Dual-Motion Growth: PLG and Sales That Feed Each Other
Win by having both many customers and lots of revenue — with PLG and sales feeding each other
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 85%
Clowes argues PLG rarely fails on merit — it fails because no one's true incentive is to own end-user success, so it stays a hobby. The durable answer isn't PLG-or-sales but balance: a self-serve motion and an enterprise sales motion that feed each other. The magic outcome is a very large number of customers AND a very large amount of revenue, which makes a company extremely hard to knock over.
Origin
Clowes built the first B2B growth team at Atlassian (~2012, pre-'PLG' terminology); he cites Charlie Munger's 'show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome' and Confluent's own dual motion.
Core principles
- 01There is no natural force pulling a company toward the end user's success — the economic buyer's feature-driven needs dominate
- 02You get what you incentivize: without an owner incentivized for end-user success, PLG stays a hobby
- 03Incumbents that neglect end-user experience create a differentiation opening for challengers
- 04Don't force a sales team to do a PLG motion by edict — incentives, not pressure, drive behavior
- 05The magic is many customers AND high revenue; either alone is fragile
How to run it
- 1
Assign a real incentive owner for end-user success
Put someone whose true incentive is end-user success, enjoyment, retention, and engagement. Without that, the buyer's feature-driven needs crowd it out and PLG never takes hold.
Pro tip 'You get what you set out to measure' — wire the metric to a person's incentives, not a hobby.
Watch out Beating a sales team over the head to run a PLG motion won't work; 'at the end of the day they're not going to do it' unless incentives change.
- 2
Balance PLG investment against other growth levers
Don't zero out PLG, but don't over-invest either — you can't spend your life experimenting on onboarding. Decide how PLG fits alongside paid acquisition, activation, retention, expansion, and enterprise sales.
Pro tip It's very hard to argue PLG investment should be zero, but equally hard to argue onboarding is the only thing that matters — right-size it.
- 3
Make the two motions feed each other
Wire PLG to feed the sales team and the sales motion to feed the PLG funnel when leads aren't ready yet. When both motions play into each other, you build a resilient, high-revenue, high-customer-count business.
Pro tip Confluent runs self-serve credit-card signups that never talk to sales alongside an enterprise team selling to the biggest banks — both, not either.
Watch out A company with lots of revenue but few customers is captive/fragile; lots of customers but little revenue can't sustain operations — you need both.
In the wild
Clowes notes Atlassian had on the order of tens of thousands of customers (he recalls ~80-100k; it later reached 300k). Picking off even a thousand Jira customers still leaves ~79,000 to go — 'it's very [hard] to [beat] a company which has a very large number of customers and a very large amount of revenue.'
→ The combination of many customers and high revenue makes the business extremely resilient to challengers.
Common mistakes
Treating PLG as a binary versus sales
Framing it as PLG-or-sales misses that sophisticated companies make both motions work together; the resilient outcome (many customers AND high revenue) requires balance, not a single motion.
Mandating a motion without changing incentives
Ordering a sales team to run a PLG motion fails because 'people only do what their incentives told them to do'; without an incentive owner, end-user success stays a hobby at best.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B founders and growth leaders deciding how to combine self-serve and enterprise sales motions
Not ideal for
Products where the self-serve motion is genuinely irrelevant to the buyer and use case
From the transcript
“there is not a natural force that pulls companies towards thinking about the end users enjoyment and success earlier in their Journey”
“people only do what Their incentives told them to do”
“the magic is in having both a very large number of customers and a very large amount of Revenue”
“if you can get a plg motion work to feed your sales team and a sales team motion work to feed your plg funnel”
From the episode
Why great AI products are all about the data
Shaun Clowes (CPO Confluent, ex-Salesforce, Atlassian)