---
title: "Why You Can't Sell Your Way Into PLG"
episode: 101
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Bryce Winkelman"
guest_title: "Chief Revenue Officer"
date_published: 2026-08-20
date_modified: 2026-09-03
duration: 00:51:17
word_count: 10642
topics: ["gtm-strategy", "pricing-packaging", "demand-generation", "brand-positioning"]
canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/bryce-winkelman-typeform-plg-sales-led/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# Why You Can't Sell Your Way Into PLG

_Typeform CRO Bryce Winkelman on running self-serve and enterprise at once, fighting for brand budget, and the industry-expert hire most teams miss_

**Episode 101 · The LeanScale Podcast**  
Bryce Winkelman, Chief Revenue Officer (Typeform) · Hosted by Anthony Enrico  
Published August 20, 2026 · Updated September 3, 2026 · 00:51:17  
Canonical: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/bryce-winkelman-typeform-plg-sales-led/

**Topics:** GTM Strategy · Pricing & Packaging · Demand Generation · Brand & Positioning


## Executive summary

Most companies assume they can bolt a self-serve motion onto a sales-led engine whenever they choose. Bryce Winkelman has run both and is convinced it almost never works in that direction. He is Chief Revenue Officer at Typeform, turning a 140,000-customer forms business into a workflow platform, and was previously an early leader at Qualtrics through its $8B acquisition by SAP, Chief Strategy Officer at Quantum Metric where revenue tripled from $35M to $100M, and GTM lead at SeekOut.

The product thesis starts from owning the front door. If you own the lead, Bryce argues, it follows that you should own enrichment, routing, segmentation and payments — the whole activation workflow, which is stickier and more valuable than collection alone. The enterprise side had different use cases around feedback and research, which pointed at qualitative research as the hardest adjacent problem: focus-group logistics, transcription, clips, analysis, executive summaries, and needing to know research design at all. AI made it tractable, so Typeform built an end-to-end research flow where AI moderates, analyses in real time and summarises.

Running both motions at once is where the difficulty concentrates. The barriers going the wrong direction are cultural and financial: month-to-month self-serve produces churn numbers that look frightening, and if finance and the board are not rallied around that in advance the plug gets pulled too early. Sales teams must accept enterprise leakage, on the reasoning that acquiring the customer and driving them up-market beats being protective. And packaging is genuinely hard — Bryce says nobody has fully cracked it, though enterprise-shaped needs like data residency, security, scale and SSO have proved the better line. Typeform organises marketing around both motions and runs a dedicated enterprise R&D team, so a feature's origin suggests where it belongs.

On brand he is candid that ROI is nearly unprovable. His method is to ring-fence budget, state what success looks like up front — usually recognition rather than new business — run a brand tracker, then review honestly, including killing what fails, which itself buys trust. The CEO, CFO and product chief are involved in the big initiatives so it is never "just trust us". The pitch starts from the business imperative: search, paid media and CAC are the most disruptive he has seen in twenty years, over-reliance on one channel is dangerous, diversifying requires brand. He and Anthony agree AI search has made brand and content more important than ever.

Two organisational points close it. Enablement is never finished — Bryce recommends skip-levels and listening to calls personally, and describes a CSM saying it was the first time anyone had explained *why* the company entered the research space. Nobody had doubted the decision; nobody had been brought into the reasoning. Second, the hire most teams miss is the industry expert — organisational psychologists, a hotel chain's head of digital, an associate principal researcher — who span pre-sale and post-sale and become so valuable you need an intake process to ration them. Under today's scrutiny the model is "nail it, then scale it" rather than hiring fifty AEs.


## Key takeaways

1. **You can PLG your way into sales, but almost never sell your way into PLG** — Bryce has run both and says he has seen very few examples of a sales-led company successfully becoming product-led, while the reverse is materially easier. Layering an event strategy and enterprise motion onto an existing consumer-grade media engine is far simpler than building that engine from scratch. Part of the gap is capability: PLG demands consumer-grade marketing — paid media and lifecycle work against millions of signups — that enterprise-led companies, used to events and high-touch ABM, are not set up to run.
   _Why it matters:_ If a self-serve motion is ever part of the plan, sequence matters enormously. Deferring it until the sales-led engine is mature may be deferring it permanently. It is a capability and budget gap rather than a strategy gap; without aggressive brand investment there is no PLG engine to speak of.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives

2. **Owning the front door justifies owning the downstream workflow** — Typeform owns lead capture. Bryce's reasoning is that if you own the lead, it follows you should own enrichment, routing, segmentation and payment processing — the activation side, not just collection. That is both stickier and more valuable to customers avoiding a complex stack.
   _Why it matters:_ Multi-product expansion is most defensible where you already hold the step everything downstream depends on. Ask what the customer's next action is on the back of the data you already provide.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, Marketing Leaders

3. **Pick the adjacent problem AI just made tractable** — Typeform was already used for quantitative research, so it asked what the hardest problem in that world was. Qualitative research qualified: focus-group logistics, transcription, clip creation, analysis, executive summaries, and needing to know research design at all. AI can now moderate, analyse in real time and summarise.
   _Why it matters:_ Expansion candidates are strongest where an existing use case sits next to a problem that was previously too painful to automate — not where a new capability is merely possible.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives

4. **Churn will look terrifying in a healthy PLG motion** — Month-to-month self-serve contracts produce churn numbers that are genuinely scary for a while. If the team, finance and board are not rallied around that in advance, fear pulls the plug far too early.
   _Why it matters:_ Reset the expected shape of the metrics with finance and the board before launching self-serve, not after the first bad chart. This is a governance problem before it is a product one.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders

5. **Accept enterprise leakage as the price of a working PLG engine** — You will lose some enterprise deals and some existing customers to self-serve. Bryce's position is that this is acceptable — better to acquire the customer and drive them up-market than to be too protective early.
   _Why it matters:_ The sales team has to be brought into this deliberately, because from inside a quota it looks like cannibalisation rather than acquisition.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives

6. **Nobody has cracked self-serve versus enterprise packaging** — Bryce says plainly that he does not think any organisation has fully solved it. What has worked best is drawing the line at genuinely enterprise-shaped needs: data centre location, security and privacy, scale, administration capability and SSO.
   _Why it matters:_ Resist moving everything into self-serve to strengthen the core. The durable packaging line is what only an enterprise actually needs, not what is most valuable.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders

7. **Organise R&D around the motions so packaging follows structure** — Typeform's marketing is organised around sales-led and product-led with shared services, and there is a dedicated R&D team for enterprise capability. When a feature comes from that team, where it should be packaged is much clearer.
   _Why it matters:_ Structure can resolve arguments that debate cannot. If a capability's origin tells you which motion it serves, the packaging conversation starts from a position rather than from scratch.
   _For:_ Founders, RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives

8. **Ring-fence, define success up front, then be willing to kill it** — The method is to ring-fence a budget, state clearly how success will be measured — usually recognition rather than new business — run a brand tracker, then have an honest conversation. Pulling the plug when it does not work is what earns trust for the next bet. Bryce is also direct that the case is very hard to make at all unless the organisation is already profitable and efficient enough to fund it from existing cash.
   _Why it matters:_ Defining the measure before spending converts an act of faith into an experiment. Killing your own initiative is the behaviour that buys the next one. Get the house in order first: efficiency is what establishes the credibility to fund an unprovable investment.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders

9. **Start the brand pitch from the business imperative, not the creative** — Search, paid media and CAC are the most disruptive Bryce has seen in twenty years. Over-reliance on one channel is the risk; diversifying acquisition channels requires a strong brand; therefore brand is the investment. The creative conversation comes after. Asked directly for a percentage of marketing budget or revenue, Bryce says there is no clear-cut rule — it is part art, part science, and some brand work is pure content never designed for click-through at all.
   _Why it matters:_ Leading with creative invites a taste debate. Leading with channel concentration risk makes brand a risk-management decision the CFO can evaluate. Anyone offering a tidy percentage is guessing; build the judgement capacity instead.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives

10. **AI search makes brand and content more important, not less** — Bryce's view is that whatever the brand investment was, it needs to be more: nailing review sites, creating genuinely valuable content, being discussed on Reddit and elsewhere. Anthony's observation is that the companies investing in it are showing up in the LLMs and owning their audience.
   _Why it matters:_ Discovery is shifting to surfaces that reward being talked about rather than bidding. Without brand investment, cutting through is much harder than it was.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Founders, Revenue Executives

11. **Bring the team into the why, not just the what** — In a skip-level with customer success, Bryce started explaining why Typeform entered the research space — the board conversations, where investment was going. A CSM said it was the first time they had heard it. Nobody had doubted the decision; nobody had been brought into the reasoning.
   _Why it matters:_ Enablement defaults to positioning, messaging and product capability. The strategic why is rarely covered, and it is the foundation the skills training sits on.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders, Customer Success

12. **Enablement is never finished, and leaders have to hear it themselves** — Mission is not accomplished after one session. Bryce recommends skip-levels, listening to call recordings, attending enablement personally, and delivering important messages himself — not because others are doing it badly, but because you cannot otherwise tell what has failed to land.
   _Why it matters:_ Anthony's version is calling himself chief reminder officer: knowing something does not mean everyone knows it, and the answer to how many times to repeat it is again and again.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders

13. **The industry-expert hire is the one most teams miss** — PhD organisational psychologists in HR tech, a hotel chain's head of digital at Quantum Metric, an associate principal researcher at Typeform. They act as consultative partners pre-sale from a trusted voice that has been in the buyer's shoes, then carry into delivery. Once it works, everyone wants that person on every deal and the team is small — so an intake process is needed to pick the genuinely strategic deals, and Bryce typically routes 70–80% of post-sale services work to partners.
   _Why it matters:_ It is also mutually beneficial — a long-time practitioner gets a new career surface in tech. The first challenge is teaching a team that has never sold alongside such a person how to use them. Plan the intake and the partner channel before demand arrives, because both constraints appear immediately after the approach starts working.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders

14. **Growth at all costs is dead — nail it, then scale it** — Growth still carries a premium but must come with an efficient, effective, profitable model. Bryce quotes Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith: nail it, then scale it. The alternative — hiring fifty AEs as a growth strategy — does not work any more.
   _Why it matters:_ Ring-fence, define success, execute, regroup, and invest more aggressively only once signal appears. Anthony's counterpoint is that many companies are trying to scale it in order to nail it.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders

15. **Watch inputs when outputs fail, and never trust dashboards alone** — Bryce's dashboards run from forecast and quota rollup down to pipeline generation at individual rep and campaign level, because if outputs are missing something upstream is usually broken. But a team meeting surfaced leads down 36% in a channel — caused by a pricing-page change pushing the enterprise lead-gen form below the fold.
   _Why it matters:_ No dashboard would have found that. Direct conversation is a detection mechanism, not a soft complement to the reporting.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders


## Frameworks

### PLG Into Sales, Never Sales Into PLG (11:25)

**Definition:** A product-led company can layer an enterprise motion on top of an existing consumer-grade acquisition engine relatively easily; a sales-led company attempting the reverse faces cultural, financial and capability barriers that compound.

