worked with warmer prospects who already understood product value, and the company had detailed data about what drives conversions.
The reverse transition proves far more challenging. Sales-led organisations typically operate on quarterly planning cycles, not weekly iterations. They often lack the product analytics and user tracking capabilities that PLG requires—understanding where users drop off, what features drive retention, and how to optimise conversion funnels.
The knowledge gap problem: In sales-led companies, deep customer understanding often sits exclusively with sales teams or account managers. PLG requires complete organisational alignment around customer understanding—everyone from product to marketing to customer success needs to understand the exact tasks customers are trying to complete.
As Gary notes, there's also a risk mitigation factor for founders. With PLG, "all the data, you understand the customer conversions, you know all the touch points. So you track everything—the whole customer journey, the whole user journey you are tracking from start to end." This knowledge is retained and baked into the business.
With sales-led approaches, you're relying on individual salespeople who can behave unpredictably or leave with their book of business. For startups and founders, that represents significant risk that doesn't exist when customer intelligence lives in your product data and systems.
The companies that successfully transition from PLG to sales maintain their test-and-learn culture as they scale, applying the same rapid iteration approach to their sales-assisted processes. They don't abandon what made them successful; they extend it.
KEY ADVICE FOR CEOS AND MARKETING LEADERS
For CEOs:
Helps you avoid multi-million-pound missteps by choosing the wrong growth model.
Gives you a framework to scale internationally without breaking customer experience.
Clarifies the organisational capabilities you must build early to avoid painful rewiring later.
For CMOs & Marketing Leaders:
Offers a practical blueprint for becoming a strategic leader in both PLG and sales-led worlds.
Teaches you how to build marketing’s influence post-SQL—closing deals faster, not just filling the top of funnel.
Helps you reposition marketing as a revenue engine, not just a demand generator.
TODAY’S GUEST
Joe is an award-winning marketing leader with extensive experience in driving transformational change and building high-performing teams within the integrated Security & Networking industry. Known for developing and executing innovative, data-driven marketing strategies that deliver measurable growth and ROI.
Adept at aligning marketing initiatives with sales objectives, Joe has consistently achieved record-breaking results across the EMEA region. His background in B2B SaaS marketing equips him with a unique perspective on executing campaigns that generate tangible revenue and business impact. He is passionate about continuous improvement, leading with a focus on collaboration, and fostering a culture of innovation.
Connect with Joe on LinkedIn or find out more about Infoblox
OUR HOST
Karen Lloyd is a passionate marketing head-hunter and recruitment expert specialising in marketing and C-suite in B2B industries. With over 25 years of experience in the recruitment industry, Karen brings a unique depth of expertise that sets her apart from most recruiters.
Over her career, Karen has accumulated a wealth of experience that includes serving as a Board Director and being actively involved in growing a business for 13 years. Karen has been a part of five start-ups, giving her first-hand knowledge of the critical importance of hiring the right people.
Currently, Karen is the founder and Director of Armstrong Lloyd. She leads a very special team that partners with businesses and empowers them to build industry-leading marketing and sales teams for some of the most exciting B2B brands - from small, agile and disruptive start-ups to global giants providing a wealth of product and service offerings.
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