Transitioning from Product-led to Sales-led Growth with Andrew Johnston of Superhuman
At some point, most B2B companies with a product led growth (PLG) motion add a sales led growth (SLG) channel. But adding a sales motion to an established PLG company is far more complex than simply hiring a team of salespeople.
This week, Andrew Johnston, VP of Sales at Superhuman shared invaluable insights from his experience building a sales-led motion at a company that was already thriving with a product-led approach.
We covered infrastructure, product strategy, team building, positioning and more. Let’s get into it!
The Superhuman Story: From Individual Users to Enterprise Accounts
Superhuman, often described as "Gmail redesigned for 2025," gained notoriety for two things early on: charging $30/month for email (which seemed radical at the time) and providing a highly curated onboarding experience that included human touchpoints - unusual for a primarily B2C product.
After raising their Series C in 2021, Superhuman decided to begin exploring a B2B motion, starting with small clusters of existing users (3-10 seats) and gradually expanding upmarket. When Andrew joined, his mandate was to double down on this motion and continue moving upmarket into enterprise accounts.
What makes Superhuman's approach particularly interesting is their unique position in sales conversations. Unlike most companies that struggle to get access to senior leaders, Superhuman often finds their champions are already C-suite executives who personally love the product.
"There's a Fortune 500 company I'm talking to right now," Andrew shared. "My champion and the person that I'm on texting terms with is the COO because he's been a Superhuman user. They had 15 people on it and then their IT department blocked Superhuman. And it was like he lost his second brain. He's like, 'I can't live without this tool.'"
That’s a pretty great foundation to start building on.
The Building Blocks: Creating a Sales-Led Motion in a PLG Company
If you're considering adding a sales-led growth component to your product-led business, Andrew outlined five critical building blocks that form the foundation of success:
1. (Re)define Your ICP
"The biggest shift was how do you outbound correctly to that new audience," Andrew explained. Your ideal customer profile for PLG (focused on end-users) will often differ from your SLG ICP (focused on buyers and economic decision-makers).
You need to understand:
Who are your current buyers?
How does this change when selling to organizations rather than individuals?
What signals indicate an account might be ready for expansion?
2. Adapt Your Product for Enterprise Requirements
Individual users and enterprises have different needs. As Andrew pointed out: "The product today might win over Kyle Norton, CRO, but it might not win over your workplace technology lead because it doesn't have SAML and SSO or another enterprise protocol."
Your product needs to evolve to:
Meet enterprise security and compliance requirements
Provide organizational-level value, not just individual productivity gains
Support collaborative workflows that extend beyond a single user
3. Build the Right Team
PLG sellers and SLG sellers have fundamentally different skill sets. Andrew emphasized that while some people can make the transition, others thrive in specialized roles:
"A PLG seller can grow into a role of being more of that hunter mentality that you see in an SLG motion. But oftentimes you need to bring other people to kind of create that culture... [to show] what does it look like to be more, a little bit more aggressive? How do we think about the buyer? How do we run a more strict medic process in our sales cycle."
Superhuman found success by:
Keeping most of their original team but evolving their roles
Adding specialized new hires with enterprise sales experience
Creating new positions like sales engineers and GTM ops roles
4. Harness Your Data
One of Superhuman's advantages was exceptional instrumentation of their product. "We were very lucky, which I think a lot of PLG companies have. We had all the data there," Andrew noted.
The key was translating consumer-oriented metrics into business-relevant signals:
Identifying which product usage patterns indicated expansion potential
Creating scoring models for accounts based on multiple signals
Building automated plays triggered by these signals
For their tech stack, Superhuman uses Pocus for data intelligence and orchestration, connecting to tools like SalesLoft for execution.
5. Align Marketing and Messaging
Finally, your external communication needs to shift from individual-focused to organization-focused:
"Often when we first started reaching out to folks, they said, 'Love Superhuman, but why would I bring it to my team? I've always thought of this as an individual product.' Before we do that outreach, we've got to pre-nurture them with messaging around, the product should be thought of as a team product."