The specific barriers Bryce names are churn optics under month-to-month contracts, finance and board fear, enterprise leakage the sales team must tolerate, packaging inexperience, and the absence of consumer-grade marketing capability.

### Own the Front Door, Own the Workflow (02:32)

**Definition:** Holding the point of data capture justifies expanding into every downstream step that capture enables — enrichment, routing, segmentation, payments.

Bryce's framing for Typeform's multi-product strategy: work out the best next step an organisation takes on the back of the data you provide, then listen to customers, who will tell you where to go.

### The Enterprise Packaging Line (12:37)

**Definition:** Reserve for enterprise the things only an enterprise genuinely needs — data centre location, security and privacy, scale, administration and SSO — rather than the things that are simply most valuable.

Offered as the least-bad answer to a problem Bryce says nobody has fully cracked, reinforced structurally by a dedicated enterprise R&D team whose output has an obvious packaging home.

### Ring-Fenced Brand Experiments (20:05)

**Definition:** Fence off a defined budget, state up front what success looks like and how it will be measured — usually recognition rather than new business — run it, then hold an honest review including the option to stop.

Bryce's answer to brand ROI being nearly unprovable. Leadership involvement in the big initiatives, and willingness to kill what does not work, are what make the next request credible.

### The Industry Expert Hire (34:51)

**Definition:** Hiring a credentialed practitioner from the buyer's own world — a discipline PhD, or someone who held the exact job at a target account — to act as a consultative partner across pre-sale and post-sale.

Bryce has built these teams three times. The sequence of problems is predictable: teach the team to sell alongside them, then ration them via intake, then scale delivery through partners at 70–80%.

### Nail It, Then Scale It (47:47)

**Definition:** Invest against demonstrated signal in increments rather than scaling ahead of proof — the opposite of hiring fifty AEs as a growth strategy.

Attributed to Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith. In practice: ring-fence, define success, execute, regroup, and escalate investment only while signal holds.

### Inputs and Outputs (49:04)

**Definition:** When output metrics — forecast, ACV, deal velocity, quota attainment — fall short, the cause is almost always upstream, so the reporting must reach pipeline generation at rep and campaign level.

Bryce's dashboard philosophy, with the caveat that dashboards are never a complete picture: the 36% lead drop from a pricing-page change was found in conversation, not in reporting.


## Quotes

_Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._

> "You have to accept the fact that to have a well-functioning PLG engine, you're going to lose some enterprise deals."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (00:34)

> "If you own the front door, that's incredibly valuable."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (00:30)

> "If you own the lead, then it makes sense that you would own enrichment that you would own routing that you would also own the ability to properly segment."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (03:42)

> "If you listen to your customers, they'll do a really good job of pointing you where you should go."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (04:12)

> "Qualitative research is incredibly painful for a whole range of reasons."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (04:56)

> "One, you have to be true to your brand."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (07:17)

> "We're going to have a much higher CAC in this area for a while because this is what is going on. So no one panic."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (08:01)

> "I've never seen it really, I mean, I'm sure it's happened, but very few examples of it ever succeeding going from sales-led to product-led."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (11:32)

> "Packaging is really hard in self-serve and especially where you have self-serve and sales-led, it's really challenging. I don't think any organizations actually fully cracked that yet."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (12:17)

> "You got to make sure that you resist the temptation to move everything into self-serve."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (12:59)

> "You're going to see churn numbers that are probably really scary for a bit."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (15:09)

> "If the board isn't rallied around that concept and you're willing to accept that, it's going to create a lot of fear and you're going to pull the plug way too early."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (15:19)

> "It's better to acquire the customer and then really drive them up market than it is to try to really be too protective on an enterprise versus self-serve for a while."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (15:58)

> "You're never going to build an engine big enough unless you invest aggressively enough in brand."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (17:27)

> "It's really hard to make the case if you're not an efficient organization already."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (19:21)

> "ROI on brand is really, really, really tough to show."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (19:40)

> "When the organization knows that they can trust you to make the right business decision, not just to protect something because it's your own, that also buys significant trust."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (21:54)

> "This is one of the most disruptive times I've seen in tech in 20 years in tech."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (22:13)

> "You have to have a diversified channel strategy on acquisition. You have to. And in order to do that and to activate those channels, you have to have a strong brand."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (22:26)

> "You got to start with the business imperative of like, why are we doing this in the first place?"
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (23:05)

> "That's been one of the unique aspects of this new world of AI search. It's that brand and content have never been more important."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (25:44)

> "It rarely is ever, mission is not accomplished after one enablement session."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (27:36)

> "That is the first time we've heard why we made this decision."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (29:51)

> "When you can bring the team around mentally, then all the skill stuff layers on a much stronger foundation."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (30:27)

> "I tend to call myself the chief reminder officer."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (31:02)

> "If your organization does not look and reflect the investments you're making from a big bet perspective, there's going to be weird dissonance in the organization."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (33:04)

> "I view revenue operations for me as it's not just a data and reporting function, like they're true, like the operational leaders of the business in a lot of ways."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (33:42)

> "You go get people that have done the job, and you bring them in."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (39:33)

> "It becomes so powerful, everyone wants to use that team."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (41:03)

> "Growth still has a premium on it, but it's all about like you got to be profitable."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (01:14)

> "We don't need to scale before we have the signal."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (45:58)

> "Gone are the days of just saying, "I'm just going to go hire 50 AEs and that's my growth strategy.""
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (46:17)

> "He said it was, "Nail it, then scale it." And I think that that's the model for business."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (47:47)

> "I think there are so many that are trying to scale it to nail it."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (47:57)

> "If the outputs aren't there, you have to go to the inputs."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (49:04)

> "Dashboards are critically important, but nothing ever really replaces those direct conversations as well."
>
> — Bryce Winkelman, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 101 (50:30)


## Practical advice by role

### Founders

- If self-serve is ever part of the plan, build it before the sales-led engine hardens — the reverse direction almost never works.
- Expand where you already own the step everything downstream depends on, and ask what the customer's next action is on the back of your data.
- Reset the expected shape of churn and CAC with your board before launching self-serve, not after the first frightening chart.
- Get efficient and profitable before making the brand case; funding an unprovable investment from an inefficient base rarely lands.
- Adopt nail it, then scale it: ring-fence, define success, execute, regroup, escalate only while signal holds.

### Revenue Executives

- Draw the packaging line at what only an enterprise genuinely needs — data residency, security, scale, administration, SSO — not at what is most valuable.
- Organise R&D and marketing around the motions so a feature's origin implies its packaging home.
- Bring the team into why a strategic decision was made, not just what to say — it is the layer enablement routinely skips.
- Run skip-levels and listen to call recordings yourself; delegation cannot tell you what failed to land.
- Build the intake process for industry experts before demand arrives, and plan to send 70–80% of post-sale services to partners.

### Marketing Leaders

- Ring-fence brand budget with a stated measure of success up front — usually recognition, not new business — and run a brand tracker against it.
- Kill brand initiatives that do not work. Doing so is what buys credibility for the next request.
- Open the pitch with channel-concentration risk rather than creative, so brand becomes a risk decision a CFO can evaluate.
- Expect no clean percentage heuristic; pure-content brand work is not designed for click-through or signups at all.
- Treat review sites, genuinely valuable content and being discussed in places like Reddit as brand infrastructure for AI search.

### Sales Leaders

- Prepare the team for enterprise leakage — losing deals and existing customers to self-serve is the cost of a working PLG engine.
- Teach the team how to sell alongside an industry expert; that is the first barrier, before demand becomes the second.
- When outputs miss, go to inputs — pipeline generation at rep and campaign level, not just forecast rollup.


## AI takeaways

**Thesis:** AI shows up here as a market-entry unlock rather than an internal efficiency play. Typeform entered qualitative research specifically because AI made the hardest part tractable — moderating interviews, analysing in real time, generating clips and executive summaries, and even designing the research for someone who does not know how. The second AI thread is demand-side: Bryce argues AI search has made brand and content more important than ever, because being found now depends on being discussed.

- **** — 
- **** — 
- **** — 
- **** — 
- **** — 

**Agent & automation ideas**

- An AI-moderated qualitative research flow covering interview facilitation, real-time analysis, clip generation and executive summary.
- A research-design assistant for teams that lack in-house methodology expertise.
- A brand-tracking analysis agent watching recognition signals across review sites and community discussion.
- An enablement gap detector that reads call recordings for messaging that consistently fails to land.
- An intake-triage agent scoring which strategic deals warrant a scarce industry expert.


