You're a SaaS company trying to become more product-led, but your product is not very self-serve. What should your approach be to demonstrate value to potential customers?
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Most of the time it is possible to build a data based / insights based / ROÍ focused narrative. As long as you can prove that the buyer will obtain value that is perceived or received and that is greater than the cost, they will typically listen. Product led companies are typically great innovators, which require expectation setting through the narrative…
If you accept that a product-led strategy is being about the product doing the talking in terms of selling then clearly it needs to be good at this, if not then this will be a significant constraint. Many products are not that good at selling themselves so you would be far from alone. In reality moving to being product-led is a transition and, depending on the product, for some it may be relatively quick and for others slow. However, if you are committing to being product-led then focus on developing the product to support this strategy. Better to focus your investment on the product rather than on trying to hide its inability to sell itself. Take an agile approach making small incremental changes like, for example, adding a simplified interface wizard for free trials with default settings and data so people can quickly work with the product and see the value. Whatever you do be committed to developing your product to creating an excellent customer experience from the minute they start engaging with it.
A few years back we converted the business from a solutions-led to a product-led. We went through this very issue. The challenge is providing 'evidence' without the self-serve, that people can get their hands on quickly. Bringing the 5-page explanations down to 1-page consumable sheets, testimonials, and CLEAR statements of the real problem you solve - not the marketing mumbo jumbo that people use inside the business to explain themselves, but the way that outsiders would understand how your business solves their specific use-case. It was a multi-year process getting it to that point, but could be accelerated. It requires a coordinated view from sales who want things to be 'self-serve' but can't have it, oh, and recorded/video demos so people can see the SaaS in action with their particular issue.
Continue to prioritize making the product easy to evaluate, sell and buy. In the mean time, teach technical pre-sales and sales reps how to demonstrate the product using the language of the customer’s C Suite so sponsors can accelerate executive sponsorship. Focus on the WHY for every WHAT that’s demonstrated.