The State of Product Signups Routing: Insights from 104,101 Signups

We spoke with 20 teams about how they approach product-led and sales-led growth.

The promise of a product-led motion is simple: create a new, efficient source of revenue.

The reality, however, is more complicated. Many companies launch self-serve motions only to end up overwhelmed with unqualified signups and no clear path to conversion.

We gathered strategic insights and actionable best practices into a guide you can start using today. Here is what we found:

Definitions

• Product-led motion: leads signup to use and pay for a product without talking to sales
• Sales-led motion: leas have to talk to sales to see and buy the product
• Hybrid motion: leveraging both product-led and sales-led motions

NOTE: This report is a must have for team that have a hybrid motion!

PQL Routing

Let's start off by taking a look at product qualified leads (PQLs). Most teams that have product-led and sales-led motion route PQLs:

• 82% used more than 3 platform and lot’s of custom code
• 18% had no routing at all

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Why?

Data suggests that more accurate PQL routing and qualification can help improve conversion rates, speed, and overall experience. From helping our customers route over 100,000 signups, we found that:

PQLs convert better

Deals with prospects who used the product were more likely to convert at a 10% higher ACV and in 15% less time during the sales cycle.

Speed-to-lead

Getting in touch with qualified product signups within 10 minutes helps convert about 30% more PQLs into pipeline. Time is money!

Account ownership

One of the best practices in sales is to route leads to appropriate account owners to make sure prospects get the best possible experience. The same should happen with your PQLs.

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Here are some best practices we picked up from our customers:

Strategic tips

Routing isn't just about automation. It's about aligning teams. To make sure reps help you increase conversion rates, you'll need these 4 things.

1. PQL process flow chart

Almost every team that had experience routing or qualifying product signups swore by mapping out a clear and visible PQL process. Everything from databases, tools used, and the overall user's path should be documented well before you start building.

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2. Apply rigor to the new motion

Most teams fail at launching new motions. This happens when everyone thinks the first motion (sales-led) works, so the product-led one gets a "secondary" label.

Same goes for internal team alignment. As much as you think you could hack a solution together, you'll still need help from other teams. To rally everyone, a new motion has to become a company-level priority. Sales, marketing, product, customer success, and engineering need to treat product-led and sales-led with the same level of rigor.

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3. Solid integration between tools

In most cases, you'll need to connect product data, enrichment, and existing sales data. This means using tools like customer data platform, external APIs, CRMs, and marketing automation platforms. Don’t try to over-engineer the process. Keep it simple. A data orchestration platform like Default can solve most of your problems.

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4. Clear qualification criteria

Since the goal of routing PQLs is to make sure sales has an additional source of deals, you'll need to include your sales team. They are the ones that can tell you what makes a good lead and who they want to be alerted about. The best way to align on PQL criteria should come from exiting data.

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Tactical tips

Enough about strategy and enablement. Here are 5 tactical tips you can implement today to increase your PQL conversion rates and drive more product-led pipeline.

1. Don't overload sales with unqualified signups

Your reps don't want to talk to prospects that aren't ready to buy. While that should be easy, it's not simple. For any product-led flow, you're balancing a fine line of letting your prospect try a product for free and "feeding" them to your sales team. Not every lead should or wants to talk to sales. That's why they sign up and not request a demo. One of the best ways to avoid burning your relationship with a prospect is to make sure they could benefit from talking to a rep.

Most teams have qualification criteria on what makes a lead qualified, which we covered already. But this leaves a lot of prospects that could potentially buy but are too small or too early in their buyer journey. We have seen a lot of success from pushing those leads into more automated flows based on marketing automation and some light automated sales touches.

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2. Alert reps in real-time

For any outreach to work, it has to be timely, relevant, and helpful. The same logic has to apply within your PQL flows. Sending the right notifications with the right context is what turns PQLs into pipeline.

There are two possible ways you can go about outbounding your PQLs — automated or manual. We have seen the most success when automated outbound is reserved for lower ACV customers, but reps still send somewhat personalized emails to PQLs. For example, when more than a few people from the same company sign up, one tactic we have seen work is adding all of them into one email. For that to work, your notifications need to include that context.

Another tactic we have seen work is adding any relevant product data or key actions accomplished. For this to work, we'll need a way to access that data from your customer data platform or CRM, but this way your reps have more ammunition to use and provide more value to PQLs.

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3. Assign support to high-ACV accounts

Product-led is all about using your product as leverage. But for some teams, customer success is a competitive advantage. One of the most interesting routing aspects we have seen is assigning a dedicated support rep for target accounts.

By enriching every lead that comes in, you can easily see who should be getting a customer success resource. While assigning sales reps to PQLs should be easy, you may want to tread lightly on assigning CS reps as it may limit the ability to help your current customers. But it makes for a great experience for prospects — they see how your support operates before they even sign a contract with you.

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4. Compare signup vs. no-signup deal performance

Make sure to send product signup deals into your CRMs. We have seen customers send signups as an activity on a CRM record or add signups into campaigns.

Some teams report faster deal cycles and higher win rates with prospects that experience the product themselves. Additionally, it helps to compare PQL leads vs. non-PQL attribution and other deal metrics to further get buy-in from other teams. If PQLs are driving revenue, why not let other teams know?

5. Capture attribution at signup

On the topic of attribution and reporting: We have seen teams leverage source of product signups as one of the lead sources for their pipeline reporting. If one channel is driving product signups but has zero impact on pipeline — you may want to deprioritize it. But if another channel is driving PQLs that help generate pipeline, that data should be included in your reporting.

One way we have seen teams accomplish this is to push any attribution data into their CRM as prospects sign up to unify reporting between sales-led and product-led motion.

Conclusion

Effective PQL routing isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a revenue driver. With proper implementation, companies see 10% higher ACVs and 15% faster sales cycles. At Default.com, we've distilled these best practices into a ready-to-use system that eliminates the need for multiple platforms and custom code.

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With Default, you can push signs up using a webhook and then check in your CRM for existing records, route to sales reps and create new objects with waterfall enrichment.

See how it works with this clickable template.