Toplyne Labs #1: Hitchhikers Guide to PQLs

42 days... The lifetime of the average product-qualified lead

Hey, Ruchin here! Welcome to the first edition of Toplyne Labs 🥳

A weekly digest that covers unique insights on what makes PLG businesses tick, what signals make for the best PQLs, what sales teams get right, what sales teams get wrong, and the meaning of life… Go figure 🤷🏻‍♂️

And where do these insights come from?

Anonymized insights bubbled up by our proprietary AI, from the wealth of product usage data across our customer base 🧠

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Edition #1… 42! The answer to life, the universe, and everything. And as it turns out the amount of time a PQL has to live its short life.

Insight #1: 90% of conversions play out by Day 42 💡

If you’re a sales team, the clock is against you.

Go too early (0-7 days) and you’ll cannibalize organic conversions - which account for ~70% of conversions* (T&C apply - keep reading)

Go too late (>42 days), and you lose a lead forever.

PLG sales teams have a short Week 1-5 range to ENGAGE and CLOSE accounts. Accounts that ultimately account for only ~30% of conversions. Doesn’t sound like much? Cut to… Insight #2

Insight #2: ACVs are 2.1x higher after the organic conversion period 💰

Don’t worry sales teams. You might only have access to 30% of conversions, but these conversions have an approximately 2.1x higher ACV 🚀

That’s roughly 45-50% of ARR.

And let’s not forget - larger ACV deals have higher NRR, and lower logo churn 💡 Everything public market investors dream about.

Insight #3: ACVs can be even higher 📈

But only if sales teams stop focussing on the wrong leads. Yes… even those teams who claim to have Sophisticated PQLs.

Here’s what most sophisticated PQLs look like:

• Business domains > Personal domains

• Email opens = GOOD

• Pricing page views = GOOD

• More activation events fired = GOOD (FYI… this is wrong. More on why in subsequent editions of Toplyne Labs)

• Invites sent out = GOOD

This is great… at eliminating bad leads 👎🏻

But product-led sales (PLS) is all about getting to a targeted list of the very best leads.

Until next week 👋🏻