Podcast Summary
From Data Analyst to Growth Strategist: Unlocking the Power of B2B Growth with Elena Verna: With hard work and dedication, it's possible to transform your career and become a highly sought-after expert in growth strategy.
Elena Verna is a highly experienced and knowledgeable expert in growth strategy.She has worked at Miro, Survey Monkey, Amplitude, MongoDB, Netlify, and HP, helping these companies develop their strategies.In her chat, she discussed B2B growth strategies, product-led growth, product-led sales and how to hire a growth lead.Elena has a Statistics degree from UC Berkeley and started her career as a data analyst.She then moved on to senior data analyst manager director and put in a lot of effort to get a job at Survey Monkey.Elena has continued to grow her knowledge and expertise in the field, and is now a sought-after advisor for companies.
Can Elena Verna's Proactive Approach Help Your Company Grow?: Leverage the power of data and experimentation to grow your business.
Elena Verna was a proactive employee who sought out opportunities to learn more and prove her worth.She started out in analytics and then took on product marketing, even though she had no idea what it was.She was a quick study and soon realized this was not her superpower.She used the data they had to prototype growth and started a growth team.After a short stint at a cybersecurity company, she decided to become a consultant advising other companies on how to grow.She took on a marketing leadership role at Miro and had the opportunity to transition them through the COVID pandemic.After 11 months she left to continue her advising journey, which she found to be a fascinating learning experience.She loves the challenge of pattern matching and data gathering, as well as running experiments across different companies.
Succeeding and Evolving Through Interim Gigs: Interim gigs are a great way to get the accountability and experience needed to succeed and evolve in your career.
Interim gigs are a great way to get the accountability one needs while also helping companies understand what type of leader they need.Elena Verna has taken three interim gigs, and found that SurveyMonkey was the most fulfilling experience.On the other hand, her time at Miro was the most challenging, as the company was growing at an incredibly fast rate, and she had to grow at the same pace in order to stay in the position.This experience taught her how to succeed and evolve in her career.
Unlocking the Benefits of Consumerization in the B2B Industry: By focusing on creating a customer-centric experience, B2B products can unlock the benefits of consumerization and provide users with a more productive, successful, and enjoyable experience.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented many challenges for leaders, but there are also opportunities to be found.One such opportunity is the consumerization of B2B products.This involves redefining who the customer is and focusing on creating a customer-centric experience.This includes things like onboarding, time to value, activation experience, and building habit loops.This shift allows users to be more productive, successful, and have a better overall experience.Although it can be a stressful process, it can be incredibly rewarding when done right.With more focus on user centricity and consumerization of B2B products, the industry is changing for the better.
Can Product-Led Growth Help Your Business Acquire and Retain Customers?: Product-led growth is an effective way for businesses to acquire and retain customers by focusing on solving users' problems.
Product-led growth is a way for businesses to acquire, retain and monetize customers.It starts from the bottom, with users adopting the product and then spreading the word about it.Through this technique, users, rather than enterprise buyers, bring the product into the company, as they can see how it will make them more effective.This way, companies can focus on solving users' problems, instead of worrying about security, data storage, and compliance.Founders should first focus on being product-led in terms of retention, by ensuring their product activates and engages users through habit-forming loops.If successful, they can then look at product-led acquisition and monetization.
Harnessing the Power of Product-Led and Sales-Led Strategies for Maximum Growth: To maximize growth, companies should layer and sequence their product-led and sales-led strategies correctly to prevent disruption.
Many companies start with a product-led strategy to acquire and engage users.When the product is successful and the market is mature, they should add a sales-led strategy to their growth model.This will help amplify their existing growth and allow them to reach larger customers.However, if the sales-led strategy isn't implemented correctly, it can disrupt the product-led strategy, leading to a decrease in user love.To prevent this, companies should use a layering game and sequence their growth strategies correctly.This way they can take advantage of both product-led and sales-led strategies.
Balancing User Growth and Enterprise Buyers for Sustainable Enterprise Growth: Companies need to remember their roots and reinvest in user growth while focusing on enterprise buyers to sustain enterprise growth.