## Operations takeaways

### Revenue operations

- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 

### Pipeline & marketing ops

- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 

### Customer operations

- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 


## Metrics mentioned

| Value | Metric | Context |
| --- | --- | --- |
| ~140,000 customers | Typeform customer base | The forms business being evolved into a workflow platform, acquired against millions of signups a year. |
| $8B by SAP | Qualtrics acquisition | The transaction Bryce worked through as an early Qualtrics leader, followed by an IPO. |
| $35M → $100M in two years | Quantum Metric revenue growth | During Bryce's tenure as Chief Strategy Officer. |
| 70–80% | Post-sale services sent to partners | How Bryce typically scales delivery once industry experts become too much in demand to serve every account directly. |
| 36% in one channel | Lead drop found in conversation | Surfaced in a team meeting rather than a dashboard; caused by a pricing-page change that pushed the enterprise lead-gen form below the fold. |
| ~50% based in Europe | Organisation split | The shape of the go-to-market organisation Bryce runs at Typeform. |


## Entities mentioned

- **Typeform** (company) — Where Bryce is CRO, evolving from a 140,000-customer forms business into a workflow platform, with roughly half the organisation in Europe. Runs self-serve and enterprise motions simultaneously, has a dedicated enterprise R&D team, and launched an AI-moderated qualitative research flow as its major new bet. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/typeform/
- **Qualtrics** (company) — Where Bryce was an early leader through the $8B SAP acquisition and IPO. Described as enterprise sales-led rather than PLG — useful for event strategy and multi-product playbooks as Typeform moves up-market and into research, and the source of the 'nail it, then scale it' phrase. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/qualtrics/
- **Quantum Metric** (company) — Where Bryce was Chief Strategy Officer and revenue tripled from $35M to $100M. His example of vertical industry experts: hiring the head of digital from a hotel chain so she could speak to other hotel chains as a trusted voice who had been in the buyer's seat. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/quantum-metric/
- **SeekOut** (company) — Where Bryce ran the go-to-market organisation as Chief Business and Revenue Officer, part of the two-decade background spanning both sales-led and product-led companies. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/seekout/
- **SAP** (company) — Acquirer of Qualtrics for $8B, the transaction Bryce worked through as an early Qualtrics leader before the subsequent IPO. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/sap/
- **LeanScale** (company) — Anthony's firm. He raises the messy middle of PLG and sales-led coexisting as a problem he has hit both at previous companies and across LeanScale's client base. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/leanscale/
- **Bryce Winkelman** (person, guest) —  · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/bryce-winkelman/
- **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/anthony-enrico/
- **Ryan Smith** (person, mentioned) —  · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/ryan-smith/


## FAQ

**Q: Can a sales-led company successfully add a product-led growth motion?**

A: Rarely, according to Bryce Winkelman, who has run both. He says he has seen very few examples of a sales-led company successfully becoming product-led, while the reverse is much easier. The barriers are mostly cultural and financial rather than technical: month-to-month self-serve produces frightening churn numbers, finance and the board panic and pull the plug early, the sales team has to tolerate losing deals to self-serve, packaging is genuinely difficult for organisations that have never done it, and PLG requires consumer-grade marketing capability that enterprise-led companies do not have.

**Q: What should you package in self-serve versus reserve for enterprise?**

A: Bryce is candid that he does not think any organisation has fully cracked this. What has worked best is drawing the line at things a true enterprise genuinely needs rather than at what is simply most valuable — data centre location, security and privacy, scale, administration capability and SSO. The temptation to move everything into self-serve to strengthen the core has to be resisted. Structuring R&D so that a dedicated team builds enterprise capability also helps, because the origin of a feature suggests where it should be packaged.

**Q: Why does churn look so bad in a healthy PLG motion?**

A: Because self-serve customers, particularly on month-to-month contracts, churn at rates that look alarming next to enterprise renewal numbers. This is a normal characteristic of the motion rather than a sign of failure, but if the executive team, the finance function and the board have not been prepared for the shape of those metrics in advance, fear takes over and the motion gets cancelled before it has had time to work. Setting that expectation is a governance task that has to happen before launch.

**Q: How do you justify brand investment when the ROI is hard to prove?**

A: Start from the business imperative rather than the creative: acquisition channels are being disrupted, over-reliance on any single channel is a risk, diversifying requires a strong brand. Then ring-fence a defined budget, state clearly in advance what success looks like — usually recognition rather than new business — and run a brand tracker to detect lift. Involve the CEO, CFO and product leadership in the big initiatives so it is never just a request for trust. And be willing to stop something that does not work, because that is what earns credibility for the next investment.

**Q: Is there a rule of thumb for how much to spend on brand?**

A: No. Asked directly whether he uses a percentage of marketing budget or of revenue, Bryce says there is no clear-cut guiding principle — it is part art and part science. Some brand activity is pure content that is not designed for click-through, signups or new business at all, so conventional performance measures do not apply. What substitutes for a heuristic is having smart people watching the signals continuously and able to explain why something is or is not working.

**Q: What is the industry-expert hire, and where should they sit?**

A: It is a credentialed practitioner from the buyer's own world — organisational psychologists in HR tech, a hotel chain's head of digital at Quantum Metric, an associate principal researcher at Typeform. They act as a consultative partner in pre-sale from a trusted voice who has been in the buyer's seat, then carry through to delivery. Reporting lines vary: often to the revenue leader, sometimes into pre-sales, and at Typeform into customer success because that is where post-sale sits. Bryce's view is that structure matters less than teaching a team that has never sold alongside such a person how to use them.

**Q: What happens after the industry-expert model starts working?**

A: Two predictable problems. First, the expert becomes so valuable that everyone wants them on every deal, and the team is small — so an intake process is needed to identify the genuinely strategic deals they should join. Second, customers want to keep using them post-sale, which does not scale in-house; Bryce typically routes 70 to 80 per cent of that services work to partners who pick up what was done in pre-sale and carry it forward. Both constraints appear immediately after the approach succeeds, so plan for them in advance.

**Q: What replaced growth at all costs?**

A: Nail it, then scale it — a phrase Bryce attributes to Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith. Growth still carries a premium but must come with an efficient, profitable model. In practice that means ring-fencing an investment, defining what success looks like before starting, executing, then regrouping honestly to decide whether to scale, move the money or stop. Hiring fifty account executives as a growth strategy no longer works; the discipline is to invest, gauge the signal, and only escalate while the signal holds.

**Q: What should a revenue leader actually watch on a dashboard?**

A: Both outputs and inputs. Outputs are forecast, performance against target and prior year, quota rollup, ACV and deal velocity. But when outputs fall short the cause is almost always upstream, so the reporting has to reach pipeline generation at individual rep and campaign level. Bryce is equally clear that dashboards are never the complete picture: a 36 per cent drop in leads from one channel surfaced in a team conversation, and turned out to be caused by a pricing-page change that pushed the enterprise lead-generation form below the fold.


## Timeline

- **00:00** — Cold open + intro
- **01:52** — Owning the front door: forms to a workflow platform
- **04:22** — Entering qualitative research — the problem AI unlocked
- **06:47** — Shifting the brand from forms to flows: paid, events, influencers
- **10:45** — The messy middle: running PLG and sales-led at once
- **11:25** — You can PLG into sales, but never sell your way into PLG
- **14:23** — Why sales-led companies can't become product-led
- **18:18** — Fighting for brand investment when the ROI is invisible
- **25:37** — AI search: why brand and content matter more than ever
- **26:24** — Enablement: bringing the team into the "why"
- **32:42** — The roles that make it work: RevOps, PMM, and ops
- **36:02** — The industry-expert hire most teams miss
- **43:36** — Growth at all costs is dead — making bets under scrutiny
- **47:47** — "Nail it, then scale it" and staying close to the signal
- **50:38** — Wrap


## Related episodes

- **Ep. 104: The State of the GTM Stack: What 50+ B2B Companies Actually Run** (Anthony Enrico (solo)) — The packaging and pricing-model gaps Bryce describes show up in the panel data as the metering and quote-to-cash holes.
- **Ep. 91: Why Outcome-Based Pricing Is a Trap for Most AI Companies** (Roee Hartuv) — The adjacent packaging argument — what to charge for and what to give away — from the pricing side. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/roee-hartuv-outcome-based-pricing-trap/
- **Ep. 76: Your Marketing Playbook Is Dead** (Leysan Zigangirova) — The brand and demand shift Bryce describes as the most disruptive he has seen in twenty years. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/leysan-zigangirova-marketing-playbook-dead/
- **Ep. 96: After the Series A: The Capital Clock** (Anthony Enrico (solo)) — Nail it, then scale it is the same argument as instrumenting every motion with a decision date before pouring in capital.
- **Ep. 82: How an Ops Guy Became CRO of a $3B Company** (Joshua Trott) — The revenue-leader view of organising a go-to-market team around motions rather than around headcount. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/joshua-trott-ops-guy-cro/
- **Ep. 90: Why Your Niche Isn't Niche Enough** (Gary Frazier) — The industry-expert hire is the staffing expression of going deep in a vertical rather than broad. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/gary-frazier-niche-brand-positioning/


## Full transcript

_Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._  
_Transcript only, as a separate file: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/bryce-winkelman-typeform-plg-sales-led/transcript.md_

