We weren't initially looking for buyers, we were looking for champions, in part so that we could then go to IT six months down the line and be like, 'Look, you have 500 people using this product, it's been very useful for them. It is time for you to pay now.'
Champions and buyers are different people
Growth → Acquisition
When you transition from PLG to adding this direct sales motion, the buyer is usually just the department head. It's the head of sales, it's the head of rev ops, it's the head of recruiting and it's not a senior person in IT or the CIO. And so, selling into this audience is different than selling into IT.
I like to think about it more as community led growth. There are certain people inside a company that feel so strongly about Figma that they're helping push for it as advocates. The sales team empowers those individuals to make a stronger case.
90% of product-led sales is converting the usage into an opportunity by finding a buyer outside, by finding the decision-maker outside.
You cannot consider a new product sign-up an MQL in the traditional sense. They're just not there yet. They have a fraction of the enterprise problem that they're solving and they're not ready to buy.