Stephanie Cox, VP of Sales and Marketing at Lumavate, is in the unique position of running Sales, Marketing, Product, and Customer Service at Lumavate, a tech startup based in Indianapolis. With Lumavate – a no-code, mobile app-building platform – marketers can quickly and easily “build and publish mobile apps in as little as 30 minutes, without code.”In this interview with Trinity Nguyen, Stephanie explains how her passion for solving complex problems drives her work in helping Lumavate transition from being sales-led to product-led growth (PLG).

"Users rarely follow your intended product path. With PLG, each solved problem reveals new usage patterns and conversion opportunities. The more product capabilities you add, the more unexpected use cases emerge—each one a chance to refine your onboarding and conversion strategy."

What’s the difference between sales-led and product-led growth?‍

Lumavate launched in 2015 with a sales-led growth strategy, but in March 2020, the pandemic changed everything.

“The pandemic forced an immediate shift. Traditional sales motions stopped working, and marketers needed faster solutions. Demand for our platform spiked.” says Stephanie. The Lumavate team pivoted quickly and reconsidered all facets of their business.  In four months, they rebuilt the entire front end of the product, set up auto-provisioning, and connected to a credit card payment system.

Today, Lumavate uses a hybrid growth strategy, a combination of sales and product-led, where interested users create free accounts and, through an automated onboarding process, work with the customer success team to ensure a beneficial outcome. Some users convert automatically. Others get funneled to the sales team, who work closely with them to close the business.

"Pure PLG companies drive users directly to the product. The product experience itself converts users from trial to paid, often without sales involvement."

“The customer learns about the product, typically through a free trial or freemium offering, they use your product, find value, upgrade, and pay. In the last couple of years with all the hype, everyone’s trying to do product-led growth, bottom-up motion, because it’s easier. With sales-led growth, you have all these requirements on your business operation, typically it’s quotes, order forms, DocuSign invoices.  PLG is usually paid by credit card online. They’re just completely different business operations.”

"Sales-led growth requires quotes, order forms, and invoice processing. PLG uses automated credit card payments. The operational differences are significant."

On the other hand, a sales-led strategy has distinct advantages.

"Sales-led motions give you full control over the customer experience. You guide prospects through a defined journey, showing specific features at strategic points."

“With product-led, you have no control. You may want them to go a certain path and they may choose not to. They’re going to make split-second decisions about your product and whether or not it's a fit for them based on their experiences, and you can't always control it a hundred percent.”

Transitioning to a PLG strategy required a new perspective. “This shift challenges teams with successful sales-led products. When you've built a strong business around controlled customer experiences, opening up to self-service feels risky.”

“When you open up product-led growth, people use it differently, and you realize everyone used your products the expected way in the past because you taught them how to use it. You don't train people with PLG. I mean, you try to, through content and guided experiences and onboarding emails, Most users prefer to explore the product independently rather than follow prescribed paths. They click through features until the interface makes sense to them. When users started exploring independently, we quickly identified gaps in our self-service experience that required immediate product changes.

Use data to figure out your “magic numbers”

“We’ve really been very data-driven,” says Stephanie. “Data shows exactly how users interact with your product, revealing both obvious friction points and hidden challenges users haven't articulated yet.”

Data reveals the critical “magic numbers” that predict conversion from no usage to free usage to paid usage.

"Identify the specific user behaviors that predict conversion—your leading indicators of upgrade intent."

“So, part of it early on is figuring out what those are. Once you identify these patterns, you can predict conversion rates based on specific user behaviors. For example: X free accounts with Y behavior typically convert at Z rate.” she explains.

The first magic number has to do with getting the users to use the product and figuring out the tweaks you need to make to increase engagement. The second would be how to get prospects to a certain product functionality they consider worthy of a paid subscription.

One of the magic numbers, per Stephanie, were prospect conversations lasting longer than 40 minutes. Qualified leads were identified at 45 minutes and handed over to the sales team who moved in with compelling offers to enhance value to the organization.

“We use Google Analytics for tracking our platform usage by customers, but then we also use Pendo. We realized a couple of months on, that we need more advanced analytics. We need even more than what we have access to today.”

Adjustments to the Lumavate website included the addition of chat functionality to provide further data on user experience. Finally, every element from button colors to CTA phrasing was tested, revealing some interesting surprises.

"We tested 'Start Free!' against 'Start Now' for three weeks. The original outperformed at 90% confidence—a counterintuitive result that reinforced the importance of testing assumptions."

How B2B is like B2C and final takeaways

For marketers looking to make the transition to product-led growth, you don’t necessarily have to hire experts in B2C. Stephanie sees empathy and authenticity as foundational elements of brand voice and, in this respect, B2B and B2C marketing and communication are similar entities.

"B2B and B2C experience both build empathy for user needs. The key question remains the same: how do we reduce friction and improve outcomes?"

“The overarching thought for me,” says Stephanie, “was just how similar B2B product-led comes to B2C. Every B2B purchase decision comes down to individual buyers evaluating whether your solution solves their specific problems.”

Stephanie’s three key takeaways for working with a product-led growth strategy:

• How you manage subscriptions

• How you track analytics on product usage

• How you enhance the product.

“The number one most important thing is going to be what you're going to use for managing your subscriptions and payment processing, especially if you're software-based. We use Stripe. You need to spend your time, make the right decision. Do your research and make sure it will work for you.”

“Our product is for marketers, but our goal is that anyone can build an app right now. That means my mom can build an app. So, my goal is if I can get her to build an app by herself at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday, that is winning to me. And until we're at that point for all consumers, we're not done yet.”

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Tune in to The First 100 Days full interview with Stephanie Cox for more great information on product-led growth.