A Single Funnel Approach to PLG Motions with Kristen Habacht, CRO at Typeform

This week on the Revenue Insights Podcast we are joined by Kristen Habacht, Chief Revenue Officer at Typeform.

In this episode, Lee and Kristen explore product-led growth (PLG) motions, touching on Typeform’s single funnel approach and where zero party data feeds into it. They further discuss why PLG salespeople need to avoid falling into the bad habits that come from taking a ‘toll booth’ approach to sales.

Kristen is CRO at Typeform, an online form builder software company. She is further a Board Member at software and tech brands Refined, Passion.io, and GuideCX. She brings nearly twenty years of experience in sales, having held positions at companies such as Trello, Atlassian, and Shogun.

• Kristen Habacht on LinkedIn
• Typeform Website
• Ebsta Revenue Insights Newsletter  

Time Stamps:

• 02:12 – Kristen’s journey to CRO of Typeform
• 04:22 – Typeform’s single flywheel
• 07:53 – Maintaining a single funnel approach
• 11:12 – Implementing new processes at a PLG company
• 17:14 – The role of zero party data
• 20:52 – How salespeople approach product-qualified leads (PQL)
• 24:21 – Hiring the right salespeople
• 26:37 – Top sellers in PLG
• 30:33 – Typeform’s current projects
• 34:20 – Experimenting with AI
• 40:24 – Where to find Kristen

Highlights:

Typeform’s Single Flywheel

At Typeform, the sales team looks at the customer journey holistically, and they make sure that every customer goes through the process in an intelligent way that suits their buying and engagement needs. For example, a large company that doesn’t have the opportunity to self-serve will automatically go through their enterprise funnel rather than the self-serve funnel to avoid unnecessary processes. Essentially, it is all one journey with multiple exits, and Typeform uses predetermined decisions to place buyers in the right place.

Using Zero Party Data

PLG companies often know very little about their customers due to the nature of their relationship with them. They rarely speak to salespeople. It’s a trade-off of big opportunities with less insights. However, zero party data can be used to lessen this trade-off. By integrating questions into your onboarding process about why your customer is coming to use the tool, then you can better understand their needs, inform your PQLs, and create a far more powerful sales motion.

A Top PLG Seller

A common problem in PLG sellers is that they take an approach reminiscent of toll booths, having only a cursory conversation around contracts when a customer needs to upgrade. This is problematic as it can create bad habits in which sellers begin to neglect the discovery phase. The top performers are those that don’t fall into that trap, instead maintaining their training in the fundamentals of the sales process and taking a more hybrid approach.

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