The ForAllSecure PLG Pivot: When Bottom-Up Meets Enterprise Sales
Eighteen months ago, ForAllSecure faced a classic enterprise software challenge: their top-down sales motion was landing deals, but implementation was stalling. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, founder David Brumley shared how their pivot to product-led growth (PLG) yielded surprising benefits beyond just faster customer adoption.
The Traditional Enterprise Trap
“The old way is you set up a sales team and everything on your website is getting someone to fill out a contact me form so that a sales rep can give them a call back,” David explains. This approach, which he calls “the John Draper approach,” was working – sort of.
The problem emerged after the sale. “In top down, what we’re finding sometimes is we’d have the leader who wanted to buy had the pain point and the leader had his team implemented it, but the implementation team was overworked,” David recalls. The disconnect between purchase decision and actual implementation was creating friction.
The PLG Transformation
The shift to PLG wasn’t just about adding a freemium tier – it required rethinking their entire go-to-market approach. But the results surprised them. “The other kind of unexpected advantage of the PLG Motion is it just reduces the time for those enterprise customers to do a pilot because often they’re already using it or can experiment with it without talking to a sales rep,” David notes.
Engineering Culture Shift
Perhaps the most unexpected benefit came from within. “The typical engineer never saw the results of their work at our company,” David shares about their previous model. “They released a new feature would go out and then CS would take it and release it to the enterprise customer.”
The PLG approach changed this dynamic completely. Engineers could now see their work’s direct impact on users, leading to better product decisions and higher team engagement. This internal benefit wasn’t part of the original PLG calculation but proved valuable for product development and team morale.
New Challenges
The transition wasn’t without challenges. “The harder issue that we’ve ran into is actually making sure people have budget when you go talk to them,” David explains. This highlighted a fundamental tension in B2B PLG: “Every board report, right, the very first number everyone wants to see is ARR. Not really a number of users, at least in our space.”
They also had to manage users trying to game the system. David notes they found “customers who are clearly tried to circumvent any sort of limitations we have by creating multiple accounts.” This raised strategic questions about monetization and value capture.
Metrics That Matter
Despite these challenges, the results validated their approach. The company has been “about doubling year over year,” David shares, with strong land-and-expand dynamics. “I don’t think we’ve had anyone reduce the size of mayhem,” he notes, suggesting that their PLG motion is creating sustainable customer relationships.
Key Lessons for B2B Founders
ForAllSecure’s PLG journey reveals several insights for enterprise software companies considering a similar transition:
- Implementation Matters More Than Sales The success of enterprise software isn’t just about closing deals – it’s about ensuring successful implementation. PLG can help bridge this gap by allowing technical teams to validate the product before formal procurement.
- Internal Benefits Count Don’t underestimate the impact on internal teams, particularly engineering. Direct user feedback and visibility into product usage can transform product development culture.
- Hybrid Approach Works PLG doesn’t mean abandoning enterprise sales. ForAllSecure found that self-service actually accelerated their enterprise sales cycles by enabling technical validation before formal sales engagement.
- Mind the Metrics While user growth is important, B2B companies still need to focus on converting usage into revenue. Having clear monetization triggers is crucial.
For B2B founders considering a PLG pivot, ForAllSecure’s experience suggests that success lies not in choosing between bottom-up and top-down approaches, but in finding ways to make them work together. The key is understanding that PLG isn’t just a pricing strategy or growth tactic – it’s a fundamental shift in how customers discover, validate, and adopt your product.
Most importantly, their journey shows that PLG can work even in complex, technical markets traditionally dominated by enterprise sales. The trick is leveraging product-led motion to solve specific friction points in your customer journey, whether those are technical validation, implementation challenges, or internal adoption barriers.