As the product-led growth (PLG) solution for businesses of all sizes, we often get questions about how we think about PLG at Pendo. While all of our departments—from marketing and sales to customer education and support—take a product-led approach, we also have a cross-functional team dedicated to product-led growth initiatives.
Earlier this summer, our PLG team got together at Pendo HQ to solidify our roadmap for the second half of the year—providing the perfect opportunity to shed some light on how we plan for product-led growth at Pendo. Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at our agenda for the week, top tips for planning a PLG onsite of your own, and key themes our PLG team will be focusing on throughout the remainder of the year.
Advice for a successful PLG onsite
While an onsite is an amazing way to build partnerships and strategize, there are a few considerations to think about before planning one for your PLG team. Before we get into the details of Pendo’s PLG onsite agenda, here are our top tips for making the most of any PLG onsite:
Tip #1: Plan ahead and make sessions actionable
While quality time spent with your team is incredibly beneficial, it also takes time away from regularly-scheduled tasks and meetings. In order to ensure the time spent together is not only enjoyable, but also valuable, be sure to keep the agenda topics applicable and actionable.
Tip #2: Keep it interactive
During our onsite, the feedback at the end of each day was always along the lines of: The sessions with more activity and small group breakouts were more enjoyable than those without.
We’ve all been attendees at strategy or planning meetings, so pull from your own experience and what you have or haven’t enjoyed. In other words, don’t host a session you wouldn’t want to attend. One caveat here: If you’re going to leverage small groups or breakout sessions, make sure your activities have clear instructions and expectations—otherwise your team will end up more confused than motivated.
Tip #3: Stay flexible and don’t overbook
For our PLG onsite, we buffered in plenty of time between sessions so we never had to rush our presenters or cut idea sharing short. Buffer time also allowed us to give our team breaks between sessions to catch up with one another and recharge.
While a dynamic agenda with interactive sessions is infinitely more enjoyable, it also requires a ton of brain power! In our marketing session, for instance, we planned for two brainstorming sessions, but when we could tell the team was running low on energy, we chose the higher priority session and swapped the second session for a snack break instead.
Tip #4: Gather feedback and don’t be afraid to pivot
As with any good user experience, be sure to bake feedback into your PLG onsite and be ready to pivot if the feedback isn’t what you expected.
Our initial agenda for our onsite had a mix of presentations and breakout sessions, but based on survey feedback from Day 1, we pivoted our Day 2 schedule to swap out some presentations in favor of interactive sessions. In addition to feedback throughout the onsite, make time for a full team retro on learnings, takeaways, and next steps. After a busy few days of idea sharing and strategizing, a closing retro helped our team end the week with clear alignment on what to prioritize as a team.
A peek at our PLG onsite agenda
Pendo’s PLG onsite included a mix of retros on the first half of the year, strategy planning for the next six months, lots of breakout sessions, and of course, a ton of celebrating. Our team spans multiple offices and remote employees so this week was a chance to mix things up with in-person conversation and even some real-life sticky notes (we still love our Miro stickies!).
For a rundown of how we spent our time together (and some lessons we learned along the way), download the full agenda here. One quick note before you dive in: Every team is unique, so what worked for our team may not work for yours. Be sure to think about your team’s learning styles and priorities while reviewing our agenda and planning a PLG onsite of your own.
More than a month after our onsite, our PLG team is still buzzing with energy and momentum from a great few days together. Whether remote or in-person, dedicating time to look back at your successes (and lessons learned) and collectively plan what comes next is an invaluable opportunity for any team. Laying an aligned foundation is key to achieving your goals, especially for a fast-paced, highly collaborative product-led growth team.
On the heels of our PLG onsite, we cannot wait for Pendo users to experience everything we’re building. Don’t miss out on the incredible things we have planned—create your free Pendo account today to follow along with what we are up to!
