From Product-Led to Sales-Led: What It Takes to Build a Winning SaaS Commercial Engine

Oli Clarkson, Senior Consultant, Zeren offers his insight into building high-performing sales teams, evolving from product-led growth to a commercial engine, and knowing when it’s time to invest in sales leadership.

1. What value have you seen in businesses that shift from product-led growth to building a commercial engine? As someone who works closely with CROs and VPs of Sales, what’s important to get right?

This is really important. Moving away from just product-led growth into more of a sales-led, commercial engine motion is crucial for a couple of reasons. It’s about being able to build predictable revenue beyond the early adopters, reducing reliance on viral product adoption, and enabling more strategic, positioned growth. 

Product-led growth is very effective in the early stages, but as the company scales, you need to scale quickly. That means making sure you’ve got the right balance between inbound and outbound sales, keeping the pipeline strong. 

It’s also about having processes in place to enable more strategic targeting of higher-value, typically larger enterprise customers, across multiple regions. 

You need clearly defined elements from lead qualification to closing, and you need sales, marketing, and product communicating effectively, with unified messaging and an aligned value proposition across the business. 

Customer success is critical at this stage too, driving expansion and upsell so you keep delivering value. 

Sales enablement also makes a real difference, ensuring people have the right tools, resources, and training to succeed. 

Finally, you need a solid CRM in place, a single source of truth, so you’re making decisions based on the right data. And you need to be able to onboard high-performing salespeople quickly. 

2. What does a well-built sales team look like in the early stages of SaaS growth, and how does that evolve?

In the earliest stages, you’ll typically have a very lean and focused sales team. 

They usually contribute more broadly, helping to shape the company culture. You’re looking at hiring people with market expertise and experience who can quickly identify the pain points of prospects. 

Founders usually play a key role at this stage. Often, they’ll be stepping into the larger, more strategic deals, acting as advocates, and they need to be able to adapt quickly to market shifts or evolving customer needs. 

At this stage, you want salespeople who communicate the value proposition well and know how to build trust and relationships. They often handle the full sales cycle, right through to closing, and help build up that early base of referenceable customers — testimonials and case studies that will be critical later on. 

As the team evolves, especially if you move into an enterprise sales motion, things become much more clearly defined. You’ll see more specialised roles like SDRs, AEs, and sales operations, all helping to drive team performance. 

The process becomes more formalised and structured, with clear segmentation, thoughtful lead qualification, and a well-built sales playbook. 

Key considerations at this stage include the hiring strategy: focusing on experienced salespeople and leadership as the company matures. Lead generation also evolves, shifting from inbound and founder-led outreach to outbound and marketing-sourced leads, helping drive more scalable, organic growth. 

3. What signals tell you a SaaS business is ready to invest in sales leadership, not just execution?

This is a question that comes up quite often with earlier-stage businesses. 

Usually, the key signs include struggling to hit growth milestones or moving past the viral adoption phase of your product and realising it’s time to market the product effectively and establish a cohesive sales motion. 

You might start seeing inconsistent sales processes, poor qualification, or deals falling through. As the sales team grows, you need a leader — someone who can coach the team, ensure proper communication, and address performance gaps. You may have team members who need more focused attention, and you need a leader in place to help reinforce the right behaviours and strengthen the sales process. 

Other important factors include market expansion and investor expectations. You’ll be leaning on these leaders to help navigate funding rounds and hit the milestones required.

4. When you’ve seen sales teams succeed in fast-growing businesses, what’s usually been true about the hiring approach behind them?

This is something people often get wrong, and it can be difficult to measure because there are so many intangibles. 

At the early stages, you’re prioritising people whose performance is critical — the closers, the ones driving deals over the line. But you also need to make sure you’re instilling the values and spirit of your company so that message spreads throughout the market. 

It’s about striking a real balance between experience and growth potential. You want candidates who might not be the perfect fit today but who show all the key traits to develop and evolve into the people you need. Those hires often have far more investment in you and are more likely to stick around if they feel included and supported. 

Timing, onboarding, and training are also critical. You need a structured approach that makes integration into the business seamless. And as the product and market evolve, you need to keep adapting and training your people so they can grow alongside the business. 

When you’re hiring, you can’t take shortcuts. You need to use performance metrics and data to inform hiring decisions and ensure they align with business goals. Fundamentally, you want people who are driven, who maybe have a point to prove, and who enjoy the ambiguity that comes with a fast-growing environment. 

Oli Clarkson specialises in placing top GTM talent for B2B SaaS companies globally. Contact Oli to discuss your hiring needs and how Zeren can support your growth with the right leadership.