### 00:00 — Cold open + intro

**[0:00]** One of the founders of Qualtrics used all the time, he said it was nail it, then scale it,

**[0:03]** and I think that that's the model for business. My guest today is Bryce Winkleman, Chief Revenue

**[0:08]** Officer at Typeform, where he's leading the evolution of a 140,000 customer forms business

**[0:14]** into a full workflow platform with half his organization operating out of Europe. What did

**[0:20]** you see that made you believe the front door was worth so much more than just the form itself?

**[0:25]** You know, as you talked about, you know, we own the front door, and it became pretty clear to us

**[0:30]** that, you know what, if you own the front door, that's incredibly valuable. First of all, you have

**[0:34]** to accept the fact that to have a well-functioning PLG engine, you're going to lose some enterprise

**[0:40]** deals, you're going to lose some sales light deals. I'm like, that's okay. I really appreciate

**[0:44]** how you take these approaches of knowing maybe let's be less worried about the math upfront

**[0:52]** and focus on customer impact. How do you make these decisions with the higher level of scrutiny

**[1:00]** that companies are in now versus five or so years ago? You know, there's a praise growth at all

**[1:05]** costs. You know, and eventually you had to clean that up, especially as you became a public company

**[1:10]** and things of that nature, but it was really just growth was the premium. And now it's, yeah,

**[1:14]** you still need to grow and growth still has a premium on it, but it's all about like you got

**[1:18]** to be profitable. You got to show that you have an efficient, effective, profitable business model

**[1:22]** that also can grow. How have you fought for or positioned further investment in brand marketing

**[1:32]** with your board and with your executive team? Yeah, it's a real tough one. And tech was a lot

**[1:39]** easier, you know, 2021 and early because it was all just growth. Bryce type form is known to

### 01:52 — Owning the front door: forms to a workflow platform

**[1:52]** millions of people as a forms tool. You're in the middle of turning it into a workflow platform.

**[1:59]** What did you see that made you believe the front door was worth so much more than just the form

**[2:04]** itself? Yeah, that's a great question, Anthony. And thanks for having me excited to have this

**[2:10]** conversation today. So, you know, it's this is a critical evolution in our business. And really,

**[2:16]** when I think of type form, there's two key distinct parts of our business, right? And this

**[2:20]** is the case in a lot of PLG organizations, there's the, there's the self serve base. And then there's

**[2:26]** the enterprise base. And they really require two pretty distinct emotions. And so as you think about

**[2:32]** self serve, you know, as you talked about, you know, we own the front door, and it became pretty

**[2:37]** clear to us that, you know what, if you own the front door, that's incredibly valuable. If you

**[2:42]** have, you know, companies that operate through a self serve motion, typically, they're a little

**[2:47]** smaller, a little more nimble, you know, say startups, solopreneurs, organizations that are

**[2:52]** in that active growth mode. And they're trying to avoid at all costs, building a hairy tech stack,

**[2:58]** particularly when it comes to activation of leads, right. And so in type form is very commonly used

**[3:04]** for lead generation. And so we said, Look, well, we own the front door. And we are the data collection

**[3:10]** side of that equation. But it makes a ton of sense, because there's a ton of value. And there's also a

**[3:16]** ton of stickiness when it comes to activation. So it's not just collection of leads, but it's

**[3:20]** also the whole activation side. And so if we own the front door, the whole workflow, the back end

**[3:26]** workflow around activation just makes a ton of sense. It makes it again, stickier for type form,

**[3:31]** but also way more valuable and way more impactful for these organizations that operate in that kind

**[3:36]** of a self serve type of motion. And so it became pretty clear that well, hey, if you own, yeah,

**[3:42]** if you own the lead, then it makes sense that you would own enrichment that you would own routing

**[3:47]** that you would also own the ability to properly segment that you would also own the ability to

**[3:52]** do payment processing, right. And so the kind of end to end flow just made a lot of sense. And the

**[3:57]** front door again, if we're already in the in the organization, adding the elements of the broader

**[4:01]** workflow, just it just made a lot of sense, right. And I think type form does a great job as well of

**[4:06]** listening to its customers, which was a key driver behind how we think about evolution and development,

**[4:12]** right, if you listen to your customers, they'll do a really good job of pointing you where you should

**[4:16]** go. So there's, there's that side of the business. On the other side, on the enterprise side,

### 04:22 — Entering qualitative research — the problem AI unlocked

**[4:22]** the use cases were actually very different. It was much more feedback related customer experience,

**[4:27]** some elements of employee experience and research, right, there was a much more kind of enterprise

**[4:33]** grade series of use cases that went outside of that world of lead generation. And so with that,

**[4:39]** and with the strong AI capability we had built into the product, we said, look, if we're already

**[4:43]** utilized for research in a lot of organizations, and for consumer insights and things of that

**[4:49]** nature, what's the hardest challenge that exists out there in that world. And what we saw in

**[4:56]** collaboration with our board and others was, you know, qualitative research is incredibly painful

**[5:01]** for a whole range of reasons, and I won't pontificate too much about it, but the logistics

**[5:06]** of organizing focus groups, you know, the amount of time that it takes the pain of analyzing the

**[5:12]** data, transcribing everything down, creating video clips, you know, and then really analyzing and

**[5:18]** coming to an executive summary of what does this look like, you know, you also have to know what

**[5:22]** you're doing to go and do qualitative research. And we said, look, if we're already used in the

**[5:25]** quant side of that equation very actively, let's go tackle this really hard challenge that AI has

**[5:31]** made easier. And so let's get into qual. And so we said we can build an end to end research workflow

**[5:37]** out of our product as well. Again, it's an expansion on existing use cases,

**[5:41]** and we can completely upend and create a whole new modality in the world of research and AI can

**[5:45]** moderate it. AI now has the ability, you know, so it can moderate the interview in the focus group,

**[5:51]** it has the ability to much more effectively analyze the data in real time, create executive

**[5:57]** summaries, create video clips to everything of that nature. If you don't know what you're doing,

**[6:00]** AI does a great job at spinning up and doing research design. So all of these critical pain

**[6:06]** points that exist in the world of research, particularly around qualitative, we figured,

**[6:10]** hey, type form is in a great position to go solve that problem. And so those are those are a couple

**[6:16]** of things that we've been seeing and thinking about of like, hey, if you own the front door,

**[6:19]** and you own distribution, a really a more aggressive multi product strategy makes a ton

**[6:24]** of sense. And, and you kind of figure out where do you go in that strategy by, you know, thinking

**[6:29]** what is the best next step that an order, you know, that an organization would take on the back

**[6:33]** of the data that you provide, and then you got to listen to your customers, and they'll do a really

**[6:38]** good job of telling you where to go. So it's kind of a long winded answer. But that's how we that's

**[6:42]** how we're thinking about our product evolution. It makes a ton of sense, especially earning the

### 06:47 — Shifting the brand from forms to flows: paid, events, influencers

**[6:47]** right to get to those next use cases and listening to the customers that are telling you exactly what

**[6:52]** they need. The biggest thing that comes to mind for me is the education needed to shift on the

**[6:58]** brand. How are you thinking about doing that with the existing customer base as well as when you're

**[7:03]** landing net new logos, what motions or moves had you had to make to help up level the brand to get

**[7:11]** people current to what type form is today? Yeah, that's been one of the most challenging aspects

**[7:17]** of it. One, you have to be true to your brand. When we still invest in the core that made us

**[7:22]** who we are today, right, you still build an incredible form experience, and you have to invest

**[7:26]** there and build great UX and beauty of design and all those things that were known for you can't

**[7:29]** just stop doing that. So it requires real dedicated investment, ensuring that you keep your your core

**[7:35]** strong. But then you also have to let people know that like, hey, by the way, type form can do a lot

**[7:40]** more than what you may think about. And so we've had to think about activating new channels. So

**[7:45]** one is, you know, we do a lot in paid media, and we have to continue to aggressively go into paid

**[7:50]** media, but test new channels and avenues, we have to get into new keywords, and that's expensive. And

**[7:56]** so we spend a lot of time with finance ring fencing investment to help us break into those

**[8:01]** areas and paid saying, hey, we're going to have a much higher CAC in this area for a while because

**[8:05]** this is what is going on. So no one panic, like let's let this go run its course, you have to

**[8:10]** think about, again, new avenues and channels as well. So, you know, as you think about the world

**[8:14]** of research as an example, and getting in front of researchers, well, you kind of got to start

**[8:18]** spinning up an event strategy. So we started going into small format events, you know, starting to

**[8:23]** really entertain third party events and go, we got to go to where those people are. And this

**[8:27]** developing and emerging ICP as we're getting into it, we also aggressively utilize influencer

**[8:33]** strategies, I think that's actually been one of the coolest things because influencers have the

**[8:38]** ability when they have broad reach, but they also have the ability to tell a really cool story,

**[8:43]** right? And they actually articulate a case and they, you know, there's a use case in front of

**[8:47]** everyone in addition to a trusted voice out there, right? But to access, you know, influencers, you

**[8:53]** actually have to be good as well, because often they're in there playing with the product, they're

**[8:56]** testing it, they're trying it, they're actually deploying it. And so you got to put your money

**[9:01]** where your mouth is, if that's going to be a strategy that you go and try. And so, you know,

**[9:04]** those are just a few examples of how you start creating broader brand reach and helping

**[9:09]** organizations know like, hey, there's a lot more that we do that goes beyond this. But there's also

**[9:14]** been internal shifts, right? It's not just about brand, it's also about are we organized as a

**[9:19]** company around the different motions that we have to now go and activate? Are we willing to go and

**[9:24]** invest aggressively in accessing that audience that we want to go to? And so there's more on

**[9:28]** that front that we could dig into, but it's been a, it's been a big effort.

**[9:33]** Is there anything from the Qualtrics playbook that is opening up this idea of

**[9:38]** landing into qualitative research with Typeform? You know, Qualtrics is from a playbook perspective.

**[9:48]** Yeah, Qualtrics was very much enterprise tech sales led, right? That was one of those

**[9:52]** organizations. It's not a PLG business, it's sales led. And, and so there's a lot of aspects of that

**[9:58]** playbook that we can go and adopt as we move up market, as we move into the research space,

**[10:02]** I would say on the, the growth flow side, which is the lead generation side, probably not as much

**[10:08]** outside of just they're really good at and have been good at deploying a multi-product strategy.

**[10:12]** So for us, I think some of the playbook things is, you know, some of the event strategy, right? How

**[10:15]** do you go get in front of the right people at the right time? How do you have highly curated events

**[10:19]** that really resonate where you can tell a story, but also create an experience for folks? You know,

**[10:25]** and so I would definitely say that there were parts of the playbook that are, that are really

**[10:28]** helpful. They're known in the research space. What we do is very different in a lot of respects for

**[10:34]** what they do today, but they've done a really good job at creating more of a services-based

**[10:40]** flow that I think has resonated. And I think there are things we can learn from that.

