The rapid proliferation of cloud services has added to overwhelm among enterprise workers. Over the years, Grammarly has learned effective strategies to stand apart with users and business decision-makers while channeling customers’ needs, whether in customer support, sales, HR, and marketing. CEO Brad Hoover shares the customer-centric principles and lessons that he has learned in growing their user base to tens of millions of enterprise and individual customers, with teams from Accenture to Zoom.
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Secrets To Combining PLG and Enterprise Sales with Grammarly's CEO | Brad Hoover, CEO @ Grammarly
1. Keys to Unlocking PLG in the
Enterprise
Brad Hoover
CEO
Grammarly
@GrammarlyBiz
1
2. Climb the Right
Mountain: Mission
2
Inspire talented people to do big things.
Grammarly’s mission: Improving lives by
improving communication
3. Climb the Right
Mountain: Market
3
Create lots of value and monetize a little.
Look for broad relevance.
4. Climb the Right
Mountain: Timing
4
Tectonic shifts bring opportunity.
Bring something new into the world.
5. Build an Exceptional
Product: User Focus
5
Put users at the center of decisions.
Infer to innovate with a hypothesis-driven approach.
Align your business model with user interests.
6. Build an Exceptional
Product: PLG
6
Align product, messaging, marketing, and
sales to open the PLG combo lock.
Let customers set the bar for excellence.
7. Build an Exceptional
Product: Values
7
Values accelerate teamwork and innovation—and
thus PLG—at scale.
Values enable breakthroughs large and small—
and a fun journey.
8. Forge Your Enterprise
Path: User Focus (Still)
8
Turn end users into champions to land
enterprises.
Evolve self-serve motions for the enterprise.
9. Forge Your Enterprise
Path: Buyer Focus
9
Consider your new stakeholders.
Open new combo locks for buyers and others.
10. Forge Your Enterprise
Path: Sales
10
Match problems and solutions.
Make the investment for sales to excel.
Find the PLG-sales fulcrum.
12. Thank you!
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Editor's Notes
At Grammarly we like to compare our journey to hiking a big mountain like everest, want to be sure the journey is meaningful and the destination worthwhile
Catalyst that can bring people together to do something bigger than themselves – Moon landing and COVID vaccine, many big missions
Grammarly’s mission - improving lives by improving communication
Communication is hard – left to our own devices from an early age, rich perspective through tiny straw, break down, digital communication has made it harder b/c we lose non-verbal calibration when communicating digitally
Communication is critical – unites people; more volume given digital, impacts every facet of our lives, every level of Maslow’s hierarchy, every function in business, and every part of the P&L
Lots of communication in the world today, but not much effective communication – this is the problem we solve – drives results, unlocks innovation and creativity, reduces unnecessary disputes, all of which increase our trajectory as individuals and collectively
Second thing to consider is resources – big missions take a lot of resources, customers can fuel your business
The market value of solving ineffective communication is massive due to the impact on business outcomes
$1.2 trillion annually for ineffective communication among US businesses
Teams lose almost an entire workday each week
93% of business leaders think communication drives business, and 82% are concerned about remote work
GB is relevant to every function and affects P&L: Zoom increased their efficiency
Timing is everything – I like to ask why now, what has changed to make this possible and important now?
Start by looking for tectonic shifts; moon landing and COVID vaccine, later less relevant – find the bottom of the U
For Grammarly, tech shifts made it possible in the beginning (evolution of algos, big data, cloud), and now market shifts to remote work provide rocket fuel
Fast followers can make sense, it’s how ecosystems evolve
Harder in apps with network effects, including ML applications with data network effects – huge quality advantage for first movers; plus it’s FUN
Focusing on end users in particular, and in the case of enterprises recognizing that end users aren’t buyers
Understand what users already know: explaining their problems via 1) direct conversations, 2) ambient feedback, 3) infer with data, 4) research teams
New product horizon requires going further to infer user needs, and understand what they don’t know – vision, intuition, 0-1, new horizon
Stay close to users on new horizon– apply hypothesis driven approach to ensure you’re headed in the right direction
Align interests — business model, investments in security and privacy, went beyond accuracy to address their deeper needs
PLG = product sells itself w/o talking to anyone; hard to do!
Combo lock of product, messaging, marketing, and sales hard w/o salesforce to overcome objection;
Each piece needs to align to open the lock; took us 3 years; benefit is user/product/innovation focus, efficient growth (profitable since inception)
Use PLG as a compass: High bar for product excellence with paid product, and if enterprise customers get quick onboarding and no complaints – we show value in under a month with little or no training
Building a great product and aligning the right combination requires incredible teamwork. That’s harder as you grow beyond 5-7, and 150.
Our values are a common protocol to foster teamwork and innovation at scale – balance high levels of individual impact with high levels of collaboration
Developed through the lens of our customers and team members
Empathy enables us to fully understand each others perspectives
Remarkability enables us to find the small differences that lead to big breakthroughs
Enterprises made of end users, sea change — PLG enables reaching users in enterprise
We followed our users to the enterprise – most of our users also used Grammarly at work, where it drove a lot of value in nearly all functions
First step was expanding self-serve motions and funnel to enable teams to onboard and expand
Thought that would get us wall to wall in large enterprises – half true, since we have users in half of the F2000
But not wall to wall — had to expand stakeholders including buyers and IT
New combo lock for each stakeholder / product, product marketing & messaging, marketing… sales was the biggest change
Sales is very valuable: Match problems with solutions and create long-term relationships
Web funnel is automated sales in a sense; sales teams can go top-down, create budget, get MSAs, etc. to make new connects a web funnel can’t
Huge investment and different skillsets – big challenge with developing cross-functional support — broke GB into separate org with a dedicated leader
Effective PLG combined with high-performing sales force is quite powerful–find the balance b/t the polarities; two strong and complementary muscles
Be thoughtful about the opp you select, ensuring a compelling mission, big market, and good timing
Unlock the PLG combo lock with a great product for users, and high-levels of crossfuncional teamwork enabled by values
Expand in the enterprise by focusing on all stakeholders, and considering the different combo lock for each including a separate enterprise sales motion
Thanks for joining today, I hope you found some nuggets here!
Please visit our booth today, we’d love to talk more.
Thank you.