Learning from this section is that companies need to carefully balance their focus between user growth and enterprise buyers.If too much emphasis is placed solely on enterprise buyers, the user growth will eventually slow down, making it difficult to sustain enterprise growth.Companies need to remember their roots and ensure that user growth is maintained when focusing on enterprise buyers, otherwise their enterprise growth will suffer.This can be done by reinvesting in user growth and maintaining product-led initiatives, as well as hiring the right team for enterprise.It's important to know when to correct the focus in order to sustain enterprise growth.
Unlocking the Potential of Product-Led Growth: Focus on delighting users to have them be the selling agent and look out for signs of slowness, not only relying on sales and marketing to fix it.
Product-led growth is an emerging trend that focuses on user value, creating a pipeline through usage, and cost-effective acquisition.Companies should incentivize their teams correctly, and focus on delighting users in order to have them be the selling agent.Product-led sales will eventually box out top down sales as it is focused on user value, and less expensive cost of acquisition.Companies should also look out for signs of slowness and not just push sales and marketing to fix it.Product-led growth will create additional opportunities for companies to acquire, retain, build better products, and understand how the market is evolving.
Unlocking the Power of Product-Led Sales: Product-led sales allows companies to generate leads, qualify prospects and increase value through freemium models.
Product-led sales is an innovative way for companies to empower users to make purchasing decisions without involving enterprise buyers.Rather than traditional sales-led models, companies are using their product as a sales enablement tool to generate leads and measure intent.Through the use of network effects, user volume and velocity, demographics, feature use and use cases, companies can qualify leads and score prospects to generate more organic hand raisers.This new approach allows companies to use freemium models instead of trials to generate leads and find buyers.As a result, companies can justify their investment in the product and get the most value out of it.
Unlocking Value for Different Sized Businesses with Freemium and Trial Services: Providing freemium and trial services that cater to both small and large businesses is essential for optimal product usage and value.
Freemium and trial are two different ways of allowing customers to use products for free.Freemium products are forever free, but trials are time-bound.The amount of time to use a product can vary from person to person, with small startups needing only 24-48 hours, whereas large enterprises may take weeks or even months.If a trial is time-bound, larger enterprises may not have enough time to get true value from the product.Usage-based freemiums are better as they don't require a time-based effort and can be used for testing and prototyping.High-friction products require more effort to use, but this effort varies depending on the size of the customer.By providing services that cater to both small and large businesses, companies can ensure that everyone can get the most out of their products.
Unlocking Success Through Growth Enthusiastic Problem Solvers: To achieve success, it is important to find a growth leader who is passionate about growth, analytical, and willing to challenge the status quo and collaborate.
Finding a growth leader can be a tricky task.It is often best to find someone internally, as they will already have an understanding of the company's mission and culture.They may even have ideas that can bring in more growth right away.It is important to look for someone who is a growth enthusiast and has a growth mindset.They should be able to understand data and analytics, as well as have an understanding of the customer journey and user experience.Also look for someone who is a problem solver and is willing to challenge the status quo.Finally, make sure to find someone who is open to collaboration, as growth is a process that requires a team effort.
Understanding the Need for Product-Market Fit Before Hiring for Growth: Before hiring for growth, it is essential to ensure that a product has a good product-market fit and a growth model that is authentic and local to the product offering.
Hiring a growth person too early can be a mistake.It is important to first have a good product market fit, which means your product should have good retention and ability to acquire and monetize customers.Once you have this, a growth person can help build out, scale and innovate your growth model.However, it is important to note that growth models should be authentic and local to the product offering and not just copied from another company.It may take 3-6 months or longer to understand the growth model for a product.
Unlocking Sustainable Growth Through Frameworks: Having a growth model in place can help minimize context switching and create repeatable and sustainable growth.
It's important for business leaders to understand the patterns of the problems they are trying to solve in order to achieve success.Switching between tasks can be a difficult process and it's important to have a framework to help make the process smoother.Having a good growth model in place can help minimize context switching and create repeatable and sustainable growth.Elena Verna suggests that following her on LinkedIn is a great way to learn more about growth frameworks, and if anyone has any questions she encourages them to reach out.Taking the time to understand growth models can be key to achieving success.
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