### 10:45 — The messy middle: running PLG and sales-led at once

**[10:45]** Let's talk a little bit about the PLG, SLG motions that are running simultaneously.

**[10:52]** The major issue I've always run into previous companies and the companies that we work with

**[10:58]** at LeanScale is that messy middle of it might be a sales opportunity that came in through self-serve.

**[11:05]** We have to get the sales team engaged. I would love your perspective on how to manage that

**[11:12]** and any lessons learned that would work well for the audience.

**[11:16]** Yeah. This is, again, it's a very challenging one. This is one of the main reasons why

### 11:25 — You can PLG into sales, but never sell your way into PLG

**[11:25]** I believe sales-led first companies or enterprise-led companies really struggle to get into PLG.

**[11:32]** In fact, I've never seen it really, I mean, I'm sure it's happened, but very few examples of it

**[11:36]** ever succeeding going from sales-led to product-led. But I've seen it flip the other way, right? Where

**[11:42]** product-led can go into sales-led much easier for a range of reasons. And I'm happy to kind of go

**[11:46]** into some more detail on a few of those reasons, but I would say generally it's, first of all,

**[11:52]** you have to accept the fact that to have a well-functioning PLG engine, you're going to

**[11:57]** lose some enterprise deals. You're going to lose some sales-led deals. I'm like, that's okay.

**[12:01]** You have to be able to understand that. And then as you deliver value and as you package things the

**[12:05]** right way, what you lose on the self-serve side out of the gate will eventually come up and become

**[12:09]** an enterprise customer as you go down the road. But you just have to spend a lot of time from a

**[12:17]** packaging perspective. Packaging is really hard in self-serve and especially where you have self-serve

**[12:22]** and sales-led, it's really challenging. I don't think any organizations actually fully cracked

**[12:28]** that yet because you say, hey, we want to shore up our core. We want to create a strong base of

**[12:33]** customers. And so we have to give them the right capability to self-serve, but at the same time,

**[12:37]** what do you reserve for a market? And typically we found that things that are geared around

**[12:41]** enterprise needs, it's just that's kind of led to the better packaging opportunity.

**[12:46]** Data center location, you think about security and privacy, you think about scale and enterprise

**[12:52]** scale. You think about administration capabilities and the ability to do much more around SSO and

**[12:59]** things of that nature. You got to make sure that you resist the temptation to move everything into

**[13:03]** self-serve and say, what are the things that true enterprise needs? And then let's make sure that

**[13:08]** that's left in the right spot. It's also really important that as you think about how you

**[13:14]** organize internally, our marketing organization is very much organized around sales-led and

**[13:21]** product-led. And then a range of shared services, whether it's content and creative and things of

**[13:26]** that nature. And I think you need to do a similar thing on the product side where it's like, how do

**[13:31]** you build dedicated investment arms in R&D that are focused on key parts of the business? So we

**[13:37]** have a dedicated R&D team focused solely on enterprise capability. And so when stuff comes

**[13:42]** out from there, it's a lot easier when you think about, hey, it's coming from this team. We should

**[13:47]** be packaging that in the right enterprise package, or this is coming from this team down here. That

**[13:52]** should probably be utilized to go and shore up our self-serve core business. And so it's a lot of

**[13:58]** conversation, a lot of effort, a lot of experimentation. Things move regularly and you have

**[14:02]** to continue to have a culture of experimentation because you rarely get it right out of the gate.

**[14:07]** But I think the more that you create dedicated bets and dedicated organizations, the easier it

**[14:13]** is to figure out where things should be packaged. And again, it's a journey that we're on right now

**[14:17]** and we're continuing to pound on it, but we definitely made a lot of progress over the years.

### 14:23 — Why sales-led companies can't become product-led

**[14:23]** I'm curious of something you mentioned at the front end of that saying it's nearly impossible

**[14:28]** to go from a sales-led organization to a product-led organization. And it's a little bit easier the

**[14:34]** other way. What barriers are sales-led growth companies running into that just make it so

**[14:40]** difficult to implement an effective PLG motion at the same time?

**[14:46]** Yeah, so the things that I've run into in the past that make it especially challenging

**[14:53]** are things like there's a lot of fear on the finance side of business. So first of all,

**[14:58]** it's sales-led or product-led. It's a real cultural thing, right? And you get used to KPIs

**[15:03]** and metrics looking a certain way. And the minute you start saying, well, in a self-serve business,

**[15:09]** especially if you provide things like month-to-month contracts, you're going to see churn numbers that

**[15:14]** are probably really scary for a bit. And if your team is not rallied around that concept,

**[15:19]** if the board isn't rallied around that concept and you're willing to accept that,

**[15:22]** it's going to create a lot of fear and you're going to pull the plug way too early. So I think

**[15:26]** things like churn models and fear from the finance team, from the board, from others is one of those

**[15:31]** things that is a real hurdle to get past. I think the other thing too is one thing we were just

**[15:37]** talking about is you look at enterprise leakage, right? You got to have the sales team that

**[15:42]** is also patient and understanding that like, hey, with this motion, we're going to lose some

**[15:46]** business. We're going to lose some existing customers that are going to opt for self-serve.

**[15:49]** We're going to take existing pipeline. And we may lose some of that into the self-serve motion,

**[15:54]** but like we're okay with that concept because if we add a ton of value down there, we'll get them

**[15:58]** to where we want them to be. It's better to acquire the customer and then really drive them

**[16:02]** up market than it is to try to really be too protective on an enterprise versus self-serve

**[16:08]** for a while. The other thing is just packaging is really hard. As you think about, well, what

**[16:12]** do you put in a self-serve package? What do you put in an enterprise package? That is debilitating

**[16:18]** for a lot of organizations. If you've never done that, if you don't have people that are used to

**[16:22]** doing that, it is a real challenge, right? And it requires, again, a level of experimentation that

**[16:28]** a lot of organizations rarely do. And then I think the other thing too actually goes back to

**[16:33]** what we were talking about earlier, Anthony, on the brand side, where we're working on saying,

**[16:37]** hey, we're going from forms to broader flows and workflows. That concept requires a brand shift in

**[16:43]** the mind of our customers. But I think we're up for that challenge because we also have consumer

**[16:48]** grade marketing, right? We are used to paid media. We're used to lifecycle marketing. We're used to a

**[16:54]** whole bunch of things because we have to acquire thousands and thousands and thousands of customers

**[16:58]** a year. And we do, we're talking millions of signups, thousands of customers. That requires

**[17:03]** a different grade of marketing that feels much more like consumer grade. It doesn't mean we don't

**[17:07]** do enterprise marketing too, but you got to have that consumer grade motion, right? Because you have

**[17:11]** to have the brand investment to be able to create a PLG engine. And it's expensive and it is a huge

**[17:18]** investment. And some of these more enterprise led companies are like, well, we're used to just going

**[17:23]** to events and like the motion is very different. A lot of ABM, a lot of high touch. Well, you're

**[17:27]** never going to build an engine big enough unless you invest aggressively enough in brand. And brand,

**[17:34]** it's hard sometimes to track full ROI. So that's when I talk about organizational culture and

**[17:40]** readiness. It's all those kinds of things that become death by a thousand cuts and take these

**[17:44]** enterprise led companies. And those are big significant hurdles that they have to get over.

**[17:50]** Whereas going the other way, it's a little bit easier. It's much easier to layer an event

**[17:53]** strategy on the back of an existing media strategy that is consumer grade. You've already wrapped

**[17:58]** your head around CAC and cost models and things like that. And so layering things on and building

**[18:02]** an enterprise motion becomes easier once you've built the PLG engine. So those are just a few

**[18:07]** thoughts and observations I've seen as I've been in pure enterprise tech and sales led. And as I've

**[18:10]** been in PLG, it's just there are some pretty big hurdles to go over going from that sales led to

### 18:18 — Fighting for brand investment when the ROI is invisible

**[18:18]** PLG. Can we double click a little bit on the brand investment philosophy? I think that is something

**[18:27]** that I've seen so many companies struggle with. It's very easy to make more investments in demand

**[18:34]** engine. One dollar in brings three dollars back from all of your channels. It's a reasonable bet

**[18:40]** to make. It's a little bit more difficult on the brand side. You know that it's really greasing the

**[18:47]** whole system for everything else that you're running. But how have you fought for or positioned

**[18:54]** further investment in brand marketing with your board and with your executive team?

**[19:01]** Oh yeah. First of all, we have an incredibly supportive board and the whole leadership team

**[19:09]** at Typeform is very open to making big swings. And so that's helpful. If you add a ton of

**[19:16]** conservatism on that side, that could be really challenging to get past. So first of all, it's a

**[19:21]** few things. One is that it's really hard to make the case if you're not an efficient organization

**[19:26]** already. If you're not profitable and efficient in your approach and in your go-to-market engine

**[19:31]** and you're not able to use existing cash for it, that's a real tough sell. So one, you've got to

**[19:36]** actually just make sure that your own house is in order before you go really, really big on some of

**[19:40]** the brand stuff. But I would say that it is a challenge because ROI on brand is really, really,

**[19:46]** really tough to show. And some of the things that we've done is we do brand tracking research. We

**[19:53]** actually go and say, let's run a consistent brand tracker. Let's see, can we actually determine

**[20:00]** where we are seeing a brand lift? But we have to go test it out of the gate. And so I think a lot

**[20:05]** of the conversation is like, again, let's ring fence a budget. Let's go test this channel. Let's

**[20:10]** test this concept. Let's test this brand initiative. And here's how we're going to measure it. And you

**[20:14]** got to be really clear up front that it's not typically in the form of new business, for example.

**[20:20]** It's going to be in the form of, you know, things like recognition and things of that nature. And

**[20:24]** so you would you would go and you articulate how we measure it. And then you go run it. And then

**[20:29]** you circle back and say, okay, here's generally what we saw from that. And here's and here's what

**[20:33]** it looked like. We also made it very clear that we want our our CEO and our leadership team to be

**[20:39]** with us in the whole every step of the process. So right now we're in the process of building a whole

**[20:44]** new video highlighting a few of our new product lines. And that's very much a brand initiative

**[20:50]** in a lot of ways. And so we make sure that our chief product and technology officer, our CFO,

**[20:56]** our CEO, they're involved in the development of that they get their eyes on it, they feel like

**[21:01]** they're a part of the brand initiative. And it makes it easier. Like if it's just a hey,

**[21:05]** just trust us, we'll go do something interesting over here. It's a lot tougher to do. Now, eventually,

**[21:10]** we may get to that point. But first, you got to go build the trust with the team, paint the vision,

**[21:13]** and help them understand this is what we're trying to do and come along the journey with us.