Challenges and Pitfalls to Avoid
Building this bridge from PLG to SLG isn't without its challenges. Andrew highlighted several common pitfalls:
Perceived as a Niche Product
"People don't believe that Superhuman is widely applicable to everybody. They think it's a niche product, that it's the people who like keyboard shortcuts who going to nerd out to inbox zero are going to get the value from it."
This perception challenge requires educating the market about the broader applicability of your solution. The most successful messaging focuses on universal pain points rather than specialized use cases.
Cultural Resistance
Adding a sales motion to a product-led company can create cultural friction. Andrew's approach focuses on building buy-in through shared experiences:
"When you get into deals that are really meaningful, bring in your CTO, bring in individual engineers, make them feel and hear the pain that's coming from the customer and also make them feel and hear the excitement from when you win a deal."
This approach transforms sales from a siloed activity to a company-wide effort, helping technical teams understand the value of the sales function.
Not Adapting Fast Enough
The transition from PLG to hybrid requires multiple adaptations happening simultaneously. Organizations that move too slowly on any of the five building blocks will struggle to gain traction.
Building a Sales Culture in a Product-Led Company
Perhaps the most nuanced challenge is building a sales culture within a company that may have never had one before. Andrew's approach offers valuable lessons:
Secure top-down buy-in: "It starts with everyone from tops down at the executive team being bought into, 'We're going B2B because ultimately we can't just build for the B2C customer anymore.'"
Create shared experiences: Involve product and engineering teams in customer calls and sales processes so they can experience the impact firsthand.
Celebrate wins collectively: "That big large consulting customer was a company-wide effort. It wasn't an individual sales rep. That was the entire company winning that deal together. And it was celebrated as such."
Set new expectations: Implement structured methodologies like MEDIC to establish the cadence and rigor that sales-led motions require.
Involve everyone in revenue generation: "We've even given other executive team members quotas. I'll say, 'Hey, I have $50,000 in your head. I want pipeline from you based on you introducing us to vendors that we might sell into.'"
The Results: Unlocking New Growth Opportunities
For Superhuman, the investment in building this sales-led motion has already paid dividends. One prominent example Andrew shared was winning a large consulting firm deal where 4,000 managing directors now have access to Superhuman - a scale that would have been impossible through individual adoption alone.
The company has nearly doubled its revenue team since Andrew joined, growing from about 6 team members to approximately 15, with plans for continued expansion.
Your PLG-to-SLG Transition Checklist
If you're considering adding a sales-led motion to your product-led company, here's a practical checklist based on Andrew's experience:
Assess your current PLG data: Do you have the instrumentation to identify expansion opportunities? What signals correlate with enterprise potential?
Redefine your ICP: Map out who the buyers (not just users) would be in an enterprise context.
Audit your product for enterprise readiness: Identify gaps in security, compliance, collaboration features, and admin capabilities.
Evaluate your team: Which current team members could transition to SLG roles? What specialized roles need to be hired externally?
Revamp your messaging: Begin shifting marketing from individual value to organizational impact.
Build your tech stack: Select tools that can leverage your PLG signals for sales outreach and orchestration.
Create a cultural integration plan: Design specific activities to build bridges between product and sales teams.
Final Thoughts
Adding a sales-led motion to your product-led company isn't merely an addition - it's a transformation that touches every aspect of your business. As Andrew's experience at Superhuman demonstrates, the journey requires careful planning, cross-functional collaboration, and a willingness to evolve your understanding of who your customer really is.
The companies that will thrive in this hybrid world are those that can maintain the user-centricity that made their PLG motion successful while building the enterprise scaffolding needed to support larger, more complex deals.
And for those who get it right, the rewards can be substantial: higher contract values, reduced reliance on viral growth, and access to markets that would remain closed to a purely product-led approach.
As Andrew succinctly put it near the end of our conversation: "It's become my second brain. I couldn't live without it." Creating that level of indispensability for both individual users and entire organizations is the ultimate goal of a successful PLG-to-SLG transition.