There is an ongoing conceptual tug-of-war occurring between the traditional Sales-led Growth and the relatively new Product-led Growth. The sides both think that there can only be one and are therefore averse to the adoption of any ideas from the other side. Guest Fred Melanson, a visionary entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Bliinx is here to tell businesses that they can have it both ways! Learn the benefits of Product-led Growth and how to adopt some of its principles to make your sales team more effective in a hybrid approach.    Busted Myths: The concept of Product-led Sales does not mean you don’t need a sales team. In the B2B world, it’s important, and very effective, to adopt a hybrid model that is built on Product-led Sales ideas but still uses a sales team and introduces the sales team at the right time.   Takeaways Product-led Growth is the idea of using your product itself as the main driver of acquisitions for your business.  For software companies, having a product demo is a way to use Product-led Growth without giving your product away for free.  Consumers want to experience your product before they talk to a sales rep. Companies have to find the contextual clues that tell them the right time to introduce a sales rep into a particular consumer’s buying process. Companies should be trying to deliver as much value to potential customers as possible, even before the sale. This helps the customer to experience and understand the value  of the product better and gets them closer to the “aha moment.” Companies can deliver value to the consumer by creating content about the product, offering free versions of the product, or providing consultative sessions. Part of Product-led Growth is prioritizing potential customers based on who is engaging the most with your marketing, the free version of your product, or sending you the most buying intent signals. Power is shifting from the seller to the buyer and a lot of the awareness process is done online without a sales rep. The customer is in the driver’s seat and the sales rep is in the passenger seat as the co-pilot/ navigator, doing whatever they can to help the driver get where they want to go.   Quote of the Show: “You didn’t hear about Netflix from a sales rep” - Fred Melanson   Links LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fred-melanson-bliinx Twitter: @FredMelanson Company Twitter: @BliinxApp Company website: https://bliinx.com   Ways to Tune In Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show/id1338838763 Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/37228621-2f9c-4905-a223-1844effb49dd Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/1vVLpNI1LssMTiL6Kdsamn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show Google Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/m/Im7mytmu2wa2mekhoeixlja5hpe?t=The_Hard_Corps_Marketing_Show YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZvDjT-h14Bw