**[21:17]** And obviously, our whole leadership team is not involved in every single campaign that we do on

**[21:22]** the brand side. But those big ones, those those things that are big investments, and that we

**[21:26]** believe are going to move the needle, we try to make sure that they're actually bought into the

**[21:29]** whole concept start to finish. I think, you know, a few other important points is that if something

**[21:37]** doesn't work, you got to be willing to pull the plug on it. If it's like, hey, you know what,

**[21:41]** we tried this thing on the brand side, we didn't see a lift from it. We didn't see any new business

**[21:47]** increase, right? If that is something that you're going to measure in that market. And so we're

**[21:51]** going to stop doing it, right? And when the organization knows that they can trust you to

**[21:54]** make the right business decision, not just to protect something because it's your own,

**[21:58]** you know, your own project, that also buys significant trust, right? And so, but brand is

**[22:04]** a brand's a tricky one. It's something that does require investment. I think the other thing too,

**[22:08]** is there's a bit of a business imperative because if you're over reliant on one channel,

**[22:13]** this is one of the most disruptive times I've seen in tech in 20 years in tech. Like this is like,

**[22:17]** it's insane what's happening with search and paid media and CAC and all of these things that are

**[22:22]** kicking off. Like it's really, really challenging. And so you have to have a diversified channel

**[22:26]** strategy on acquisition. You have to. And in order to do that and to activate those channels,

**[22:32]** you have to have a strong brand. Otherwise, you're going to find yourself overly reliant

**[22:36]** in one channel. And so with that business imperative and but that's that's part of what

**[22:40]** has to be pitched as a part of this. It's not just, hey, we want to go create a brand video.

**[22:44]** It needs to be there's a shift happening in the landscape. We need to go diversify our

**[22:49]** acquisition channels. Here's one of the ways we need to go do it. We need to invest in brand.

**[22:53]** And then you start the pitch. So you start with the business imperative too. And I think that's

**[22:57]** another lesson that can be learned. Sometimes it's easy, especially when you have very creative

**[23:01]** people to dive directly into the creative side of it. You got to start with the business imperative

**[23:05]** of like, why are we doing this in the first place? And then you go into the creative aspects of it

**[23:11]** and the project management side of it. And so those are just a few learnings over the years of

**[23:15]** like how I think you can get better brand investment from your team. But having, again,

**[23:19]** a very supportive leadership team and board goes a long way. Are there any heuristics that you use,

**[23:26]** maybe percent of marketing budget, percent of total revenue, anything that gives you

**[23:33]** back of the napkin math to say, hey, we're probably investing enough or we're probably

**[23:39]** not investing enough. That's a good question. I don't think there's a clear cut rule

**[23:49]** for how to think about brand investment. I mean, ultimately it needs to trickle down to,

**[23:54]** I mean, you can see, we can see things like we have dedicated campaigns that are designed for

**[23:58]** brand and you can see what it clicks look like, right? Are we seeing a reduction in clicks? Are

**[24:02]** we seeing more, you know, there's a lot of things brand related that's pure content, right? So you're

**[24:06]** not actually designed for, you know, a click through. It's designed for, you know, you're not,

**[24:12]** it's not designed for signups. It's not designed for new business. It's purely designed for like

**[24:16]** thought leadership and creating a brand in the space. You know, you can see how the how the take

**[24:21]** is on that. Is that performing well? Is it not performing well? Is that because of the channels,

**[24:25]** because of lack of investment? So you just have to have really smart people that are very driven

**[24:29]** and good at this stuff to be looking at it all the time and say, this is working or not working

**[24:33]** because of this. And so here's what we recommend we go do. And so, but yeah, from a, from a pure

**[24:38]** numbers perspective, I don't think there's really a clear guiding principle on that aspect of it.

**[24:44]** It's kind of, it's, it's a little bit of art and science. Yeah. And like most things, it depends on

**[24:49]** everything happening internally, but just wondering if there was any, anything that stood out, just

**[24:55]** because I know it's so tricky and a lot of people are having a tough time getting budgets for brand

**[25:01]** related investments approved and getting the support behind them. But I, I agree with you.

**[25:08]** It is the most disruptive time. And I think the companies that are investing in brand though,

**[25:14]** are actually performing really well. They're showing up in the LMS. They're owning their

**[25:19]** audience. They're creating relative content that brings people into their brand and then

**[25:25]** gets them into their ecosystem. So I don't have one either. I wish I had some guidance on it,

**[25:31]** but I do see the companies that are investing in it are performing really well and they seem to get

### 25:37 — AI search: why brand and content matter more than ever

**[25:37]** it. Yeah, no, I absolutely believe you're right. And that's been one of the unique aspects of

**[25:44]** this new world of AI search. It's that brand and content have never been more important. And so

**[25:50]** whatever it was, like it needs to be more, I think is what I'm seeing. It's a, you know,

**[25:55]** if you want to be recognized, you need to be nailing it on review sites. If you want to be

**[26:00]** recognized, you need to be creating incredible content, like actual valuable content. If you

**[26:04]** want to be nailing it, you need to be being discussed. You need to be in things like Reddit

**[26:08]** and other channels, right? You have to have that, that owned audiences you're talking about. It's,

**[26:12]** it's so disruptive that if you don't have the brand investment, it's going to be really,

**[26:15]** really hard to cut through the noise. It's going to be really hard to be found now

**[26:19]** because of the way that search is changing.

### 26:24 — Enablement: bringing the team into the "why"

**[26:24]** We talked a little bit about getting the market up to speed on new things that you're doing,

**[26:31]** going from forms to flows. Where my mind goes is it may be equally as difficult to get the

**[26:40]** enablement internally, especially on sales teams, SDR teams, the whole go to market organization.

**[26:47]** I would love if you could share a little bit about your approach to enablement

**[26:52]** to get those teams up to speed and ready for the change that Typeform is going through.

**[26:58]** Yeah. Yeah. So enablement is critically important and it's a team effort, right? We have great,

**[27:03]** you know, sales leadership that's driving enablement and thinking about it and customer

**[27:06]** success leadership that's thinking about it regularly and joint enablement sessions. And

**[27:11]** we have incredible product marketers and folks like that that are kind of teaching positioning and,

**[27:15]** you know, and all that stuff. But I think one of the biggest takeaways, and I think a lot of

**[27:18]** organizations are doing the, like, the, you know, the classroom teaching, which I think is important

**[27:24]** and to teach them, hey, here's what the positioning is. Here's how you talk about it. Here's who the

**[27:28]** ICP is. Here's how the ICP thinks. Here's how they buy. Here's what it looks like. But I think

**[27:31]** there's a few things that have been some good best practices to think about as you go. One is that it

**[27:36]** rarely is ever, mission is not accomplished after one enablement session. It's ongoing enablement.

**[27:42]** It's ongoing conversations. And I would encourage any leaders out there that may be listening to

**[27:47]** this to think about, like, when was the last time I had a skip level with that team and was able to

**[27:53]** dig in and understand like, do they get this? Do they understand this? Like, what's going on,

**[27:57]** right? Sometimes, and it doesn't mean that, you know, the other management layers are not doing

**[28:01]** a great job. I'm sure they are. But sometimes you need to go down and hear it for yourself. You need

**[28:06]** to be listening to call recordings. You need to be actually attending enablement. You need to be

**[28:11]** doing those things and seeing what's taking what isn't. And it's an ongoing process of continuous

**[28:15]** enablement. And as you learn more, share it, right? So with this new product line, this research flow

**[28:20]** product line, I've been going out to my own network and setting up conversations to go learn, like,

**[28:25]** how does, you know, how do great executives in the space, like, how are they thinking about what

**[28:30]** we're doing? What do they think about the ICP? What's the problem that we would be solving for

**[28:34]** them? And so I've been having a lot of those conversations. And then I take that information

**[28:38]** that I learned, we distill it down, and I send it out into a field channel, so that everyone can

**[28:42]** learn like, hey, okay, here's the conversation I had. And here are all the key takeaways that you

**[28:46]** should be thinking about, right? And so it's continuous enablement, continuous communication.

**[28:51]** So that's one, I think important point. The second point, and by the way, I think it's important that

**[28:56]** you lead from the front as a leader, right? That you're actually having the conversations as well,

**[29:00]** you can see where things are breaking down, right? You, they're just delegated to your team and hope

**[29:04]** that you eventually hear from it, right? One of the things that I've learned, and this isn't a

**[29:08]** natural part of enablement, because often, again, you focus on things like product capability and

**[29:12]** messaging and how to position it and, you know, medic related to it. And there's all this stuff

**[29:17]** that you would typically go and teach. But it's really important that you bring the team along

**[29:22]** with why did we make this strategic decision? This is a big takeaway recently, I was having a skip

**[29:26]** level team meeting with our customer success team. And we were talking about the research flow product

**[29:32]** that we had just launched. And I just naturally started telling the story of like, why we made

**[29:37]** the decision to enter the space and talked a lot about the interactions we had had with the board,

**[29:41]** where they saw investment going, what was going on. And I started just sharing some of this,

**[29:45]** this context. And one of the CSMs came off mute and said, that is the first time we've heard

**[29:51]** why we made this decision. It's not like we ever doubted the decision. We think it's a great idea,

**[29:56]** but we no one had ever brought us into the like, why did we go there? And why is this so important?

**[30:02]** And so that was a big aha moment for me that sometimes it's not just the skills based

**[30:07]** enablement. But sometimes you need to actually bring the team along with you as to why this

**[30:12]** strategic initiative, why does this matter so much? Why did we make this decision as a leadership team?

**[30:18]** And so I think that's another piece is that you may actually need to take your enablement playbook

**[30:22]** and take it a click or two deeper into the concept. Because when you can bring the team around

**[30:27]** mentally, then all the skill stuff layers on a much stronger foundation. So I think that was a

**[30:33]** big takeaway over the last three weeks, regarding how to just keep keep pounding on and driving

**[30:38]** enablement in the right place. Getting that buy in is so difficult. And especially when you're

**[30:44]** sitting in rooms, you you know, every detail of the strategy and the plan, and then you forget that

**[30:50]** so many people have not been as privy to the information that you have. So intentionally,

**[30:56]** going back, reminding the team of why we're doing what we're doing, I think it makes a ton of sense.

