PLG or SLG? How to choose your go-to-market motion
PLG or SLG is not a question of taste. The right motion comes out of a few things: the job your product does, how hard the pain is, the market you are in, the price you can charge, and what you are honestly willing to do every day.
This is the way we go through it in the course. Five steps, and you should do them in this order.
Step 1: What job does your product get done?
Nobody wants your product. People hire it to get a job done. Write it down as one honest sentence. When does the problem show up? What are they trying to get done? So they can what? And what do they use today instead?
The last one is your real competition, even if its just an Excel sheet or doing nothing at all. And please talk to a real target user, not to a friend who is being nice. Talking to zero people is the number one way how founders fool themself.
Step 2: How hard does the pain bite?
The same job can be a fire or just a nice-to-have. And how hard it bites decides how people buy.
If it is blocking ("I need this fixed now"), people search for a fix and sign up on their own. That pull is exactly what PLG needs.
If it is nagging ("it costs me time and money, but I live with it"), a human has to start the conversation. Thats SLG ground.
And if it is optimizing ("it works, but we could do it better or cheaper"), you are building an ROI case with many stakeholders over quarters. Thats enterprise.
Step 3: Which market are you in?
Red Ocean means a known market with clear competitors. The demand is there, both PLG and SLG can work. Your job is positioning and a sharp wedge.
Blue Ocean means a new or redefined market. You have to create the demand first. PLG does not fit here, because the top of the funnel stays empty. Start sales-led and teach one buyer after the other. PLG can come later.
Step 4: Do the price math
ARPU is not a number you pick out of thin air. It is your motion. If you can only charge $10 to $50 per user per month, a sales rep will never pay off, so you need PLG and a lot of volume. If one customer is worth $5k to $25k per year, you can afford a human who sells. Under a few thousand per account the sales-led math just does not work.
Step 5: Be honest about yourself
A motion is only worth something if you can actually run it. This step gets skipped the most, and it is maybe the most important one.
Take PLG only if you have an audience or a place where your users are, if you can do SEO and content, if your product shows its value fast without a human, and if you have the patience for a long game.
Take SLG only if you can start cold conversations on LinkedIn, push strangers into calls, follow up again and again and take the no. Plain question: are you a seller?
If most of one list feels wrong, this is not a failure. It is a signal. Pick the motion that fits how you really work.
And then: test it before you build
You dont have to develop anything to find out if it works. You need a signal and a little bit of momentum.
- ▸For PLG post the problem on Reddit, run a mini Google Ads test or check Google Trends.
- ▸For SLG get ten ICP people into calls and ask for a deposit or a letter of intent.
- ▸In both cases a smoke test landing page works, or a clickable prototype, or a concierge test where you just do the job by hand.