In this article, we share insights into the go-to-market (GTM) strategies of 30 fast-growing B2B SaaS companies, including Airtable, Datadog, Figma, Notion, and Stripe, and explore valuable lessons that emerging B2B SaaS companies can learn from these success stories.
Definitions of Important Terms
First, let's take a moment to france telegram phone number list define some key terms that we'll use in this article, as understanding these concepts is essential when considering a GTM strategy.
1. Product-led Growth vs. Sales-led Growth
Product-led growth : The product is self-contained and users become customers after using the product themselves. Usually offers a freemium model or a free trial. Users discover the product through SEO, ads, or referrals. Examples: Figma, Datadog, Airtable
Sales Thread Growth : Salespeople are needed to implement the product. New customers usually try the product after being approached by a salesperson. Examples: Workday, Snowflake, Salesforce
2. Top-down vs. bottom-up
Top-down : Approach the leaders of the organization (executives, VPs, department heads, etc.). They buy the product and promote it top-down throughout the organization. Examples: Workday, Carta, Square
Bottom-up : Reach out to individual employees (individual contributors) within a company. Employees start using the product and it spreads bottom-up throughout the organization, eventually leading to company-wide adoption and scale. Examples: Datadog, GitHub, Coda
3. Other Important Terms
Sales Assist : A sales team that helps close and expand large accounts acquired primarily through product leads.
Bottoms-Up Lead Generation : A self-service product offered by salesthread companies primarily to generate leads for their sales teams.
With these definitions in mind, let's take a closer look at five key insights gained from analyzing the GTM strategies of 30 B2B SaaS companies.
Five key insights
1. 100% of Product Lead companies eventually add a sales team
Of the 30 companies surveyed, 19 started with a Product Thread approach. But what's surprising is that 100% of these companies added sales teams as they grew. Even more notable is that 4 companies moved completely to a Sales Thread methodology.
On the other hand, there were zero companies that made the opposite move (from sales thread to product thread). This is a very interesting trend.
Why does this phenomenon occur?
Company-wide adoption barriers : Many products cannot achieve sustained company-wide adoption without the approval of high-level decision makers. For example, a product like Slack is likely to spread organically across an organization, whereas products like equity management or HR systems typically require a top-level decision.
Need for growth : Venture-scale businesses need to continually grow. To sustain growth, they need to acquire bigger customers i.e. larger enterprises. In the mid-market and enterprise segments, human interaction (i.e. sales teams) becomes essential.
Increasing Product Complexity : As companies grow and their products evolve, their features and value propositions become more complex. Explaining this complexity and making it applicable to larger organizations requires the expertise of your sales team.
Customization requests : Larger customers tend to request customization of products to suit their specific needs. Sales team intervention is required to address these requests and suggest appropriate solutions.
Case Study: The Evolution of Dropbox
Dropbox started as a simple file sharing and syncing service for individual users. Their initial GTM strategy was completely product redeployed, where users started for free and upgraded to a paid plan when they reached a storage limit.
But as Dropbox expanded into the enterprise market, it had to change its strategy: enterprise customers had more complex needs (security, compliance, administrative features, etc.) that required customization and consulting to address.
As a result, Dropbox built an enterprise sales team and adopted a sales thread approach combined with bottom-up lead generation. This shift in strategy helped Dropbox acquire large enterprise customers and grow its business significantly.
2. All companies move upmarket
All of the companies surveyed moved up market (to larger companies) over time, a trend that provides critical insight into the growth strategies of B2B SaaS companies.