**[31:02]** I tend to call myself the chief reminder officer. And I need to remember that just because I know

**[31:07]** something, it doesn't mean everybody else knows it. So I have to be okay with repeating myself

**[31:12]** over and over again to people. And I think a lot of organizations miss that layer. And just I think

**[31:20]** they have assumptions that people already get it. Yeah, I totally agree. And you may think, well,

**[31:26]** I said it once, like, how many times do I need to say it? Well, the answer is again, and again,

**[31:30]** and again, and again. And then you need to have skip levels with folks. And, you know, obviously,

**[31:34]** you're already having conversations with your directs. But then again, these these skip levels

**[31:38]** open up to like, Oh, you know what, that didn't land, like, I need to repeat, we need to talk about it

**[31:42]** again, I don't care how many times you've talked about pricing, and packaging, and I don't know,

**[31:46]** I don't care how many times you've talked about positioning and messaging. You know, stuff isn't

**[31:50]** always landing. And unless you're really close to the, to the individuals that are taking it to

**[31:55]** market, like you're going to miss the fact that it just is not really connecting at this point. And

**[31:59]** that's why I would recommend there's something really important to you, as well as a revenue

**[32:03]** leader in an organization, sometimes you need to deliver that message yourself, right, and then do

**[32:08]** the follow ups and then do the conversations and the skip levels and the, you know, regular check-ins,

**[32:13]** you got to watch the calls, and you got to see how they're doing it, you have to do that work

**[32:16]** yourself. Again, it doesn't mean that the other people that are designed to do it are not critically

**[32:20]** important. But sometimes you have the context, you have the understanding that can be really helpful.

**[32:25]** And so I don't know, that's, that's one of those things that you just, you just kind of have to be

**[32:29]** involved in the process to, yes, you delegate key critical things that you need to delegate,

**[32:34]** but you can't just blindly just say, okay, someone's got enablement, and I'm going to

**[32:37]** carry on with my day. Are there any key roles that you have on your team, that you think maybe other

### 32:42 — The roles that make it work: RevOps, PMM, and ops

**[32:43]** companies are not making this level of investment and enablement operations, all the support

**[32:50]** connective tissue that keeps these initiatives moving along? Oh, geez. There, honestly,

**[32:57]** there are so many people that, and we've spent a lot of time over the last, you know, year and a

**[33:04]** half or so, of refining the organization. Because if your organization does not look and reflect

**[33:12]** the investments you're making from a big bet perspective and the products you're, you're

**[33:16]** investing in, there's going to be weird dissonance in the organization. So you have to actually make

**[33:20]** sure you have the roles and the structure that reflect your priorities. And so I, you know,

**[33:26]** there are a lot of roles, like I have never leaned more in my life on product marketing.

**[33:31]** Incredible, like so much work that they have to do, you know, in helping us transition and form

**[33:36]** into a whole new, whole new side of the business, right? I think about revenue operations, like how

**[33:42]** critical they are as like strategy partners. And I view revenue operations for me as it's not just

**[33:47]** a data and reporting function, like they're true, like the operational leaders of the business in a

**[33:52]** lot of ways, right? We also brought in marketing operations, right? How do we make sure that as we

**[33:58]** are transitioning and transforming as a company, that marketing and product stay in complete sync.

**[34:02]** And so you have product operations and marketing operations that work so close together. That's

**[34:07]** been a huge unlock from an efficiency perspective, but I'll just also just communication and

**[34:12]** transparency. And because, you know, there were times, you know, where you found that like, hey,

**[34:16]** we're running this marketing initiative and product has no idea what's going on,

**[34:19]** our product is making this change on the roadmap and marketing has no idea what's going on, right?

**[34:23]** So how do you actually bring some of those operational roles together can be really,

**[34:26]** really helpful. Obviously, being careful to avoid glue functions as well, it's an important part,

**[34:31]** you know, so I would say those are some really critical things. We also have hired a head of

**[34:36]** field engineering, kind of this combination of like custom engineering, making sure that the right

**[34:41]** kind of level of solutions are built for organizations helping out on the pre-sale side,

**[34:46]** you know, from pre-sales to post-sales. There's also, you know, as we entered the research space,

**[34:51]** we said, look, you know, one of the big unlocks I've seen in multiple companies is bringing in

**[34:56]** experts to go in and talk about the product, right? So if you are happy at deep industry

**[35:00]** focus, you need to bring in an industry expert. And they're incredibly impactful in a pre-sales

**[35:05]** motion all the way through to like post-sales delivery and knocking it out of the park for the

**[35:10]** customer and building that continued trust going forward. So whether it's an industry expert,

**[35:14]** or we just hired a research expert to help us with the research flow side, it's like, look,

**[35:19]** you know research, you know research better than anyone that's here. And so one, we want you to

**[35:23]** pound on the product to we need you to be involved in pre-sale conversations, be a thought partner

**[35:27]** with the customer, think through what they're trying to do, help them design POCs, you know,

**[35:31]** and then you're going to be responsible for delivery on the back end. And so bringing in

**[35:34]** some of those real specialists and experts has been a massive unlock again, and that's multiple

**[35:39]** organizations where that's been really, really huge. So I would say those are a few roles. But

**[35:45]** again, it gets tough when you start naming roles because everyone has some critical part to play

**[35:49]** our content team. We couldn't do all this AI search stuff if we didn't have a killer content

**[35:54]** team that was pumping out great content. Head of web strategy has been transformational in our

**[35:58]** organization. You can just go down the list and everyone has a really important part to play in

### 36:02 — The industry-expert hire most teams miss

**[36:02]** our story. I think one that was pretty unique and I have a couple questions on the revenue ops and

**[36:10]** marketing ops side. It's a near and dear place to me, but I want to spend a moment on the industry

**[36:17]** experts and I want to make sure I'm understanding right. So if you're going into a particular

**[36:22]** vertical or function that has a specific audience, specific customer, and you're bringing in these

**[36:29]** experts to speak to it, how are you structuring that team? Are they reporting into sales? Do they

**[36:35]** have their own division? How do you hire for those type of roles? And what does day to day look like?

**[36:41]** Because I'm asking because I think a lot of companies could benefit from having a roster

**[36:46]** of people like that on their team. But functionally, how do you get that into the organization?

**[36:51]** Yeah, we could do a whole podcast on this one. This has been again, this is an area that would

**[36:57]** be happy to have you back for another one. Yeah, there's there's so much that we could go into on

**[37:01]** this front. So, you know, in a past life, you know, I was operating, you know, I was on a leadership

**[37:08]** team of a business unit in HR technology. And it was a very scientific aspect of it focused on the

**[37:15]** world of, you know, employee engagement and things of that nature. And the industry had been very

**[37:19]** reliant on agencies for a long time, it was very services heavy. And then we were the technology

**[37:24]** disruptor. But we found that there had to be some kind of a blend of like, these organizations value

**[37:29]** the thought partnership, and the guidance that was given through the agencies and going pure tech,

**[37:34]** and relying just on in house resources that they had available was really challenging. And so we

**[37:38]** launched team that was a bunch of organizational psychologists. And, you know, and so when you in

**[37:45]** when you bring in individuals like that, like like PhD level, you know, organizational behavior,

**[37:51]** you know, in folks with that, you know, IO psychologists, things of that, like they were

**[37:55]** able to come in in a pre sale motion, and they were able to collaborate with the customer and

**[37:58]** say, Well, let me help you understand how these benchmarks work. Here's how you should think about

**[38:02]** measurement and design here. And so they were that, that upfront, consultative partner to get

**[38:07]** them to feel comfortable to move on to a more tech based solution. And then there was a services team

**[38:12]** that would kind of pick it up from their post sale and take it and run additional services on the

**[38:15]** back of it for organizations that were ready to self serve it. organizationally, often this group

**[38:21]** reports to me like, these folks are typically again, you get a lot of folks that are PhD level,

**[38:28]** late career, right folks that have done it before been there done that. And so it can be challenging

**[38:33]** to just purely bury them in an organization. However, I also have seen them, you know, inside

**[38:37]** of a pre sales organization, you know, and so the structures are kind of all over when I was a chief

**[38:43]** strategy officer at quantum metric this, they also reported to me we were much more industry focused.

**[38:48]** And so it was okay, well, we want to go deep into travel and hospitality. That's a huge play for us

**[38:53]** within our technology. And we, you know, we have a ton of airlines, we have, you know, hotels, we

**[38:58]** have all these different groups that we want to work with or are working with, let's go hire the

**[39:02]** head of digital, which was the product that we provided was it was a digital analytics application,

**[39:06]** let's go get the head of digital at this hotel chain. And let's bring her into the organization

**[39:13]** so that when we are working with other hotel chains, she can come and say, let me tell you

**[39:16]** lessons learned. Let me help you understand why this technology is differentiated from a

**[39:20]** trusted voice that's been in those people's shoes that you're selling to. It's incredibly impactful.

**[39:26]** And so those individuals were part of the organization. So we had someone, you know,

**[39:29]** for retail, you had someone for travel and hospitality, you had someone for financial

**[39:33]** services, right, you go get people that have done the job, and you bring them in. And what's cool

**[39:37]** for those folks, too, is it diversifies their career, right? They have, they've been on that

**[39:41]** client side for so long, that coming in and getting to cut their teeth in tech, it opens

**[39:46]** up a whole new world of career for them, too. And so like, it's been very mutually beneficial.

**[39:51]** And then similar thing here, we actually are our associate principal researcher that we brought in

**[39:58]** to help us launch research flow and get it off the ground. She's also she's really spanning both

**[40:02]** pre and post sale. And we're going to be investing in this part of the organization. She sits in

**[40:06]** customer success reports directly to the VP of customer success, because that's where post sale

**[40:11]** lives right now. And so we said, let's, let's put her there. But there's probably about three

**[40:16]** different places in the organization where she could sit. Because she is involved in pre sale,

**[40:21]** she is involved in post sale, she is involved in everything in between, she could probably sit in

**[40:25]** the sales organization, and she's doing a lot of that work to directly with the sales team.

