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PLG vs B2B marketing & sales role differences

2 mins read
Adam Schoenfeld
Adam Schoenfeld

*Thank you for being one of the 4,857 early members and supporting PeerSignal research!

Welcome back to my almost-weekly newsletter (now on Thursdays) where I share data and examples to help you study B2B sales and marketing.*

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For 11 months I’ve been writing about *other* B2B hiring.

Today I’m hiring too.

:)

Preparing to grow our small team (just Andrew, Lauren, and me today), I've been reading a lot of JDs and digging into our hiring data.

One question I've been exploring for months:

*How do the top PLG companies look different than other B2B companies?*

On the surface, we see a few marketing role categories that PLG companies favor -- Growth, Community, MOps.

We also see lower concentration of sales roles, but know that most PLG companies will eventually build a sales team.

But more interesting differences come below the job titles:

* We've talked about how SDRs might look different along with Kyle at OpenView.

* I've started to notice many examples of centralized Marketing Ops in PLG.

* And, I'm starting to get curious about Growth and Demand Gen dynamics...

I previously thought that Growth = product-led and Demand Gen = sales-led.

This doesn't hold true when looking closer.

The reality is that many have BOTH (either operating within the *same* motion or as two *parallel* go-t0-market motions).

This comes out across roles and *within* roles.

For example, check out the responsibilities in Productboard's Head of Revenue Marketing JD:

While many traditional B2B companies will "bolt on" a GTM motion, top PLG companies have distribution in their DNA.

They have a cohesive strategy that allows them to add activities within a mutually reinforcing system.

Not every company can go PLG, but I think this dynamic makes PLG companies the most interesting modern go-to-market case studies.

In crafting my own JDs, I'm using these companies as my role models.

*What other differences do you see in the details?*

I read all replies.

Best,

Adam