**[40:29]** And, and so, organizationally, there's a lot of places that you know, you could go and put this

**[40:35]** person, I think the biggest challenge is less organizational structure, and probably more of

**[40:39]** like, how do you get a team that maybe has never sold with someone like this, and get them to

**[40:43]** effectively incorporate them into the process. So one, it's, it's how do you take a team that's

**[40:48]** never had that subject matter expertise? And how do you help them know what this person can do and

**[40:53]** why you want them at the table with you and strategic deals? So getting that to take is the

**[40:57]** first problem. But then when you do that really well, you run into a secondary problem, which is

**[41:03]** now how do you create an intake process, because it becomes so powerful, everyone wants to use that

**[41:09]** team. And that's usually not a huge team, right? It's a few people. So you then have to say, okay,

**[41:14]** well, now we have to figure out what are the right deals that these people work on. And so you're

**[41:19]** going to run into the other problem where they'll become so popular, everyone wants them on every

**[41:22]** deal. So then you have to figure out, well, how do you actually structure this and find the right

**[41:26]** strategic deals. And then you have, you know, what do you do on the post sale side, one of the best

**[41:30]** ways to scale in post sales is you do have an in house team that can do this work. But that's

**[41:35]** where we scale through partners. And I've typically found 70 to 80% of your post sale work,

**[41:39]** we would typically send to partners who can then take what was done in pre-sale and then take it

**[41:44]** and carry it forward and continue with program development and design. And so really thinking

**[41:49]** through one, how do you get people to understand how to sell with the person is number one. And

**[41:53]** that's something that's very doable. Second is once you get those wins, they become in major demand.

**[41:58]** So how do you now figure out what are the deals they should be involved in and make sure that those

**[42:01]** get to that person or those people. And then the third step is now how do you scale because

**[42:07]** the services component becomes they're so valuable in pre and post sales. Now the customer wants to

**[42:11]** utilize them all the time. So how do you scale the services side? And I've typically found partners

**[42:16]** are a good way to do that. So it takes some time, but it's a massive unlock.

**[42:23]** As most things, it doesn't sound like a cookie cutter approach and you'll have to tailor it to

**[42:26]** your industry. But I love hearing how busy they get. It sounds like you might need to hire them

**[42:30]** an agent to manage all of the work they're getting internally, keep up with the volume.

**[42:35]** Incredible, incredible people out there, super smart people that just do such a such a great

**[42:40]** job. And so these have been some of the most successful teams I've built in the past. And

**[42:44]** it's so fun to work with them. I really appreciate how you take these approaches of knowing

**[42:53]** maybe let's be less worried about the math upfront and focus on customer impact. And then

**[43:00]** we'll measure the results later. I think when you juxtapose that against kind of the current

**[43:06]** environment where the market's really, really rewarding efficiency and making sure that you're

**[43:14]** being hyper efficient with the bets that you're making, if you could maybe walk through your

**[43:20]** decision-making process when you're saying, "Hey, we're going to hire more sales people here. We're

**[43:24]** going to hire more in customer success here. Yes, we need to make a bigger investment in brand.

**[43:29]** Here's why." And then here's some industry experts that we need to get on the roster for XYZ reason.

### 43:36 — Growth at all costs is dead — making bets under scrutiny

**[43:36]** How do you make these decisions with the higher level of scrutiny that companies are in now

**[43:43]** versus five or so years ago? Yeah, it's a real tough one. Tech was a lot easier

**[43:52]** 2021 and earlier because it was all just growth. There's a phrase, "Growth at all costs."

**[44:00]** Eventually, you had to clean that up, especially as you became a public company and things of that

**[44:03]** nature. But it was really just growth was the premium. And now it's, yeah, you still need to

**[44:07]** grow. And growth still has a premium on it, but it's all about you got to be profitable. You got

**[44:12]** to show that you have an efficient, effective, profitable business model that also can grow.

**[44:17]** And so that's one of the big shifts that happened. I would say probably 2022 is when it really kicked

**[44:22]** into gear. And it's a lot more of a delicate balance and you have to make trade offs. You

**[44:27]** have to figure out where you're going to bet. And is there a bet where you feel conviction enough,

**[44:32]** where you're willing to forward invest, you're willing to go into the red a little bit in this

**[44:36]** bet. Overall, as a company, you should never be going into the red. But in this bet, I'm willing

**[44:40]** to take on a higher CAC or I'm willing to take on a little bit of burn here because I feel enough

**[44:47]** conviction and see enough signal that I know that this is going to work. I would say we've talked a

**[44:52]** little bit about a culture of experimentation. You have to do the same thing as a revenue leader and

**[44:56]** say, "Let's go and experiment with this idea." So let's say it's a brand initiative. That's where

**[45:01]** it's really important. You ring fence budget and you say, "Okay, let's go ring fence what we're

**[45:05]** willing to invest and what success looks like. And let's put it out there and let's see if it

**[45:09]** delivered what we thought success looked like." And then let's have a real honest conversation

**[45:13]** where we say, "Are we ready to go big with this or are we going to move this money or are we going

**[45:18]** to go somewhere else?" We see enough signal with this product that we're willing to hire ahead on

**[45:24]** the account executive side and bring in more account executives who we feel confident can go

**[45:29]** and create pipeline and go build this product. And so you just have to make some of those bets.

**[45:34]** And honestly, a lot of it revolves around what are your big bets as a company? If you don't have a

**[45:38]** vision and you don't have clarity in what you're betting on, it's really hard to make those

**[45:42]** decisions. But when we say as a company, "Hey, research flow is a huge bet for us." Okay, well,

**[45:47]** in order to activate research flow, we need to have investments A, B, C, and D. Okay, let's go

**[45:52]** forward and invest, but let's not do, again, 2021, which is like, let's go hire 15 people to go do

**[45:58]** this now. We don't need to scale before we have the signal. Let's invest, gauge the signal,

**[46:04]** signals there, let's invest a little bit more aggressively, signal still there, invest a little

**[46:08]** bit more aggressively. And so it's a constant game of test and iterate, which a lot of functions

**[46:14]** inside of companies have been doing for a long time. And now I think it's time for revenue

**[46:17]** organizations to do that too. I think gone are the days of just saying, "I'm just going to go

**[46:21]** hire 50 AEs and that's my growth strategy." It doesn't necessarily work that way. It's like,

**[46:25]** how do we have measured investment? But then also, and I think one of the things our CFO has been

**[46:30]** fabulous with is that he is very clear on like, hey, let's just make sure that we define what

**[46:34]** success looks like out of the gate. So let's be clear in our own thought process. What does

**[46:38]** success look like? What are we ring fencing for it? Let's go execute, and then let's regroup

**[46:43]** and say, "Did this work or not?" And so I think it's a constant test and iterate is the new model

**[46:48]** for how to decide what goes from there. I think the other thing too, to know what to invest in,

**[46:52]** is you just have to hire really smart people too that are, that have a good read on it, that say,

**[46:56]** "Look, there's 15 things that we could go do. We feel conviction that the signal is leading us to

**[47:01]** this. This is what we want to invest. This is what success looks like. Now let's go and invest. Let's

**[47:05]** go try that thing." And then let's circle up and say, "Did it work or not?" So it may lead to a

**[47:09]** little bit slower, but then you're ensured to keep yourself out of trouble and you're going to stay

**[47:14]** efficient and profitable. So again, but stage one, again, before you do any of that, the most important

**[47:18]** thing is that you can build an efficient, profitable growth model, and then you can go and start to

**[47:26]** play with bets on the back of it. So overall, the company stays efficient and effective, even if one

**[47:31]** bet isn't for a period of time, but you're willing to, you're all signed up with that concept of like,

**[47:36]** we're willing to let something go run for a little bit and see how it works. So we know if we're going

**[47:40]** to scale it aggressively or if we're not. There's a great phrase that was used that Ryan Smith,

### 47:47 — "Nail it, then scale it" and staying close to the signal

**[47:47]** one of the founders of Qualtrics used all the time. He said it was, "Nail it, then scale it."

**[47:50]** And I think that that's the model for business. Absolutely. And I think there are so many that

**[47:57]** are trying to scale it to nail it. So if you can just reverse that order and would love to hear

**[48:06]** in order to stay in touch with the signals on all the bets that you have to balance

**[48:12]** leading the GTM of a company like Typeform, what dashboards, reports, and report reviewing cadences

**[48:19]** do you have to keep you plugged in? Yeah, so there's quite a few. So when it comes to the

**[48:26]** overall core business, the self-serve side of the business, we have a Vitals dashboard that shows

**[48:30]** everything from signups, conversion, all the way down to churn and inactivation. And so we have

**[48:38]** everything, kind of anything and everything in between. Very, very detailed. We have invested

**[48:42]** in a data team. That's amazing. And so they're able to serve us up with the right data that we

**[48:46]** need to look at the funnel holistically and understand what that looks like. On the enterprise

**[48:50]** side, it's a little bit of a different flavor. Now I have product specific and industry specific

**[48:55]** dashboards as well. So I can gauge, hey, what's going on in this product line? What's going on

**[48:59]** in this industry? But then there's kind of a more holistic one and the things that I really focus on

**[49:04]** are inputs and outputs. And so when I look at an organization, if the outputs aren't there,

**[49:09]** you have to go to the inputs. And so a dashboard would typically be, hey, here's what, you know,

**[49:14]** here's what forecasts look like, but then here's what pipe gen looks like over here. And then

**[49:19]** here's actually on an individual rep level, what pipe gen looks like. And so if we're having a

**[49:23]** problem with the outputs not producing, we have the ability to take it down to a campaign level

**[49:28]** and say, is something broken in that area that we need to go think about and focus on? And so that's

**[49:33]** what typical dashboards for me look like is, yes, there's the stuff on, you know, forecast of

**[49:38]** performance against last year, against targets, against quota rollup, against all of these

**[49:42]** different things. You can see all of those like output metrics that are really important. You can

**[49:46]** look at ACV, I can look at all of, you know, deal velocity, that stuff all exists. But what is

**[49:50]** really important for me is that you're also always looking at the inputs as well, because it's,

**[49:55]** it's the other side of the equation of if the outputs aren't there, there's something typically

**[49:58]** upstream on the inputs that may or may not be broken. And then I think again, one of the

**[50:04]** important aspects of that is the world is not dashboards are not always a complete picture,

**[50:09]** you got to be talking to your team, you got to be having conversations and another team meeting I

**[50:13]** joined with the sales team, it was leads are down 36% in this channel. Wow, like, wow, I had no idea,

**[50:22]** let's go look at that and come to find out we had made adjustments on a pricing page that dropped the

**[50:26]** enterprise lead gem form below the fold. It's like, oh, my goodness, okay, well, now we know,

**[50:30]** and we could kick things into gear. And so dashboards are critically important,

**[50:34]** but nothing ever really replaces those direct conversations as well. And so you got to manage

### 50:38 — Wrap

**[50:38]** through both. Brice, I really appreciate everything you shared going from moving type form from just

**[50:46]** forms to expanding through flows, all the mess and excitement that comes with getting your go to

**[50:52]** market team geared up to go through that transition. Really appreciate you sharing also how to manage

**[50:58]** PLG, SLG, the messy middle and all of the advice on where you should be investing now and go to

**[51:06]** market. Brice, I'm a huge fan of type form. Thank you for being on the podcast and can't wait to see

**[51:11]** what you guys do. Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Anthony.


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